I’m in a bit of a "mulling" period right now. Lots of different ideas, post-NSTA, that will manifest themselves into a blog entry, but for now, I am taking Spring Break to do a lot of house-stuff, family stuff, and catching up on paying all my bills stuff. (And the catch up on the the articles in the RSS aggregator stuff.)
Two posts about NCLB really caught my eye — first, Chris Clarke is a freelance whose wife is a public school teacher. His post Last Night talks about what NCLB has done to frustrate and demean his wife. He starts:
Public school teachers make up the largest, most accessible sector of the United States intellectual class.
They are the cannon fodder in the War on Thinking.
Public school teachers are the largest constituency that represents a government-funded social program.
They are the cannon fodder in the War to Starve Government.
They time my wife with a stopwatch. The government curriculum must be followed! An afternoon behind schedule, or ahead, and the warning letters come. No matter that the children struggle, or that having mastered the material, they sit despondent, bored. If her students learn too quickly, she is deemed out of compliance. If she takes time to explain, she is deemed out of compliance. If she is far enough out of compliance, she is deemed substandard.
And then toward the end, he writes one of the truest statements about public education I’ve read in a while:
The best advice to give a new teacher: learn how not to cry until you are at home. I have known people in a thousand professions, and routine weeping is associated with but one. Sometimes the veterans chuckle through the tears. Sometimes, as last night, one tear erodes the penstocks, and ragged howls of anguish echo off the walls, nails clenched deep and cutting into palms.
Go read the whole thing.
And then, when you’re done, go read Jim Horn’s 20 Reasons to Eliminate NCLB (and the 10 Action Strategies for Eliminating NCLB.)
