Learning Beyond the No Child Left Behind Act

This morning while watching the Today show, the topic came up about a teacher who taught kindergarten/first grade at an elementary here in the U.S. The teacher wrote a letter of resignation and sent it to the Huffington Post in effort to highlight her dismay in society surrounding the disconnect between teaching, learning and standardize testing, in short the No Child Left Behind Act.  The teacher explained in detail that she was leaving her position as a teacher because she felt that she taught primarily to appease the “Test” scores and often felt she was doing a disservice to several children who could have used attention in different areas and in the end, many students do not test well.  With pressure on both students and teachers to preform, the teacher came to the conclusion that her job was no longer a fit for her and to paraphrase her statement, “I didn’t leave my job, my job left me.”

The No Child Left Behind Act was instated back in 2002 under President Bush and congress in an effort to “close the achievement gap with accountability, flexibility, and choice, so that no child is left behind.”  The bill was praised by republicans and democrats alike and held a pretty consistent and overwhelming belief among the public that it was indeed the right choice for youth advancement and bridging the gap between standard students and those of disadvantage.  I was certainly one of those individuals on the bandwagon.  I thought that there were several areas in the early education that could be better off.  Besides, a little pressure to set higher standards should positively affect both students, teachers and ultimately society in the long run.  However, I’m not sure if I, or others truly understood the magnitude of the new qualifications and other certain aspects like funding and curriculum, and how those factors would be impacted so drastically in attempt to withhold these new standards.   Hence, standardize testing.

Standardize testing has been debated for centuries. While I hold a pretty strong belief against standardized testing, I’m also a firm believer that there has to be some sort of a happy median between standardized testing and the alternative; a more creative, effortless form of teaching that varies from one to teacher to the next and has no barriers in their style or teaching outcome.  There’s one idea that standardize testing is absolutely an unfair assessment of one’s knowledge or curriculum, yet there’s another idea that some teachers need better structuring and guidance as to what’s important to these young learning brains, so no child is left behind. I’ve had the disservice of having both ends of the spectrum.  There’s the teacher who clocks in and out, who does the bare minimum to get by and could care less if students were more interested in napping than mathematics; then there’s the counterpart individual who was so focused on testing, it was not only extremely frustrating and difficult, it for me was more of an insult to demean me down to a silly test and hold me accountable on strictly those test scores alone. 

To be fair, I’ve had the privilege of having a healthy contrast between both ideas in some early education, but mainly during my undergrads at UM-Flint.  Regardless, at the end of the day I think the government on both a federal and state levels need to take a look at what’s being asked of, and in turn what’s suffering because of these implications and standards.   I think more often than not, particularly in the relationship among government and the academic world, that there’s this all or nothing attitude, when really compromises are crucial to succeed.  On one hand we have congress who, by all means have good intentions, yet seem a little out of sorts as to where attention should be focused, so they blanket the academic world in an effort to cover all the nooks and crannies. On the other hand, we have the academia who perhaps gets stuck in old habits and become complacent to structure and day to day activities, which can ultimately lead down a path of overwhelming disservice to students.  The disconnect is apparent and I think it’s worthy of some attention, focusing on these insights and moving towards how to remedy such situations, for the betterment of all society.  
I'm no longer really involved in the academic realm, I'm not an expert on the topic by any means, nor have any involvement in instruction, however I did spend nearly the last 20 something odd years as a student and I thought it was all insightful food for thought at the very least.