Always searching for inspiration…

The subject of No Child Left Behind will frequently be one that affects our everyday teaching as well as the lives of our students. Since the act was formally passed five years ago, several have studied student performance and the affects from the changes that have been made as well as the development of any further improvement from district to district across the country. Many seem opposed to having to change their teaching styles to accommodate a standardized test. In addition, several people feel that NCLB takes away from other aspects of a student’s education, such as fine arts while causing them to not have time for their own lives. This article which was located on CNN.com closely examines one student’s individual grasp on preparing for the test and how it affects her day-to-day life in school and in general.

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) — Natashia Ector starts the last class of the day with her head on her desk.

After two bus rides, a train ride, five classes and a lunch period spent doing homework, the 17-year-old high school sophomore quickly takes her math teacher up on the offer of two minutes of quiet.

But the calm doesn’t last, the classroom perks back up and the work begins anew.

There is no time to waste at the Boston Community Leadership Academy, where the teachers and 10th-graders have mere months left to prepare for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test. The exam will determine which sophomores can graduate and whether the school is meeting the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law, which mandates that all children be proficient in math and English by 2014.

Last year, more than 90 percent of the schools’ students — nearly all black or Hispanic — passed both the math and English portions of the exam on their first try.

Minority sophomores statewide have shown steady improvement over the past five years, making Massachusetts a leader in addressing one of education’s most stubborn and urgent problems: the achievement gap between white and minority students on standardized tests.

In a typical day for Natashia, it seems everything is colored by the all-important exam.

“Nobody knows what we’re going through,” she says, “unless they’ve come to school.”

After No Child Left Behind became law, states scrambled to comply by creating new tests and standards, said Jack Jennings, president and chief executive officer of the Center on Education Policy, a Washington group that advocates for public education. Others reduced existing standards to make it easier for students to meet them, which is allowed by NCLB.

But Massachusetts — already several years into its own reform plan — did neither.

When the state Legislature passed the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993, it created the MCAS test, established the 10th-grade exam as a graduation requirement beginning with the class of 2003 and demanded the creation of high standards for teachers and students.

In exchange, the Legislature promised more funding; it has pumped more than $19 billion in additional money over the past decade-plus into education.

In most schools districts, several teachers are having to only change their individual curriculum in order to ensure that their students will be able to perform on annual standardized testing, but in this particular area of Boston it has become a graduation requirement and as earlier stated, has provided this school system with an enormous amount of funding. Though I feel that NCLB may do quite a bit to improve the effiency of students not only in the white demographic but the minorities as well, I’m still not entirely sure of whether this act provides students with the skills they should acquire before they go on to higher learning experiences. Reading about this student in the tenth grade named Natashia has made me consider my own doubts about how it affects student performance and understanding.

For those that have questioned whether or not NCLB removes students from other areas of learning, this article shows how a student of minority which this act concentrates on, is able to take on many different activites including dance and drama. In relative to what we have been discussing in class recently, Natashia’s teachers concentrate mostly reading comprehension which is largely tested on but still have the opportunity of giving lessons in other subjects such as drama. For “The Crucible” students were to analyze a character by comparing to a celebrity similar qualities and how they each would fulfill the role. Which consequently encourages reading comprehension through a better understanding of the characters. In relation to our own discussions, I think that mixing both the curriculum involving NCLB with a more meta-cognitive learning curriculum is possible but more difficult, and therefore calls for some improvements because as Natashia says,”Nobody knows what we’re going through, unless they’ve come to school.”

Her English teachers, Beth Noell and Frank Pantano, barely mention the exam directly, but their emphasis this class is on reading comprehension, a major skill needed to pass.

For the period, the students talk about the characters in “The Crucible,” putting them in different categories, speculating on their motives and discussing their fatal flaws.

The four-act play should take the class about four weeks to finish. Maybe that’s a little long, Pantano says, but “I want them to go in depth and understand.”

So it seems that regardless of this test that students are being required to pass in order to graduate, teachers at this school are still taking the time within the limits of their curriculum to not only teach a deeper understanding of reading and writing, but skills that will enable them in any further assessments, such as a standardized test.

One teen’s struggles preparing for standardized test

Complete Article

January 29, 2007

CNN.com

As English teachers who will soon be out in the field we will be dealing with the constant question of has No Child Left Behind, which five years ago had passed as a legislature with many answers to improving student performance in math and reading has had overwhelming improvement in public schools over time. When Bush’s administration created this program the idea was to increase school and government standards so that in subjects that are “most” important such as English, we will have more students who are making the grade more often to ensure that these improvements will hopefully better the quality of our future generations who will one day be taking care of the country.

I discovered in an article I found using Google News which was recently published in Carson City, Nevada that the person writing the article (mostly opinion based) decided to take a closer look at what this act has done to schools in his area. He did this by examining the local schools in the district he lives in while interviewing administration and teachers who live there.

The superintendent of the district, Dr. Mary Pierczynski says,

“NCLB established valid goals for teachers and students,” Dr. Pierczynski told me, ”but the people who put it together must never have been in a classroom.”

In other words, after five years progress many of the schools did have some improvement, excluding the local elementary schools but that those who created and passed the act were clearly not aware of the experiences that occur within a classroom. Those who thought of creating this act created a strict or “uniformed” way of running the classroom. Ironic, considering that most often educators are finding that a slight departure from these traditional classroom settings are more suited to the learning of students. The reasoning for this being that constantly reciting facts and information about “what happened” in stories and poems does not help children maintain what they have learned nor does it offer a deeper sense of understanding that comes from becoming a mature reader. In addition, growing as a reader can only happen when students are interested and engaged. Therefore, teaching in a way that is directed mostly toward an efficient performance on a standardized test is not necessary helping students to improve while learning more, but just passing.

Though there has been some improvement, educators are claiming that the program is slowly progressing toward its goal in 2014 of “proficiency” and that is finally focusing more on the standards taught to lower achieving students. That with its with its five-year deadline, new national standards can be revised for further progression. But perhaps the reason this is taking more time than originally speculated may be for some reasons earlier listed and that there is a constant push-and-pull with teachers trying to teach in ways that suggest students have the ability to learn better from processing what they are reading rather from maintaining facts and skills suited to take a test with certain requirements. Curious.

But the government must not forget that students still do contain the capacity to be creative and thought processing individuals. If our school systems continue this “rigid” program students will have a tendency to having a difficulty learning important reading and writing skills which is for many already a more challenging task to take on. Someone should ask those who were involved with the creation of the act if they know where they laid out the rules for being creative and thinking meta-cognitively rather than constantly struggling to make sure students pass another standardized test. Just something to think about. I think No Child Left Behind has some potential but definitely needs to be improved if the government intends for this to actually prove to be useful in upcoming years. Many aspects that define this act have relatively decent intentions but will it truly do justice for students who are becoming more mature learners? I think that is where this act falls short is helping children become equipped for further years of education.

Is “No Child Left Behind” passing the test five years later?

By Guy Farmer
January 14, 2007

Complete Article

Hello everyone! My name is Hilary and I’m a senior here at Grand Valley State. I’m also a senior nearing completion but still have some more work to do. I am of course an English major (with a particular enjoyment for Poe, Austen, Byron, Wilde, Barrie and the list goes on). As a little side note about me, I enjoy playing the violin and I’m a huge fan of the t.v. shows Lost and Heroes (with a long-time love for The X-Files) because they are quite simply great. I hope that this class will further my knowledge of how to encourage students to enjoy literature as we do while showing them that there is more than regurgitated what happened in what they read.

As for the topic or topics I would like to focus on for my blog’s entries, I have considered doing censorship because I think that as English teachers this is one of the most important if not most important topic to discuss. It is always important to focus on information that is useful to the public as well as your own personal needs. This topic will provide an update in what latest events have occurred within this issue because this is obviously something that has been around for many years (I stress the “many”). It is still questioned in classrooms today as well. Knowing what will be considered appropriate in our classrooms is important knowledge to have because as English teachers we are challenged with the task of getting students to abide to learning with some tradtional values being set by the government. At the same time providing lessons that are thought provoking concentrating on open-ended learning that produces more of a response that shows connection to what is being taught.

 I have also considered doing No Child Left Behind because this also an important subject amongst English teachers. As I have been told by many of my professors, statistics show that English education has been slipping and students will to learn and comprehend this subject has somewhat lessened recently. Who am I kidding? Most students don’t get too overly exited but I think that updating knowledge about this topic would be really fascinating to see where it has come as well as looking at what is has done in schools since established. While evaluating the affects of this act trying to continue a more traditional teaching style as opposed to providing more of a creative outlet. This would be interesting to look at.

I’ll be searching for resources with Google news as well as some major news sites including CNN.com and The New York Times and Washington Post to try and narrow the search for these topics. After reading an article or two I will hope that I have found something useful.

Anyway, this is my introduction to ENG 311. I hope to learn a lot and meet many of you as well! See you soon!