New Head of Teacher's Union Attacks NCLB
Randi Weingarten, the new president of the American Federation of Teachers, called this week for overhauling No Child Left Behind, saying the education law "has outlived whatever usefulness it ever had" and that "it is too badly broken to be fixed." Weingarten's sharp attack on NCLB puts her at odds with U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who in her last six months on the job continues to defend NCLB. Speaking to reporters after a meeting with business leaders in Washington, Spellings said she "vigorously disagreed" with Weingarten and expressed hope that a new administration won't abandon the law's goal of having every child read and do math at grade level by 2014. "We need more NCLB, not less," Spellings said during her remarks to the Business Roundtable group, which on the same day released a report expressing alarm about the stagnant number of U.S. scientists and engineers.
The education czar urged business leaders to resist the "lofty rhetoric" of the presidential candidates and other elected officials who may be trying to undermine the law's core principles of accountability and transparency. (The country's two biggest teachers' unions have said they don't oppose accountability but resent the punitive nature of NCLB and want other measures besides testing to gauge student learning.) Spellings credited the business community for its efforts to promote math and science education, though she took some indirect criticism because the federal government has not made good on its promise to fully fund the America COMPETES Act, which was passed three years ago and calls for more emphasis on preparing students and teachers in math and science.
Tags: teachers | Margaret Spellings | No Child Left Behind
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Reader Comments
The fix to NCLB is fairly simple. Every time a school fails some measure of AYP (adequate yearly progress) you eliminate an administrative position and transfer the equivalent salary permanently to budget for classromm teachers. If you run out of administrators to cut, you start cutting sports coaches. Sooner or later this will result in more teachers and smaller classes---for the same money.
NCLB
Testing must be developmentally appropriate and done on a continuous basis--not once a year. Therein lies the problem of high-stakes.
To top it off, too often tests that are supposed to be criterion-referenced function like norm-referenced tests--only useful for making group decisions-- yet, in the name of NCLB States proceed to allow individualized decisions. Therein lies a serious breech of testing ethics.
This can be verified by the American Education Research Association (AERA) but has been ignored in favor of for-profit testing providers, who are simply delivering what we ask.
Our plea should not be to throw out the tests. It should be to use tests to gauge success "the temporary acquisition of goals" over time on a continuous basis. That is what teaching and learning is really all about.
teachers
the problem lies in the effectiveness of the teaching vs. cost.
We know what works but does our state really need to require a Bachelors degree @ $60,000 per school year with all the vacation time etc and full benefits? Please! A couple of business majors I know became teachers instead because it's "cake!" I predict a major crash in the teachers market just like the overpaid auto union. The statistics prove test scores are no better with higher paid teachers.
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