@ samrway
@ pocahontas.
The No Child Left Behind Act is actually different from the 'No child left behind' motto. The No Child Left Behind Act doesn't actually mean that schools/teachers aren't allowed to make students repeat grades. They still can and still do. The No Child Left Behind Act isn't (wasn't - because it was replaced by a new law in December) literal, as in 'No student has to repeat a grade regardless of how they're doing,' - it's metaphorical, as in 'We're not going to let any kids fall through the cracks.'
If anything, the No Child Left Behind Act was actually meant to help decrease instances of social promotion - where kids are simply moved forward by their school so that they don't feel ostracized - because the No Child Left Behind Act is what attempts to create academic standards through standardized testing and take steps to ensure that schools help students to reach those standards. (Whether or not it's been effective is another story.)
Most of No Child Left Behind deals with standardize testing and using that to gauge how a school is doing, and then using that to determine how a school is funded and changes that need to be made. It's actually a lot more to do with the school system and teachers than the actual students and their promotion.
Standardized tests - a HUGE part of No Child Left Behind test how the school is doing, and not necessarily the individual students. It looks at test scores to see if the school is improving or not - by seeing how many students are passing/failing the tests from one year compared to another. So, for example, if 28% of fourth grade students passed the ELA test in 2004 and 35% of fourth grade students passed the ELA test in 2005, that would be seen as an improvement. It might be the difference between a school being in danger of getting defunded, staff being fired, or the school closing as a whole, and the school getting better funding the following year.
One of the real issues with No Child Left Behind is that there isn't really a big concern for individual students. It doesn't matter if you're a great student in a failing school or a failing student in a great school, you might ultimately end up getting treated exactly the same and afforded the same opportunities - which is double-sided blade really.
* As far as holding kids back/making them repeat grades, the reason it's always been such a hot-topic item is because there's more than just the issues in confidence/social development it may cause in the individual student. It's also issues with over-crowding (if more kids are entering the school system than leaving it, where the hell are we going to put them?), the school not doing enough to help the student (a lot of times the kid not being up to snuff is more a reflection of the school and the education they're receiving, than the student themselves - so is it fair to punish a kid for the school's failure?), creating classrooms situations that may be unsafe/inappropriate for other students (for example, 10 year olds and 13 year olds are kind of miles apart in emotional/sexual maturity, do they need to be in the same class together). Holding a kid back isn't something that happens within a vacuum.
** Also with initiatives that move to limit kids getting held back, it's not generally just, "Oh, we move them forward anyway." When people move to limit kids being held back, they usually do so so that other options can be given a chance. So, for example, instead of making holding a kid back as the first choice, they make it so that kids who are failing have the option to take free tutoring lessons provided by the school, or extra-lessons, or after-school lessons, or summer-school - basically any other way to get the kid to pass the class(es) before deciding that holding them back is the best measure.
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How they're teaching math now with Common Core standards seems super-hard (and even ridiculous) to us because that's not the way we learned it - similar to how some of the teaching methods we learned seemed foreign to our parents when we were growing up - but the kids who are growing up with it now won't have the kind of trouble we have understand it because it'll be all that they know. They're not hindered the way we are by knowledge of a different way - kind of similar to how it's easier to learn a language when that's your FIRST language, rather than if it's your second. We look at it and we think 'What is this nonsense?! No, look, here's the easier way to do it," but the kids coming up now won't feel that way.
And I don't think the issue with Common Core is that it teaches different methods than what older generations learned. I think the issue is that it creates a big gap between parents and their children and a lot of parents aren't being appropriately prepared for it. So when your kid comes home with what seems like simple math problem and the way you know how to do it is incorrect, that's frustrating. If teachers are sending your kids home with basic math and you're expected to help them with it, but how you would do it is considered wrong, that's the issue.
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Both of these initiatives are made to help standardize education in the country so that (a) everyone's leaving high school and entering college with, at least, a basic minimum of knowledge that's somewhat equal across the board, and (b) to help make schools accountable for how thoroughly they educate their students. I don't know if either of them have worked/will work wholly, but definitely parts of each has been helpful, and when they move forward, hopefully they'll keep taking the pieces that work, dropping the stuff that doesn't, and then trying out more new ideas.
March 23rd, 2016 at 09:44pm
