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Friday, January 15, 2010

No child left behind means all children left behind

Are you kidding me?! At the end of each school quarter, the teachers in many school districts get a whole or half-day off for "professional development" days. I thought they were learning better teaching skills or something. Not so! Guess what they do on those days?

They all get together and re-evaluate the performance of their class from the last quarter, and readjust the curriculum down to fit the lowest achiever in class.

Are you kidding me?! They are in effect dumbing down the whole class so that one or a few aren't "left behind." Isn't this the same as leaving them all behind? I don't think this was the intention of the No Child Left Behind Law. Why can't the schools just get a tutor or aide or resource person to help the slow kids, and stop holding everyone back?

It makes me just about ready to home-school my kids. First, Project Follow Through ruins over 3 generations of US kids, then NCLB is mis-interpreted to mean that the whole class has to learn on the level of the most-challenged student.

What is the real political goal, here? To have citizens too stupid to vote with any intelligence? To make sure that all our technology jobs keep going to India and China? Do we enjoy talking to a help desk half-way around the world whom we can't understand? Why promote this?

Any parent who cares anything about his/her child's future would not depend on the schools to do the teaching. Even if you can't afford public school or to home-school, you can supplement at home. You can teach your child to read by phonics before kindergarten. You can find math systems to do at home. And you should!

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