Every Teacher's Bare Behind

I arrived at Lincoln Junior High School last week to discover that I was to teach my group of 7th graders a lesson for the upcoming CSAP testing (identifying adjectives, nouns, and verbs). While this lesson wasn't difficult for me to teach, it reminded me how CSAP testing interrupts the regular flow of a curriculum. You see, not only are teachers expected to cover the same amount of material now as they did prior to CSAP, they have to address and teach to CSAP because their jobs are on the line. If you're a teacher and your students don't perform well on the CSAP, it goes on your record and you become accountable. If a school has failing test scores on a consistent basis, it will be shut down by the state government and everybody in that school will be out of a job (as was the case with a Denver middle school three years ago). It rarely gets to this level as a principal will likely fire a teacher if their students don't perform well on the CSAP before it gets out of hand. Every day last week, my class at Lincoln was focusing on some aspect of CSAP preparation. My mentor told me that she wished this wasn't the case, but because of the 'No Child Left Behind' Act, this is unfortunately the outcome. As a future educator, it's very important for me to understand the pros and cons of the 'No Child Left Behind' Act as it will undoubetedly have an impact on my career. But for all of you who are reading this (and might not be teachers), it is also very important to understand because you may have children in public education, or will have children in public education very soon. So lets go over some of the pros and cons real quick:

PROS of 'No Child Left Behind'
1. CSAP testing. According to the NEA (National Education Association), test scores from CSAP indicate that the majority of students are becoming more proficient in Math and English on an annual basis (this is compared to previous results gathered from a national test such as SALT).
2. ELLs (English Language Learners) benefit from the program because standards are leveled and it "creates equal opportunity in education".
3. Forces teachers to be certified with a license. This is actually a useful benefit of NCLB. In a previous post, 'Bro C' stated that teachers weren't required to have a license, they just had to pass a state test (PLACE or PRAXIS) and have education equivalent to a Bachelor's Degree. This isn't true. NCLB requires that you must obtain a teaching license from an accredited college or university (which is what I'm doing currently - I wish I could just take the PLACE or PRAXIS and not be in 30k student loan debt lol).
4. NCLB gives students a school-of-choice option; they get to pick whatever school they want (in the past it was dictated by zip codes).
5. If you're a politician, it somehow makes you look better to endorse it and it definitely fattens your wallet, but let's not get into that.

CONS of 'No Child Left Behind'
1. CSAP testing. As stated above, it cuts into EXPECTED school curriculum and places pressure and accountability on the teachers (I suppose it's similiar to professional sports in a sense, if the players don't play well and the team is terrible, the coach gets canned). Shouldn't the accountability be on the students? (this differs from my professional sports analogy...in professional sports, a team can release or cut a player if the organization doesn't feel they are giving good effort. In education, a teacher can't release or cut a student if they just refuse to be accountable; the worst they can do is fail a student which in turn makes the teacher look bad on their record).
2. CSAP testing. Because of the pressures and accountability that CSAP testing puts on teachers, they HAVE to 'teach to the test' (so-to-speak). They spend valuable time and effort teaching kids how to get it right on the test instead of teaching kids how to understand the material. You're probably scratching your head and saying: 'doesn't teaching them how to get it right and how to understand it go hand-in-hand?' Simply put, no. It doesn't. Teachers no longer care if the kids understand it or not, they just want them to get it right because their job is on the line. Just because a kid knows that 2 + 6 = 8 doesn't neccesarily mean they understand WHY 2 + 6 = 8.
3. CSAP testing. What life skills will CSAP testing give students in the future? Seriously think about this. In all honesty, the knowlegde that children gain in order to perform well on the CSAP will most likely be of no value (or little value) when they grow into an adult and are faced with real-world problems.
4. NCLB facilitates military recruitment. Here's something I bet hardly any of you knew: NCLB REQUIRES that all students information be given to the military and be placed in their recruitment programs. Failure to do so results in the student's expulsion from public school. Hmmm...wonder why this is part of the tiny print in NCLB (a purely political concoction) although it has nothing to do with education or improving education.
5. Some students just don't learn as well under a "one-size-fits-all" standard of education. Some students require much more creativity than NCLB allows to grow and blossom as a future citizen in our society.
6. Teachers don't get anything from it. As if our jobs weren't stressful and hard enough, placing a "one-size-fits-all" standard on our career as well as our teaching methods, our curriculums, and our educational beliefs and consequent outcomes doesn't make it any easier. However, even if our personal finances don't receive any kind of boost, if our students perform well on the CSAP, our school gets more state funding - - yay. I guess. maybe. I don't know. I don't really care. I'm just glad I still have a job...I guess. yay.

So all-in-all, no wonder teachers hate NCLB so much. You would too if you were/are a teacher. Your freedom would be stripped away and you'd fear for your job as it would lay in Little Pedro and Sweet Sally's hands. In the next few posts, I'll be going over the educational beliefs of Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Barrack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, so all of you can gain a little information on how they'll impact my life if they're elected President of the United States in November. So shame on you if you vote for somebody that will make my professional life suck. Just kidding. Not really.