My first experience with No Child Left Behind. What a joke!

[RandySF]

It's been a little over month since our kid started kindergarden at San Francisco Unified School District. We we like the school, love his teacher and he enjoys the after-school program so much that he never wants to leave. It is a relatively unknown school that provides a safe learning environment and the staff have high expectations of the students. So I was bit surprised last week when we received a notification that, according to No Child Left Behind, is not performing as well as at should. The reason cited was proficiency in English and Language Arts. I did a little digging and examined the most recent STAR test results. students are scoring very well in mathematics, but yes, scores for English are not so high. Then, I applied something called "common sense" which told me that an overwhelming majority of students are immigrants or were born into a home where another language is spoken. Do the people who wrote NCLB understand that some communities have large immigrant communities? Do the bureaucrats at the Department of Education realize this? Must staff be penalized for factors out of their control? I would think everyone would be thrilled to death with the math scores. The kids will learn English by osmosis if anything else. This law has to go.

[Sancho]

1. welcome to the world of NCLB!! Some of us have seen it for 10 years.

:mad:

[Angry Dragon]

2. Why should facts have anything to do with regulations??

[RKP5637]

3. Often bureau'crazies' follow rules and regulations with sadly no common sense involved and

those that want to don't have the leeway/authority to correct any inane methodologies.

IMO our whole life is one giant bureaucracy. Now I can't remember what happen awhile back here, I put the whole idiotically of it all outta my mind.

[msongs]

4. the paper pushing morons who create this stuff get paid whether their stuff is worth it or not nt

[arcane1]

5. You'd think that, in a sane world, instead of being penalized...

they would be given funding to make their language department better suited to the needs of the school.

Hell, the school across the street from me has kinds from every kind of culture imaginable. I'll see parents walking them from school and it's as if the entire world is represented; from 20-something Caucasians in jeans to women in burkhas! It's quite beautiful, and I had hoped that the school was taking this diversity well into account. We're probably talking about different schools but the demographics are nearly universal.

What happens when they get a low score? Please don't say funding cuts!! :(

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. You applied something called common sense

That's where you messed up. :)

[charmay]

7. Exactly!

[Luminous Animal]

8. My neighbors, with a 6 year old in the public school system in SF are considering

pulling their kid out for a similar reason you expressed above. And these are people who are very supportive of public school. They are currently fighting back with other like-minded parents but they feel that they don't know how long they can compromise their kid's education.

[NYC_SKP]

9. I'm sorry for your child, children everywhere.

I'm happy that we have some local public (yes, public local government-run) charter schools that don't take Title I funds and don't have to play the NCLB game. SFUSD is not my favorite to work with but if anyplace offers alternatives, I would expect it to be them.

Good luck.

[RandySF]

10. Let me be clear, I'm not faulting the school

They have wonderful teachers and a kid who lives upstairs went to Redding and he's on track to possibly attend Lowell High School (one of the best in the country). But NCLB is tagging it just because most of the kids are learning English. And I should mention that if you go deeper into the scored by demographic, there is only one specific group of students who are not doing well in English. The Department of Education should give us the funds to lift them up, but take money away and tear everyone down.