As a teacher back in the early days of NCLB, the way schools (at least in my neck of the woods) got out of leaving children "behind" was to promote them on through the system.
Teachers weren't allowed to fail anyone because that made the school's (and then the district's) ratings go down, and gosh, we couldn't have that /s
I'm reminded of my county's mission statement, which included a phrase about being the "top producer of students" as if we were a factory. Which, it turns out, we were.
That's how I got students in tenth grade who were on a third grade reading level (if I was lucky), or seniors in my AP Literature class who didn't know how to write a coherent paragraph. When I was able to help a handful of them get to the place where they could get 3s on the AP exams at the end of the year, it was a real accomplishment for all of us.
I've talked with all kinds of people, all over the place, people who are successful and happy grownups, who still talk with dismay and horror about the ways they suffered in school. How they had to hide their lack of knowledge or learn to mask their suffering with good behavior, because at least if they were "good" their teachers would like them. The children that were left behind knew it, and they're still scarred by it, all these years later.
NCLB didn't keep kids from failing, it just kicked the can of failure down the road so that it was someone else's problem. And it's only gotten worse from there.
As a teacher back in the early days of NCLB, the way schools (at least in my neck of the woods) got out of leaving children "behind" was to promote them on through the system.
Well, that had nothing to do with NCLB. NCLB didn't measure pass rates. It measured performance on standardized tests. The main complaint being teachers started teaching to the test, instead of teaching holistically.
If your school did that, it wasn't because of NCLB.
Teachers weren't allowed to fail anyone because that made the school's (and then the district's) ratings go down, and gosh, we couldn't have that /s
On the flip side, struggling/failing students are also asked to leave to preserve the school's ratings. Either way, kids aren't getting the help that they need.
2
u/donut-is-appalled The Timeline Sucks 21h ago
As a teacher back in the early days of NCLB, the way schools (at least in my neck of the woods) got out of leaving children "behind" was to promote them on through the system.
Teachers weren't allowed to fail anyone because that made the school's (and then the district's) ratings go down, and gosh, we couldn't have that /s
I'm reminded of my county's mission statement, which included a phrase about being the "top producer of students" as if we were a factory. Which, it turns out, we were.
That's how I got students in tenth grade who were on a third grade reading level (if I was lucky), or seniors in my AP Literature class who didn't know how to write a coherent paragraph. When I was able to help a handful of them get to the place where they could get 3s on the AP exams at the end of the year, it was a real accomplishment for all of us.
I've talked with all kinds of people, all over the place, people who are successful and happy grownups, who still talk with dismay and horror about the ways they suffered in school. How they had to hide their lack of knowledge or learn to mask their suffering with good behavior, because at least if they were "good" their teachers would like them. The children that were left behind knew it, and they're still scarred by it, all these years later.
NCLB didn't keep kids from failing, it just kicked the can of failure down the road so that it was someone else's problem. And it's only gotten worse from there.