NCLB renamed? How 'bout Act to Help Children Read Gooder?

[babylonsister]

Rename Law? No Wisecrack Is Left Behind

By SAM DILLON
Published: February 22, 2009


WASHINGTON — Two years ago, an effort to fix No Child Left Behind, the main federal law on public schools, provoked a grueling slugfest in Congress, leading Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, to say the law had become “the most negative brand in America.”

Education Secretary Arne Duncan agrees. “Let’s rebrand it,” he said in an interview. “Give it a new name.”

And before Mr. Duncan has had time to float a single name, scores of educators, policy wonks and assorted rabble-rousers have rushed in with an outpouring of proposals.

The civil rights leader Marian Wright Edelman took the high road, suggesting it be called the Quality Education for All Children Act. But a lot of wise guys have gotten in on the act too, with suggestions like the All American Children Are Above Average Act. Alternatives are popping up every day on the Eduwonk.com blog, where Andrew Rotherham, a former Clinton administration official, is sponsoring a rename-the-law contest.

One entry, alluding to the bank bailout program, suggests that it be called the Mental Asset Recovery Plan. Another proposal: the Act to Help Children Read Gooder.

Part of the problem is that the law, which comes up for reauthorization every five years, became closely associated with President George W. Bush, and as his popularity slid, the law, and its name, came under attack and ridicule.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/education/23child.html

[Captain Hilts]

1. There are so many punchlines here, it's amazing, isn't it?

[Ms. Toad]

2. Hate to have to tell them this,

But very few (if any) competent educators took it seriously in the first place - its popularity didn't slide along with Bush's, it was never popular.

[Whoa_Nelly]

5. As an educator, thought it was crap right from the start

But the states have had to follow suit to receive funds, and the crap is forced on us to hand out to the kids, thus limiting the ways we can actually reach them and teach them.

The NCLB has to go.

[Ms. Toad]

6. I know. I taught for 11 years.

And my daughter who previously had not even bothered to tell me when tests were coming up was so freaked out by her first 4th grade encounter with the NCLB tests that I heard about it for months in advance of the test.

In 6th grade, she failed the writing portion because - again - there was such pressure about the tests. She misunderstood the directions about when they were supposed to stop, and they had drummed into their heads the importance of only working on one section of the test at at time - she thought she was done and thought she was following directions by not turning the next page (to the remaining part of the section of the test she was supposed to be working on). They didn't bother to glance through her test to see that the reason she was done way ahead of everyone else was that she hadn't even worked on major parts of the test. She scored in the top percentile range on the parts she finished :)

Just for a point of reference, this kid who was - at least in some sense being left behind based on her test scores - graduated last year as the valedictorian of her class - and earned a B+ average in her first semester at the very selective college she now attends, despite beginning a battle with a major illness in the last month of the first semester. If the tests are serving her that poorly, imagine what they are doing with the less well-equipped kids.

[Cerridwen]

3. If it's "broke" you don't fix it you "re-brand" it?

/insert long detailed rant in here complete with #@@#$#%!!!!!! and )*&(*&^^^($#F#!!!!! and other thoughts about what I think of applying bandaids to sucking chest wounds.

/end of rant I'm too astounded (and not yet awake enough) to type.

May I just end with, how about we just let the teachers TEACH!

[carlyhippy]

4. They can rebrand it all they want to, the program still isn't going to work.

Carly

[TBF]

7. lol ... lipstick on a pig. n/t