Educational issue- NCLB

I really thought this presentation was going to be a complete waste of my time since i have looked over some of the details of NCLB in quite a few of my education classes. This did not turn out to be the case. In most of my classes, the level of depth with which NCLB is investigated remains shallow. I have talked various times about how the system does not work because it restricts funding from the schools that need it the most, and i have talked about the impossiblity of having 100 percent of students reaching the standards set in reading and math. That being said, i had not gone over the results in the detail that the group presented to the class. For example, i was not aware of the goals in aqequate yearly progress. It put me somewhat at odds to see the dispairity between the levels of students who did reach the benchmarks compared to the projected number of students. I did not know that NCLB set requirements for schools to have highly trained teachers but i was glad to see that the standards are being set.

Perhaps the most important part of the presentation was the short video of the president elect Barack Obama speaking about his views on NCLB. I have to admit, i was a little discouraged by the fact that he was refering to AYP as ANNUAL yearly progress, but overall, he did seem to understand the nature of NCLB and see the flaws in its constructs. The other video of people (senators maybe?) talking about NCLB was valuable also. It was good to see that Joe Biden was one of the people that talked about his view of the bill because it is important to me to see what is going to happen with NCLB. Also, i was glad to see that he was not in favor of the bill. On a side note, i liked the guy who said to completely scrap the bill and mandate a minimum salary of $40,000 for teachers. haha.

After watching the presentation, i feel like i have a knowledge of NCLB that allows me talk about it with enough knowledge to earnestly discuss the ways to fix the problem at hand. Personally, i think that NCLB should be scrapped. Even though some of the principals in NCLB are admirable, i think the system created by this expansive act is too flawed to justify spending time repairing it. The interesting thing to me though is that the question over to fix it or abandon it is really as big of a question as it is. Whether the act is kicked aside or heavily revised matters little when you realize that either way is little more than an interchangable method that will be used to try to create a new standard for our nations education. instead, the questions should be: what values do we want to see put into our nations education? Who should be present to help create a new act or revise the old one? and how can we avoid a failure such as been seen with NCLB.