No Test Left Untaken

I wonder if any of the architects or enforcers of No Child Left Behind actually have children in the public schools. Somehow I doubt it. I'd guess their children are grown up or safely ensconced in private school. Because I don't know a single person who has to live with No Child Left Behind who actually supports it.

I'm actually quite favorably impressed with standards-based education (sorry, K). If you've got a good teacher and your standards make sense, they should enable teaching rather than impeding it. That's what happened at M's old school. The Red State standards were long and bureaucratic, but they were completely reasonable. In third grade they learned how to write a letter and a paragraph, to draft and to proofread. They studied local history and Native American culture, recycling and continents (actually, they seem to study continents every year, but that's ok). I do believe that learning should be about content, not just skills, and the content in the standards was both appropriate and interesting to third graders.

M also had great teachers who were super-creative with integrating the standards. In M's class they built a doghouse as part of a school-wide Habitat for Humanity project. Writing paragraphs about what the doghouse should have in it met a writing standard. Estimating and measuring met a math standard. Learning about dogs met a science standard. I think there was a technology standard in there too. And the kids had no idea they were meeting standards--they just thought they were doing a cool project.

So the standards are fine, if they're done well. It's the damn tests. Because the fact is, the main thing you need to do well on the tests is good test-taking skills, plus a command of basic skills: reading, writing, math. But test-taking skills don't come easily to everyone, and M's new schools is 1/3 ESL students, which means reading and writing don't come so easily either. And the thing is, everyone has to take the test, and if not enough kids pass, the school is in big trouble (this is why I have no patience with the anti-testing parents, usually middle-class and intelligent, who don't let their kids take the tests, just like I have no patience with parents who don't vaccinate--the school needs my kid's good test scores, and those parents who don't vaccinate are in fact relying on the fact that the rest of us do vaccinate, so scarlet fever and German measles aren't really something they need to worry about--the community, people, you need to think about the community, not just your own kid...but I digress).

So the problem with No Child Left Behind is that the schools become totally test-focused. Not standards-focused, but test-focused. Which is boring, and intellectually ineffectual, and just a huge pain in the ass for teachers, students, and parents. Unless they're in a private school.

[Hmm, I just googled and apparently Margaret Spelling's kid does go to public school. Then again, Margaret Spelling's perceptive abilities have never impressed me.]