NO CHANGE IS NOT AN IMPROVEMENT: Our Kids Can’t Write

NO CHANGE IS NOT AN IMPROVEMENT

By PraetorOne and Rachel

A recent test revealed that only 33 percent of 8th grade students could write at or above a proficient level. That same test revealed that approximately one in four 12th grade students could write at or above a proficient level. Girls tended to out perform boys at a rate of 41 to 20 percent. The test itself asked the students to write a brief essay in a brief period of time while the end result revealed that students had not yet mastered skills as basic as the every day sentence. Indeed, the sentence appeared to be the primary casualty.

So why is this important?

I can think of thee basic reasons.

First, writing is an indication as to how well our students are performing overall, how they are achieving or not achieving in other areas of the curriculum.

Second it suggests that we have short changed our boys. We have taught our students that math and science are important for both boys and girls while we have been telling boys that they don’t need to bother with language skills.

Third, and most important, it tells us that No Child Left Behind is an Educational Flop. With its heavy emphasis on math, science, testing, and teaching to the test, No Child Left Behind has created another generation of semi literate children, essentially worsening the problem that it was created to fix. But that doesn’t stop federal officials from heralding the latest test results as a huge success as they point out that these results reveal little change from previous test results. As if we’re supposed to be impressed. So the results didn’t get any worse. Will someone please tell me how remaining stuck in the same dismal situation that you were stuck in before constitutes an improvement? You’d think that a regime that could play fast and loose with language, a regime that could manipulate words and phrases the way this one does would be able to find a few teachers who can at least pass on information about basic sentence structure. But then again we all know that No Child Left Behind is not an educational bill.

Rather, it is a bill designed to accomplish a number of Draconian ends, only a few of them associated with legitimate education. First it interferes with the honorable tradition of local control, stripping power from school districts where it belongs and placing it in the hands of the federal government. THIS from a regime that complained fiercely about the invasive power of the dreaded federal government. What hypocrisy. With that power in hand the federal government promptly proved even more inept than the local officials who had traditionally made local decisions about education. The feds not only interfered with curricula content. They created a situation in which so much emphasis was placed on math and science and to a certain degree reading that other subjects such as government, civics, art, music, and the performing arts in general (forensics, theater, etc) went by the wayside. With teachers teaching to the test where was the time and incentive to teach anything that wouldn’t appear on the test? The answer is obvious, there wasn’t. This is odd because in so many ways it undercuts the conservatives’ own agenda. Conservatives routinely complain about the kind of violent, sexually-orientated music that kids listen to, but that didn’t stop them from creating a system in which genuine art and music education are jettisoned from the curriculum, leaving kids with the idea that violent, over-sexed music and videos are genuine art forms. As for reading and writing, it seems to me that one of the basic tenants of No Child Left Behind was a mandate to teach reading and writing. Well you’d never think so from the so called progress that we’ve been making. Which is no progress at all. But then what can you expect when you have a semi-literate chimpanzee for a President who doesn’t read and who can’t remember the first book he ever read because he never read one in the first place?

More chillingly, No Child Left Behind gives the federal government too much information about our children. Make no mistake about it. When I say the federal government I mean the military. Where does the federal government come off demanding that our nation’s schools allow military recruiters into our public schools? Why should this decision be made at the federal level and not the local level? Why should the federal government have the power to cut off federal funds if a particular school district refuses to admit military recruiters? For that matter, where does the federal government get off telling school districts that they have to provide those recruiters with students’ records? Granted, there are provisions which allow a parent to notify the district that the child’s records be kept private but this turns the situation on its head. In a rational society the recruiters would have to seek permission from the parents to OBTAIN the records, not operate under the assumption that the records are open to recruiters. Whose government is it anyhow?

If ever there was a piece of legislation that should be repealed it is No Child Left Behind. Not only is it a threat to our families’ privacy, it also fails in its mission to teach basic reading and writing. The feds can claim that a static situation is an improvement, but we all know that no improvement is an abject failure.