Children are more than test scores
This is a group that welcomes new members who believe that No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top is misguided educational reform policy that relies too heavily on standardized test scores and is too focused on punitive measures against local schools.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=352118040858&v=wall&ref=ts#!/group.php?gid=352118040858&v=info&ref=tsWe are working on an online drop box for people to share the stories of teachers, parents, and students who feel NCLB harms their schools, and plan on analyzing these stories, and bringing them to Washington D. C. this Labor day 2010, and will continue new every Labor day until the law is changed. On March 31, 2010 we will put up the online drop box for people to submit their stories about NCLB and RTTT.
Dr. Jesse Turner is personally going to walk from Connecticut to Washington D.C. this August to bring the stories to the White House. He is planning to walk and talk to teachers, parents, and students along the way to discover how fellow citizens really feel about this policy. He does not believe the mainstream press is accurately capturing the concerns of people who feel this policy is more punitive than beneficial to American public education. Dr. Turner firmly believes one person can still make a difference in America.
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Walking to D.C.
August 9, 2010
by Sabrina
.Headlines like “Inexperienced Companies Chase U.S. School Funds” and “Schools paying for tutors with mixed track record” don’t surprise Dr. Jesse Turner, a professor of reading and language arts at Central Connecticut State University. In the course of his work as director of CCSU’s Literacy Center, he has witnessed and felt deep opposition to No Child Left Behind. The teachers, students, and parents with whom he works have all expressed to him how frustrated they are by the punitive nature of recent federal education policy. As a literacy expert, he is especially disturbed by the number of reading specialists who now report spending as much or more time administering assessments and tracking student data as they spend on teaching students. Because of what he’s seen, Dr. Turner objects to the hundreds of billions of dollars that states and the federal government have spent on expanding assessment and data systems, implementing pre-packaged curricula and increasing test preparation. He feels that this money should have been spent on proven solutions like smaller class sizes and direct services to the students who need them the most.
In response, he began collecting NCLB resistance stories and presenting them at conferences around the country. The response was so great that he started the “Children are more than test scores” group on Facebook, and as you read this, he is walking–yes, walking– to Washington, D.C. His goal is to collect and share more of those stories with elected officials.
Because we’re all interested in gathering firsthand accounts of what schooling has become as a result of current policy, we’ll be sharing some of those stories here at Failing Schools.
http://failingschools.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/walking-to-d-c/
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