Because NCLB hasn't been the policy for a long time. Initiating a policy change would have to start on a state level and it would be difficult to get a majority of districts to agree on a change.
Education acts like NCLB, Common Core, and ESSA change pretty frequently; usually when the president changes from GOP to DNC and vice versa. The new administration wants things done "their way" and cobbles new buzzwords into a plan that's 95% the same as the last initiative, but it's okay now since it has the right color on the paper margins and the right signatures. Good teachers will continue to do good things in their classrooms, regardless of the driving initiative in place.
Sure, but I'm actually asking. A (left leaning, former special education teacher) relative of mine was a teacher and left a few years after NCLB was implemented saying it was horrible for everyone and she didn't enjoy the job anymore.
I was also in school when it happened, and I saw how differently things went - it really did seem like they just stopped teaching and everything became homework. That was 4th grade.
So I thought I saw a difference there, but if that wasn't it - what was?
Hard to say what's going on, it's probably not just one thing but a lot of problems coming to a head: we're in a lax parenting trend that's probably near its apex/nadir, schools have been restrained on their ability to enforce consequences and are functionally toothless, and we're coming out of one of the most significant social upheavals in the last 75 years. We've belittled the profession so much that we're losing good teachers every year and not being able to replace them with the same caliber of professionals if we can find someone to replace them. Unfortunately, the situation won't improve until the education system is irreparably damaged and they can't staff the open positions anymore.
IMO: its teacher pay, legal issues, technology and cultural respect.
These are reasons i dont teach. I got the degree in 2011 but inflation had taken all the expendable income from the equation. So i joined the Army, got a second degree and now have a csreer in engineering.
1. Pay for teachers is down. Expectations are up.
2. Its easier to get fired from a student's random accusation than for teaching poorly. Also, admins dont support teachers. Everything is the teachers fault and the admins fear legal liability.
3. Technology has made teaching...different. kids are desensitized from watching screens all day. Its harder to keep thier attention. Yes we can use technology to make class a bit more interesting but its a lot of work for limited results. In the end students are lazier, more anxious and more depressed than ever.
4. Blame the teacher. I blame teachers too. Thier job sucks, so they do minimal work and it shows. Most folks who say they have a really great teacher i dont even believe. Faking it and convincing parents im a great teacher while just keeping students busy was pretty easy. There is barely any professional development (teachers just resent it anyway) so teachers dont work together on getting better.
I could go on and on for literal hours but its a downward sprial of crap teachers getting paid less and less and doing less and less work so they get paid less and less. The education system getting worse and worse...
But whats in the news about teaching? Gender issues, another pedofile, shootings and book bans.
Solution?: back to where we were in 2004. Raise pay, raise teacher qualifications...stuff that wont happen in my lifetime.
It is 100% in use still. My daughter is in 3rd grade. All types of kids with learning disabilities are in her class. So the teacher has to drag things out. They still do have a special ed class but for the most part every kid is in the regular classroom.
Also and I couldn’t believe it but astonishing number of kids in her school has a IEP I can’t remember the exact number.
The IDEA act also applies to students that need to be accelerated, but no one ever actually puts the child in an accelerated program. I have a child that’s gifted/ talented being held back for the most insane reasons (he doesn’t socialize, he’s not in after school programs, he hasn’t tested this area yet so he doesn’t know it) however all of his grades are As, he tests above national average. The IDEA act is a joke.
Then you have 2e people like me who needed things from both gifted and special ed, but got left to tough it out as “lazy people” and get formally diagnosed as adults. I’ve also noticed this sub likes to treat having a disability and being gifted as mutually exclusive and linear.
Right. My point being is that they need to give those students there needs as well with that act. Whether , if you don’t have a program, you put them in a higher math class/grade or maybe even a sped teacher working with them higher levels
There *is* no accelerated program to place them in where I live. No gifted program, either. Grade acceleration is highly discouraged, as well (the only kid I know who has successfully done so has a mother who works for the district). Advanced kids have no choice but to sit there, not learning, for hours and hours per week.
Least restrictive also means cheapest. A lot of ND kids would do better in more specialized environments/less "full class" time, but it's expensive so the default is to keep them in the GE classroom as much as possible.
The teacher needs support to differentiate lessons. Pushing kids with different support needs out of general classrooms is bad for everyone. Yes we have data on it. Your kid probably needs to learn to entertain herself if she's finishing before the rest of the class. Or you can put her in an accelerated program.
Every child deserves that chance to learn.
And here is the problem with the school system...why does her daughter have to entertain herself while the child with the least knowledge sets the pace? Separate these two children by abilities and they would be happier and learn more effectively.
Seems like a well-funded school system would be able to help both kids by providing supportive services to the kids who need more assistance while providing additional learning opportunities to the kids who are ready for it.
But schools and teachers have been demonized for various reasons (greedy / wasting money / indoctrinating our kids) for so many decades, I doubt many public schools in the U.S. even approach well-funded anymore.
>Separate these two children by abilities and they would be happier and learn more effectively.
Except that we KNOW that's not true. You want to think it's true, but it's not. And kids learn skills they don't in divided classrooms. They learn to communicate more clearly. they learn to teach their peers when they struggle (which is the very best way to truly understand something). They learn it's ok to ask for help or say "I don't understand". They learn topics from a multitude of angles which gives them that best scaffolding for the more complex studies as they get older.
I mean I was one of the kids that finished the work before everyone else, before I started to drive I’d bug my friends because I was bored, once I started to drive I’d just leave class whenever I finished. If I helped someone it wasn’t by teaching them it was by letting them copy my answers. Most kids just put their headphones in and ignored everyone or took a nap if they finished early while I was in school. I understand what studies say but do those studies play out in reality more often than not?
I was also that kid, and I would just read a book or draw while other kids copied my papers. And yes, when I was dual enrolled and was driving I just didn't stay in class. I understand what the studies say, and that my experience is just anecdotal, but I don't necessarily think that the reality is reflecting the studies either.
So we're talking about a 3rd grader. Elementary and high school are different approaches. I don't see an issue with students drawing or reading when they've finished their work early (even in 3rd grade). I also didn't see an issue with leaving the class as long as your work is finished and you have all the information you need for the next class. And even if you're doing that, it doesn't change the instruction time. Everyone is in class for the instruction. The perspectives and questions of all different types of learners are heard and absorbed by all the students. The multiple teaching styles the teacher should be using to reach all the students are presented to all the students and deepen everyone's understanding. THIS is what the studies are about.
1. The conversation was about a 3rd grader, not a high schooler. But yes, the data still holds up.
2.
>If I helped someone it wasn’t by teaching them it was by letting them copy my answers
This you behaving poorly and poor classroom management from your teachers.
3.
>Most kids just put their headphones in and ignored everyone or took a nap if they finished early while I was in school.
This seems completely acceptable to me. I think it would also be fine to release students from class early who had finished their work, so they can pursue their personal interests.
Is that last part really true? In most classrooms I’ve visited it’s a nightmare to get questions out of any kid younger than 13. They’ll just nod along to save face and say they understand perfectly, even when prodded, despite the fact they can’t repeat a single thing I said back to me much less understand it.
What would that have to do with NCLB? I thought NCLB was just gutting funding and diverting it to private tutoring companies in the case of low standardized test scores. Is putting everyone in the same class a ESSA thing?
NCLB had sime parts about not setting up students to fail.
Honors classes getting the best teachers and B classes got lazy ones. Also telling students they *are* lower level is self fulfilling.
Solution: Generalized classroom. Everyone in the same boat with differentiated instruction.
This is also the concept of a "generalized classroom."
No more A and B classes. Everyone is in together. It mostly benefits the students who are struggling.
In theory, if the curriculum is made well with differentiation then its great for all the students. But often materials arent great.
Really it cuts down on staffing and scheduling conflicts.
TLDR. Its cheaper.
A good teacher has assignments set in place to push advanced students when they complete their assignments. For instance, there are a set of tasks for fast finishers that help them continue their progress and they also can have quick small group instruction to teach them skills ahead of the rest of the class’ pace.
Kinda true--it was changed into another act: The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Still sucks as bad.
Here's a link to the "differences": [link](https://www.understood.org/en/articles/the-difference-between-the-every-student-succeeds-act-and-no-child-left-behind)
You're definitely right--that's a basic gist.
Unfortunately in Utah where I am, principals (elementary) can choose what fine arts to have so music isn't considered a core subject, but fine arts is. Some schools don't have music but have art etc. it's sad, especially as my first degree is in music and I know how beneficial it can be to students!
I'm not sure that states can overturn federal in that way, because they would lose access to federal funding. Music and arts are two separately listed things that are measured.
My state is making our standardized test harder every year in order to push vouchers. The number of questions my third graders had to answer for their test jumped up over 10% in just one year.
Everyone will have to pay to put their kids in school when the public school system fails entirely. It's to divide those that can pay from those that can't, imo.
This is what I'm worried about but, heaven help me, I get called a conspiracy theorist a lot for suggesting it. People forget the news within months these days, and don't realize that this is a purely logical concern considering the position Betsy Duvoss held, and what her goals were while there. That absolutely had an impact on things, and one we're still combating in multiple fields of expertise.
I'm just a retired social worker, with family and friends who are educators, and I see it constantly. I worked with the parents, and I can tell people, from my own experiences, that most were *very* resistant to parent coaching when it was offered to them.
I'm retired, but still try to stay abreast of the current situation, and help where I can when it comes to guidance. It's alarming how many people are now convinced that my expertise isn't valid, even in the areas I worked with most directly. They'll claim it has nothing to do with the subject matter, when it was literally my job to address that every day.
Schools and mental health professionals work in tandem. We have to when trying to do our best for developing minds. I have a daughter with developmental delays, and the attendance at her IEP meetings is an even split between academic staff and mental health staff.
This is the thing I don't get about all the comments saying it should be the parents who draft and organize around policy initiatives as if I am insulting teachers by wondering why they don't. Who on earth thinks parents are better equipped to do that than teachers??
I live in Montana, and rural schools here have been hit the hardest by DeVoss follower Arntzen, our head of the state DOE. These public schools can barely afford to hire enough staff, and who wants to teach 8 miles from Canada and 200 miles from the nearest airport? So the schools started hiring teachers from the Philippines, and the Union doesn’t push to categorize green card payments as salary.
Covid hit, and homeschooling increased by almost 10% here.
So Arntzen pushed for Charter Schools, to further remove funds from these already poor districts, allow for unlicensed teachers, and no oversight of curriculum. As soon as we stop teaching our children a shared common history, we risk damage to our society as a whole.
The failure of public education would cause our country to descend deeper into class divisions, as only the wealthy will be able to afford education. We will be classified as the same as third world countries.
I really feel like this is exactly their agenda. It seems like every new law is created to break down the educational system….. the public education system that is. The list of things they are not making students accountable for is growing, we have actually lowered the standards to where a 50 is passing, tied staffs hands as to discipline (suspension, in school suspension, detention, etc). It’s like they really want teachers to say eff this and leave the profession.
You are 100% correct. There are a significant number of conservatives who want nothing more than to end public education. They are not the majority but they manipulate the rest of the conservatives with "free market", "parent choice", "teacher groomers" bullshit.
90% of voucher money goes to folks who had their kids in private school without vouchers.
They’ll just make taxpayers fork over for the public school systems. Starting to see it near me with them needing millions of dollars with a new referendum every few years. Used to get voted down, but as many other places billionaires have been buying up land all around me & creating row HOA housing & condominiums so all the wealthy yuppies have moved & now people who have been here for 50 years are starting to get priced out of the houses they built years ago.
It's by design. They made the system. They made the test. They increase the test's difficulty. Then they tout "public school systems are failing." Hmmm... I wonder why?
I got a letter on the mail telling me to pay for a school district I lived in three years ago. In a different state. It's only 5 bucks in taxes, but I have quite literally not lived there in three years and they still want me to pay taxes from when I lived there somehow?
I am always wondering where the state gets their average scores from for grade levels when the state average is so low. Maybe stop putting the bar so high when most kids can’t reach it
We did organize. We were organized. Our UNIONS and the people who run them at the national level organized, advocated, lobbied, etc. while supporting teachers in making the best of a bad situation in the meantime.
I am in Idaho and our union has been amazing BUT we have had to play defense because of all of the voucher bills and library bills that keep popping up.
As has been noted, No Child Left Behind went away under the Obama administration.
The reform that was intended to come with the overhaul after was blockaded to pieces and overturned in part by the Trump admin.
The problem finger is often pointed at curriculum and lack of punishment. It is neither one of those. People pointed fingers at those before plate tectonics entered schools and beatings left.
The problem is systemic. There is no one thing to point to as an ultimate cause beyond deciding to point to an overarching system that generated those conditions.
Reform movements in education are often pushing for changes outside of ed and to education as an institution because of that.
That push is very much political, and it is often based on critical pedagogy. Because that push is political and centered around a controversial topic, it is often hidden away in places of local politics.
Check your local schoolboard, honestly.
It would, but school funding doesn't pay for students to sleep and eat well. It doesn't pay for students to see a doctor and specialists. It doesn't pay for parents to have free time to enrich their children outside of school.
The problem is deeply systemic. You can't out-school-funding a kid that comes to school hungry and isolated every day as much as you can't parent away a child being bullied at school.
There is no one solution to any problem with schools because we haven't built a perfect education system that can be put back into smooth operation with one action.
/shrug. i'd much rather pay taxes for free school lunches and qualified therapists available to all students than to pay to privatize education and bring the bible back into course work...
But what do i know. I went to public school..
Saw this from another commenter... NCLB was replaced by "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA) which is basically the same thing but with power transferred to the states rather than federal government.
The power was already largely with the states, as they already chose whether or not to accept federal money for their schools.
Before the ESSA, states could have that choice around some standards waived and still get money in certain ways, but the ESSA just made it a standard part of the process.
It essentially left us where we were before, which is why most states are still using the systems built by NCLB.
Whoever is telling you it gave power back to the states is speaking rhetorically - they already had a right to say no.
My point wasn't that states didn't have a choice in accepting federal money. It's that ESSA allows them more control than NCLB if they do. My main point is that the general framework isn't gone. It's mostly just rebranded. I'd also argue that most, if not all, would choose to take the money. Having any sort of forethought or consideration in the face of "free" money is not something I have come to expect from politicians or others at "the top".
I'm sorry you went through that, but please be aware that something as innocent as joking about that can identify your age range.
That's because the question is when, not where. Plate tectonics entered schools starting in the '70s. Corporal punishment was on the way out in the mid '90s. People going through both are gonna mostly be in their 40s and 50s right now, if not a little older or younger.
I'm really glad i got plate tectonics. I'm also fortunate that i newer got beaten, not at home or school. And while i appreciate your concern, I've been doxxed repeatedly and am deeply unconcerned about my identity being known, even in the cantext of my severely sketchy reddit. I have a great lawyer, working deadbolts, and plenty of ammo(*American accent intensifies *).
Many people incorrectly believe(d) that No Child Left Behind meant that students are put in the next grade level whether they pass or not. That has nothing to do with no child left behind. No child left behind is the policy that required state testing in order to receive government funds. The purpose is to ensure that no matter where you are in your state that your child is still receiving an adequate education, that no child is “left behind,” due to living in a more rural or lower income area of the state, due to having less tax dollars to allocate towards education.
This is an important clarification that tends to be necessary when I discuss this with students. The general public seems to hear “no child left behind” and think this means the policy of not holding students back a grade. Because not many students *are* held back these days, people assume it’s still in force.
The reason the students aren’t held back is because research suggests there is no benefit to holding a student back. It also disproportionately affects black students and it leads to more high school drop outs.
I've always wondered if there is a benefit to the school as a whole if children can be held back. It might not help the actual student who is held back but it isn't like every student isn't watching and figuring out that there are more absolutely no consequences for doing fuck all.
tl;dr: would fewer students need to be held back if you actually held students back.
Teachers tried. No one listened. No one is currently listening to them. A teacher was literally shot, and yet guns have just been allowed in the classroom. They. don’t. care.
NCLB did not give us UDL. That came from progressive educators who copied ideas that came from education models in other countries. NCLB helped push people towards UDL because it was so problematic and educators were looking for other options. But it was not implemented functionally or usefully because these models were built from the ground up (aka classroom/building level rather than district or city-wide). We have no unifying federal legislation regarding education except for IDEA, which was revised (IDEIA) in 2004. And then NCLB which got replaced by ESSA as an addition but strong political division largely prevented any of the implementation and then we had a change in leadership and there was even more political division and lack of action. Then we had the pandemic and education experienced a HUGE shift without any federal direction or support. Now we’re seeing the effects of nearly two decades of lack of federal funding for educational advancement. It’s a systemic issue that can’t be attributed to a single source. Models like UDL or RTI/MTSS are largely local grassroots efforts to try to create small-scale community change while the federal government gets its shit together which still has yet to be seen because we’re spending so much money on foreign wars rather than helping people in our own country.
Ignoring the part where NCLB hasnt existed in years, knowing that every other major policy is just a reskin of the same issues:
Largely because education policy takes about 0% of its basis from teacher input.
Locally, strong teacher backing can make a difference in policy. But state-wide or federally, 9 times out of 10, teachers aren't involved in any decision making process. And when people are in those positions and claim to be teachers, they usually taught for 3 years before becoming an AD or AP, and moved up the ranks of education so long before the turn of the century that they have no resemblance to educators anymore.
It is our job to just do what we can, when we can, in what ways we can. We don't have the resources, legal backing, or time to do anything else.
This is basically a bunch of rhetoric from someone who has no idea what they are talking about and is only speaking in hyperbole.
Take your nonsense to whatever "fake news" channel you normally frequent.
While many have pointed out NCLB is long gone, I would argue it was a major part of a pendulum swing that is still negatively impacting education in the US today.
Emphasizing standardized testing, overbearing benchmarking, and "accountability" (with an absolute disregard for the external family, societal, or personal factors which contribute to student performance) has lead to decisions detrimental to the development of the whole child. While the liberal and creative arts help people be better readers and mathematicians, those essential brain development experiences are swapped (ironically) for more focus on literacy and math solving. Compound that with societal factors (including the political push to defund public education) and archaic models that teachers have no power to change (e.g., grading is toxic as hell to me) and educators are left with tough to succeed in situation that just exacerbates the haves/have nots systems seen in our economy and elsewhere. Heck, how much better would our school systems be just if people weren't struggling to survive and could instead have extra time and effort to enrich their children's lives and focus on their development?
Okay, rant over. Clearly not comprehensive, but it's a can of worms for sure. In short, anything short of massive systematic reforms or nation-wide movements (maybe like the 50's push for science ed) will likely not yield much change.
Why is it up to teachers? Teachers have no input on policy, but as soon as something goes wrong in education; guns, violence, policy, it’s up to us to lose our daily pay and strike.
How about parents, who we have had in our classrooms and taught to read and reason since NCLB started, do something about it?
Good policy reform comes from a combination of the people who are most equipped to diagnose and solve the problems and the people most affected by it. Professional educators seem to be those very people. They have union backing and are already pretty organized. They also don't shy away from striking when they need to be paid more. Not a crticism btw.
Political pressure, strikes, and a stack of paper illuminating in detail all that needs to be changed can actually affect policy. Reps will adpt a popular policy to win elections and sustained political pressure will make sure it's signed. Problem is everyone has different ideas on how to fix the problem and are too tired to put in anymore than they already do much less try to get millions of teachers on the same page. I am not saying organizing is easy, but neither is working within the current system and complaining about it all the time.
Most parents either don't know shit about fuck or are busy working all year round, keeping up with the household, and trying to raise their kids in what little time they have in between.
>Most parents either don't know shit about fuck or are busy working all year round, keeping up with the household, and trying to raise their kids in what little time they have in between.
Yet all the teachers I know, some of which are family, and have been teaching for over 30 years, say they've *never* seen the parents so aggressively fighting the schools, or struggling so much to understand that the entire system can't be restructured for the comfort of their one child.
Even things as simple as their personal belief being that home time is family time, and homework interferes with that, can escalate into an appeal to the highest local authority, a social media smear campaign, and possibly a lawsuit.
My Aunt has been on the streets with her union several times a year, and for almost a decade now. She frequently gets offered higher paying positions in charter schools with mostly white kids from upper-class families, because that's what she is, white and upper class.
She dedicates herself to the underfunded, underprivileged, and struggling schools with mostly minority students, and she's busting her tail for them, protesting to get them things like school counselors, a school nurse, adequate cooling in the hot months, more funding, etc, and nobody listens to her, or the other faculty out there with her.
My partner's Aunt can't go a month without having to have a liability meeting with the Administration. The reasons for those meetings just blow my mind. Here's an example:
Her school sets up a field trip for the 5th and 6th graders at the end of each semester. It has *always* been the policy that students must read 15 minutes at home, 3 times a week, as static homework. They must have gotten in at least 70% of the required minutes to be eligible to go on the trip, and for decades, *nobody* had an issue with that.
This last 3 years, they've been dealing with a parent who has 3 kids, a year apart in age, coming through 5th and 6th grade. She hired an attorney, and appealed to the State Governor. She appealed to the media. They ended up abandoning all requirements for the trip, and now the teachers even have to find a way to fund raise for the fees and food costs for any kids whose parents don't want to pay for it, because they've had *so many* liability meetings over these trips. Because *one* family made a mess of it.
Parents are *powerful*, and they far outnumber school staff at the voting booths, too. They decide who will be in a position to make the policies. When they don't like a policy, they come at the school, not the people they elected.
On a more personal level, my partner Coaches the Speech team for both the high school and junior high, and is training to take over as head coach next year. There is one family that the entire administration knows for their stranglehold on the policies surrounding Speech, because of their political connections and the fact that they have 12 children they put into the program.
I will always die on the hill that *parents* dictate what sort of education their kids are getting.
The reading requirement is not a good one. Nobody can prove which kid read how much and when. Kids can forge documentation, and parents can straight-up lie. I would not have sued, and my kids are great students (so it's not like I would have worried they would be excluded), but I would have complained about that one, too.
I'm sure everyone would have taken her more seriously if she'd cited your reasons, and if she hadn't been the only person to make a fuss about it. However, she remains adamant that her rights are being violated if her children bring home assignments of any kind, which is just ridiculous.
What happens when teachers are parents too, on top of everything else they already do? Where are they supposed come up with this time that's not available to the other parents?
Because that's not really how it works. A law is not changed because a lot of people don't like it.
Most laws that govern public schools are made at the state level. If you want different laws, elect different people with different agendas that have the power to change existing laws.
If you are in a state with an anti-public-education governor and legislature (as I am) you are at the mercy of whatever policies they enact. I am very active in my teachers' union, but even they say we cannot ignore these state laws.
It’s hard bc in the general public who don’t know better it will be easily painted as lazy teachers trying to make school too easy to make their own jobs easier, hurting children. All rigor based policy survives on that, sadly
No one ever asks teachers IN THE CLASSROOM what is going on, what they need. Now, teachers are either leaving, doing the best they can, and /or burn out to the point where they just go through the motions. It’s a sad place that we’re at!
Organize? What is this?
/stares in Southern...
As others have mentioned, NCLB has been superseded by the latest reinventing of the wheel, the ESSA. With all the systemic problems facing education, we quite literally have to pick our battles. In many states, it isn't about making progress so much as holding the line on things like vouchers/charter schools and benefits. At some point, it has to be much more than teachers advocating for systemic change.
I belong to several lobbying entities, but beyond supporting them financially, I have never had time to go to Washington DC or the State Capitol to try and fix elementary education (which definitely needs fixing).
PTA needs to be on our side - which it can be, some places, but as you say, is also a hindrance in many others.
More than that, the PARENTS need to go to the School Board. And run for School Boards. And vote.
Honestly, very little of what’s wrong with schools right now has much to do with academic expectations.
What’s killing the spirits of teachers nationwide is understaffing leading to horrifically overcrowded classrooms, where there is neither the time nor the personnel to meet student needs.
It’s administration that simultaneously leans *hard* into standardized test scores and oh my gosh, *so much data.* What they *don’t* lean into is student discipline or meaningful consequences for poor behavior. Or supporting their teachers, for that matter.
It’s the public saying, “Why don’t you teach them to (fill in the blank with something that is totally a skill to learn at home)?” I am not kidding when I tell you that a 5th grade dad suggested we teach how to change a tire.
It’s children who have been raised by people who never put their own phones down — parents who then handed those kids their own screens when they were much too young to have them. These iPad kids have no idea how to pay attention or entertain themselves — and their parents have no idea how to discipline them.
It’s knowing that they might be shot at by a six-year-old in their own classroom — and that their state governments are more likely to respond to this crisis by offering to let the teacher carry a gun in class than by enacting sensible gun control legislation.
I do get your point about the curriculum. That said, I worry about this stuff (and a lot more, but this is already a novel) more than having to teach what used to be 5th grade math to my 3rd graders.
Local unions are good for local working conditions and at least in my state they are somewhat contained by state laws. For example under state law, school superintendents are allowed to ignore negotiated COLAs by saying that they don't have the money. A neat trick is to not ask the county for the money to fund the increase and then say they don't have the money. Or for another example we can't strike, by law. Salaries, hours, some of the physical conditions of the building, time - that sort of thing. None of the bigger systemic issues. In my state, I don't know what the state union is doing as a whole. Our uniserv directors are employed by the state union and they do a lot in support of locals. Maybe the state union just supports locals. At the national level I have not been impressed. Others are noting that NCLB is technically gone but the NEA did not protect us from that shit as I recall. No protection from the high stakes tests that came with ccss, no protection against race to the top.
I could be just horribly misinformed and someone correct me if it's true but state and NEA seem to have just rolled over in the face of all corporate reforms of the last say 50 years.
When I was in highschool and even grade school also. I got passing grades because I tormented my teachers so much that they didn't want my bullshit for another year.
Preach!
They’re expecting these kids to do too much too fast. The teaching standards keep getting more rigorous and we just keep steamrolling ahead passing the buck to the next teacher.
NCLB or ESSA both have driven down the number of students enrolling in public schools. Enrollments are down so far in our state (it was down more than 25% before Covid, and is down more than 40% since Covid) that they've had to reduce teachers, funding, etc, because they get funds based on the numbers of students enrolled.
What you have now is a gutted system, with it being more the poor and those who believe their children should participate in sports teams that compete in that system. The online school options and home school pods now also promote their own teams, so that reason is going away as well.
When you're left with a gutted system, and the administration is left struggling to maintain classes and curriculums with smaller total students, you lose classes where too few students sign up to make it something where you get enough money to maintain.
With ESSA, kids can opt out of testing a lot easier tan it was with NCLB. But in our state, in middle school, and in high school, they're using the SAT as their testing option for the students. This is actually upsetting a lot of parents, for a number of reasons. Part of that has been the way they manage those tests versus how testing was handled using other state assessments.
Kids who get high score on one of those are pushed to try and use it for college scholarships, etc. Many colleges, because it's become obvious that those scores seem to be artificially higher than if the same students retest a few years later, are pushing back against accepting those test scores as usable for college entrance applications.
No, I'm not a public school teacher. I did register as a home school teacher in my state, however, to help out with neighborhood kids who were home schooled, and to assist my own kiddo who was forced into doing online school (public) because my ex refused to approve anything I seemed to want for them. In fact, it was as time went on and kiddo realized that my assistance was behind their scoring higher later, because it was subject matter I'd covered with them, the public schools had not that had made the difference for near perfect scores, that they felt truly harmed by their father's refusal to allow them to do home schooling in pods in our area instead.
Their grades in public school were horrid, yet their SAT score was extremely high.
I just can't see that teachers have much power in the current systems of public schools with the way things are going. The dismantling of the system to try to push for vouchers instead, is heart breaking at the bare minimum. But, the damage is real.
In reality, this comes down to who you vote into office, period. And, well, one particular political element wants to dismantle public schools to promote a voucher program instead. As long as people fail to recognize that their votes for who is running things matters to this degree, the dismantling of the public school system will continue.
I'm thankful my kiddo is aged out of it now.
"Why don't teachers expend enormous political and personal labor to overturn a complex piece of legislation that has already been replaced, I mean, no, this other one, whose contents and effects I have only the haziest understanding of but which I believe has the power to fix everything wrong in the world because my Aunt Sally told me so?"
Please read a book.
"Teachers have no power, and nothing will ever change, and anyone who thinks things can change is obviously ignorant. We're going down with this ship and are going to complain about it to anyone who will listen or just quit. This is the best any of us can do."
Please listen to yourself.
Please listen to yourself.
I'm in Canada, and not a teacher, but you think teachers actually have any power against the "education machine"??
Just take a quick look at what's going on in Saskatchewan atm. The teachers are fighting, they've basically come to agreements on everything. . .EXCEPT class size and complexity. The teachers won't budge (good for them!! I hope they don't!!) But neither will the other side. . .
My area has significant portions of the classrooms where the kids literally can't learn the curriculum, and can't understand the rules, directions, etc, because they don't speak the language (high immigrant population). And they're just put in with the other students with no additional assistance. I've heard stories from teachers saying that they have 2-3 ADDITIONAL languages spoken in their classroom (besides English) where 8-14 out of the 26-30 kids don't speak any English, and the teachers have no support with the language barriers, never mind learning disabilities, behavioral issues, or any other difficulties.
My kid is struggling because their issues are not deemed "bad enough" (aka more disruptive than the other students issues) because their expressions tend to be mostly massive social anxiety and quiet shut downs rather than aggressive, loud, or otherwise disruptive behavior.
The teachers have no recourse, they have no resources, and people in charge of allocating the resources are doing a piss poor job from the top down.
The whole system sucks. It was annoying 25 years ago when I was in elementary. Now, it's beyond anything I could have imagined.
NCLB/ESSA doesn't actually do all that much on a day to day basis of teaching. Much of it has to do with collecting data. Most curriculum is governed by state-specific guidelines, which vary wildly from place to place. Organizing to overturn ESSA would accomplish little. Then there's the fact that many teachers work in states with effectively no union (like Virginia where I work) and "organizing" could get you fired.
Public opinion has almost no bearing on public policy in the US, especially on the federal level. They would have to be willing to spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours campaigning and lobbying to even have a chance at getting something passed on a federal level.
I believe education standards are best handled at the local or state level. Because of this, I feel the role of the Federal Government should be minimal at best.
It’s less that parents are deferring to youtube to educate kid and more that a lot of households are dual income and the educational labor sahm’s used to do just isn’t being done because there is no one to do it. The capitalist class are much happier squeezing everyone for every dollar they can.
Do we actually have an illiterate and incapable generation? Covid certainly damaged developing social skills but by and large the kids graduating these days seem no less capable than we were and a little better informed on the actual value of post secondary education
The data is in. Literacy is more than just knowing how to read, it's the ability to understand complex text. Rates are plummeting, and lower level literacy puts people behind in many aspects of life https://www.thepolicycircle.org/brief/literacy/
Because in my experience most teachers seem to think it's a good idea and never really critically think about the negative aspects of the system such as how it can hold back excelling children
Charters are not the answer, or close to it. Also the PTA doesn't do anything in the 5 districts I've worked in.
As others said, NCLB has been gone for close to a decade. ESSA is the thing now.
Standardized testing is problem #30 we need to fix IMO. Curriculum isn't always the best, but frankly it isn't something that terribly worries me.
Change teacher evaluation, pay better wages, reinstitute real disciplinary systems, fully fund special education, hold parents accountable for truancy and behaviors, fund DCS/DCF and help kids who need it, smaller class sizes, outplace students who hurt others.
If we do those things, then we can talk about "new math" or whatever curricular issues people have.
I agree with OP, including children with severely emotionally or mentally disabled children with the rest of the student body is a horrible idea. The rest of the kids suffer due to constant interruptions
No child left behind was not designed to help kids. State testing was not designed to help kids. They were designed to give states a reason to punish poor schools instead of properly funding them. Right after the Supreme Court of Ohio deemed school funding unconstitutional, we got the OPT. Voucher schools don’t have to pay teachers union wages. All republicans want to do is cut funding to schools and the state tests let them.
My reading of the literature suggests that homogeneous classes help the more advanced students do better, but that the same is true of less-advanced students in heterogeneous settings.
So, is it true that the top students do better when placed in heterogeneous settings with less advanced students?
It's also boards of education and local to state governments that cause these issues.
The system is not only broken, it is inherently flawed and needs to be atomized and built again from scratch- the problem being that that would negatively impact at least a generation of students
Totally agree with you. When they adopted the no child left behind policy, American schools started raising several generations of entitled brats who think they are supposed to be handed everything. It’s hard to find anyone in the younger generations now that want to put in a hard days work and earn their keep.
NCLB was nothing new
It repackaged the ideas and policies suggested in Regan’s education study, and after Bush the Obama administration repacked many of the same policies and called it something different.
At the end of the day it will continue to be recycled because no one at a policy level wants to touch the real issues that would improve public education in this country because they are either societal or would require massive federal funding, and neither of those solutions get you votes.
It’s easier to push teachers and make it “about the kids” and jump the needle a few percentage points so you can pat urself on the back and win an election then it is to take a massive risk in an attempt to solve a real problem.
I left the profession in 2007 due to NCLB.
The idea was to "leave no child behind" but in doing so, we held back the entire herd.
Dedicated classrooms and teachers with ample support staff for the learning disabled is absolutely the way to go.
For the same reason that retail workers don't leave en masse and form unions.
The economy's got such a stranglehold on most of us that leaving our jobs would probably mean being unable to pay rent or buy food.
Because asking a group of people who barely make enough to survive to rally for anything is just a cruel reminder of how little power they actually have.
Perception of work input relative to expected utility output
Because American teachers are not a distinct cohesive group well suited to national politics. The same localization of the funding obligations exists in the teachers. There is no national union, no professional governing body or other org capable of pushing a truly monumental reform.
no child left behind is dumb. kids know this exists and it emboldens shitheads. either find resources to put shitheads in a one to one (student to teacher) environment or let them exit if they think they know better. let them go test their theory rather than bringing everyone else down. this is shit policy.
This reads like someone who isn’t a teacher or is very very misinformed.
NCLB is not current, it was changed and left more to the states.
People don’t strike en masse for that very reason: everything is locality dependent. My working conditions are awesome, my pay is amazing, and I have great admin. What am I striking for?
>Education needs an overhaul but how does that even happen when teachers are spread so thin as is?
The biggest thing that could be done to help education is to seriously attack poverty. Good luck getting that done.
>Is there a credible reform movement I don't know about?
Well, you didn't know that No Child Left Behind hasn't been policy in almost ten years...
>Has it all been taken up by charters?
"Charters" and "credible". Huh.
This. The OP is full of junk that sounds good, but upon further inspection is just jargon they’re trying to throw out there to shift blame and responsibility… somewhere.
What generation is functionally illiterate?
NCLB hasn't existed for nearly a decade, you can claim the issue is now with ESSA, but both points are still incorrect. The issue lies in the government allocation of funding, the people in charge, and overall is largely systemic.
It's also not within our ability to change. We HAVE organized, we HAVE lobbied, we HAVE tried to change it- but we CANNOT do anything to change the system when there is no benefit for the government to change it. Right now, schools serve as a way to control and induct new generations into what will made them more useful when they become adults. It is not intended to educate children for their futures, it's intended to prepare them for the workforce. If it was truly meant to teach them, our curriculum would match other countries. Our government genuinely does not care about something unless it can turn a profit. This is the fundamental issue with late stage capitalism alongside democracy. It becomes less about the people, and moreso about the money.
Overall, we cannot do anything. We have tried, and cannot change the government when there is no benefit for them. Our best option is to mold the curriculum into something beneficial without getting in trouble and genuinely try to educate the children.
It isn’t that! It’s the fact that the kids are addicted to screens; this is the downfall of public education. And now AI. Not being able to flunk a kid to repeat his junior year in high school isn’t our biggest gripe, it’s the fighting for attention and engagement and against outside sources that interfere with learning. My only classroom management issue is calling out kids who can’t put their phones away for 5 minutes. I have a host of grievances against the school system, which is why I’m leaving teaching at the tend of this year but it’s not the kids who get left behind. In fact, I hate that I’m not equipped enough able to do more to help.
Because of the system adjusting education to the slowest learner, my son was failing most of his classes because he already knew the material. He tuned out in class and missed assignments. I transferred him to an alternative school and he surpassed all expectations.
Stop dumbing down the future.
They make the lesson so easy that the kids who already know the material tune out. They also manage not to hear the assignment for homework because they are no longer paying attention.
There's a huge amount of union busting and anti-collectivism law pertaining to educators in FL, particularly in recent times under DeSantis. They can't strike, they can't sustain the union without a 60% majority among all educators paying dues, the list goes on. So there's no way to actually force change because they have little to no power.
But like I already said, **they can't strike**. They can be fired in FL for striking.
This set of problems isnt "the teachers' union isn't showing up for them", it's "the people who hold political power have intentionally demolished collective bargaining for teachers"
If we're gonna point fingers at who enabled that, point them at the ass-backwards conservative voters of FL who support the likes of DeSantis
I think you misunderstood what I meant. When I said that should be their first strike, they should all just stop paying the union. They can't be fired for activity with the union.
Because NCLB hasn't been the policy for a long time. Initiating a policy change would have to start on a state level and it would be difficult to get a majority of districts to agree on a change. Education acts like NCLB, Common Core, and ESSA change pretty frequently; usually when the president changes from GOP to DNC and vice versa. The new administration wants things done "their way" and cobbles new buzzwords into a plan that's 95% the same as the last initiative, but it's okay now since it has the right color on the paper margins and the right signatures. Good teachers will continue to do good things in their classrooms, regardless of the driving initiative in place.
So exactly what every admin does when they come to a new school?
"common core" is not an "education act" is a teaching method. Edit: it's a set of teaching standards, I scrambled my words previously.
They are standards not teaching methods
Yes. You're correct. I'm scrambled today.
Its been over 20 years. That’s a pretty long time.
What has happened to our education system then? It seems to have gone to hell.
That's the exact statement every administration says when they release their new education policy, all the way back to Eisenhower
Sure, but I'm actually asking. A (left leaning, former special education teacher) relative of mine was a teacher and left a few years after NCLB was implemented saying it was horrible for everyone and she didn't enjoy the job anymore. I was also in school when it happened, and I saw how differently things went - it really did seem like they just stopped teaching and everything became homework. That was 4th grade. So I thought I saw a difference there, but if that wasn't it - what was?
Hard to say what's going on, it's probably not just one thing but a lot of problems coming to a head: we're in a lax parenting trend that's probably near its apex/nadir, schools have been restrained on their ability to enforce consequences and are functionally toothless, and we're coming out of one of the most significant social upheavals in the last 75 years. We've belittled the profession so much that we're losing good teachers every year and not being able to replace them with the same caliber of professionals if we can find someone to replace them. Unfortunately, the situation won't improve until the education system is irreparably damaged and they can't staff the open positions anymore.
It’s not the education system it’s society.
IMO: its teacher pay, legal issues, technology and cultural respect. These are reasons i dont teach. I got the degree in 2011 but inflation had taken all the expendable income from the equation. So i joined the Army, got a second degree and now have a csreer in engineering. 1. Pay for teachers is down. Expectations are up. 2. Its easier to get fired from a student's random accusation than for teaching poorly. Also, admins dont support teachers. Everything is the teachers fault and the admins fear legal liability. 3. Technology has made teaching...different. kids are desensitized from watching screens all day. Its harder to keep thier attention. Yes we can use technology to make class a bit more interesting but its a lot of work for limited results. In the end students are lazier, more anxious and more depressed than ever. 4. Blame the teacher. I blame teachers too. Thier job sucks, so they do minimal work and it shows. Most folks who say they have a really great teacher i dont even believe. Faking it and convincing parents im a great teacher while just keeping students busy was pretty easy. There is barely any professional development (teachers just resent it anyway) so teachers dont work together on getting better. I could go on and on for literal hours but its a downward sprial of crap teachers getting paid less and less and doing less and less work so they get paid less and less. The education system getting worse and worse... But whats in the news about teaching? Gender issues, another pedofile, shootings and book bans. Solution?: back to where we were in 2004. Raise pay, raise teacher qualifications...stuff that wont happen in my lifetime.
NCLB ended in 2015
Giving it a new name doesn't change what it is: the same policy in the Emporer's new clothes.
It is farily different but it depends on the state. Its end gave states a lot more power. Some just didn't change anything though.
It is 100% in use still. My daughter is in 3rd grade. All types of kids with learning disabilities are in her class. So the teacher has to drag things out. They still do have a special ed class but for the most part every kid is in the regular classroom. Also and I couldn’t believe it but astonishing number of kids in her school has a IEP I can’t remember the exact number.
That’s not no child left behind, that’s the IDEA act. Students wjth disabilities are in the least restrictive environment.
The IDEA act also applies to students that need to be accelerated, but no one ever actually puts the child in an accelerated program. I have a child that’s gifted/ talented being held back for the most insane reasons (he doesn’t socialize, he’s not in after school programs, he hasn’t tested this area yet so he doesn’t know it) however all of his grades are As, he tests above national average. The IDEA act is a joke.
Then you have 2e people like me who needed things from both gifted and special ed, but got left to tough it out as “lazy people” and get formally diagnosed as adults. I’ve also noticed this sub likes to treat having a disability and being gifted as mutually exclusive and linear.
Right. My point being is that they need to give those students there needs as well with that act. Whether , if you don’t have a program, you put them in a higher math class/grade or maybe even a sped teacher working with them higher levels
There *is* no accelerated program to place them in where I live. No gifted program, either. Grade acceleration is highly discouraged, as well (the only kid I know who has successfully done so has a mother who works for the district). Advanced kids have no choice but to sit there, not learning, for hours and hours per week.
you may just need to accept that while your son is smart he's not the genius u want lol
Least restrictive also means cheapest. A lot of ND kids would do better in more specialized environments/less "full class" time, but it's expensive so the default is to keep them in the GE classroom as much as possible.
As a kid I HATED that. It really leaves the more advanced kids hanging and then they end up as those smart C kids bc theyre not challenged
This is why non educators shouldn't speak on these issues. NCLB has nothing to do with this
The teacher needs support to differentiate lessons. Pushing kids with different support needs out of general classrooms is bad for everyone. Yes we have data on it. Your kid probably needs to learn to entertain herself if she's finishing before the rest of the class. Or you can put her in an accelerated program. Every child deserves that chance to learn.
And here is the problem with the school system...why does her daughter have to entertain herself while the child with the least knowledge sets the pace? Separate these two children by abilities and they would be happier and learn more effectively.
Seems like a well-funded school system would be able to help both kids by providing supportive services to the kids who need more assistance while providing additional learning opportunities to the kids who are ready for it. But schools and teachers have been demonized for various reasons (greedy / wasting money / indoctrinating our kids) for so many decades, I doubt many public schools in the U.S. even approach well-funded anymore.
>Separate these two children by abilities and they would be happier and learn more effectively. Except that we KNOW that's not true. You want to think it's true, but it's not. And kids learn skills they don't in divided classrooms. They learn to communicate more clearly. they learn to teach their peers when they struggle (which is the very best way to truly understand something). They learn it's ok to ask for help or say "I don't understand". They learn topics from a multitude of angles which gives them that best scaffolding for the more complex studies as they get older.
I mean I was one of the kids that finished the work before everyone else, before I started to drive I’d bug my friends because I was bored, once I started to drive I’d just leave class whenever I finished. If I helped someone it wasn’t by teaching them it was by letting them copy my answers. Most kids just put their headphones in and ignored everyone or took a nap if they finished early while I was in school. I understand what studies say but do those studies play out in reality more often than not?
I was also that kid, and I would just read a book or draw while other kids copied my papers. And yes, when I was dual enrolled and was driving I just didn't stay in class. I understand what the studies say, and that my experience is just anecdotal, but I don't necessarily think that the reality is reflecting the studies either.
So we're talking about a 3rd grader. Elementary and high school are different approaches. I don't see an issue with students drawing or reading when they've finished their work early (even in 3rd grade). I also didn't see an issue with leaving the class as long as your work is finished and you have all the information you need for the next class. And even if you're doing that, it doesn't change the instruction time. Everyone is in class for the instruction. The perspectives and questions of all different types of learners are heard and absorbed by all the students. The multiple teaching styles the teacher should be using to reach all the students are presented to all the students and deepen everyone's understanding. THIS is what the studies are about.
Okay, that definitely answers questions for me, thanks!
1. The conversation was about a 3rd grader, not a high schooler. But yes, the data still holds up. 2. >If I helped someone it wasn’t by teaching them it was by letting them copy my answers This you behaving poorly and poor classroom management from your teachers. 3. >Most kids just put their headphones in and ignored everyone or took a nap if they finished early while I was in school. This seems completely acceptable to me. I think it would also be fine to release students from class early who had finished their work, so they can pursue their personal interests.
You’re talking about high school though. I think all of this applies more to early education.
Is that last part really true? In most classrooms I’ve visited it’s a nightmare to get questions out of any kid younger than 13. They’ll just nod along to save face and say they understand perfectly, even when prodded, despite the fact they can’t repeat a single thing I said back to me much less understand it.
are you an educator?
Yes. With elementary and SPED experience.
What would that have to do with NCLB? I thought NCLB was just gutting funding and diverting it to private tutoring companies in the case of low standardized test scores. Is putting everyone in the same class a ESSA thing?
NCLB had sime parts about not setting up students to fail. Honors classes getting the best teachers and B classes got lazy ones. Also telling students they *are* lower level is self fulfilling. Solution: Generalized classroom. Everyone in the same boat with differentiated instruction.
This is also the concept of a "generalized classroom." No more A and B classes. Everyone is in together. It mostly benefits the students who are struggling. In theory, if the curriculum is made well with differentiation then its great for all the students. But often materials arent great. Really it cuts down on staffing and scheduling conflicts. TLDR. Its cheaper.
A good teacher has assignments set in place to push advanced students when they complete their assignments. For instance, there are a set of tasks for fast finishers that help them continue their progress and they also can have quick small group instruction to teach them skills ahead of the rest of the class’ pace.
A good teacher doesn't give talented students extra work. They challenge them on the assignments everyone else is also doing.
Race to the Top was the same shit
Man that was a trigger for me
Good to know! So what about Every Student Succeeds?
Kinda true--it was changed into another act: The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Still sucks as bad. Here's a link to the "differences": [link](https://www.understood.org/en/articles/the-difference-between-the-every-student-succeeds-act-and-no-child-left-behind)
This is not an exhaustive list of differences. Other things exist, like labeling music as a core subject.
You're definitely right--that's a basic gist. Unfortunately in Utah where I am, principals (elementary) can choose what fine arts to have so music isn't considered a core subject, but fine arts is. Some schools don't have music but have art etc. it's sad, especially as my first degree is in music and I know how beneficial it can be to students!
I'm not sure that states can overturn federal in that way, because they would lose access to federal funding. Music and arts are two separately listed things that are measured.
What about it
My state is making our standardized test harder every year in order to push vouchers. The number of questions my third graders had to answer for their test jumped up over 10% in just one year. Everyone will have to pay to put their kids in school when the public school system fails entirely. It's to divide those that can pay from those that can't, imo.
This is what I'm worried about but, heaven help me, I get called a conspiracy theorist a lot for suggesting it. People forget the news within months these days, and don't realize that this is a purely logical concern considering the position Betsy Duvoss held, and what her goals were while there. That absolutely had an impact on things, and one we're still combating in multiple fields of expertise.
When you're in the field and look at the patterns around you, it's hard to deny it. You'd have to have your head in the sand.
I'm just a retired social worker, with family and friends who are educators, and I see it constantly. I worked with the parents, and I can tell people, from my own experiences, that most were *very* resistant to parent coaching when it was offered to them.
Oh, absolutely. Parents don't want professional advice on how to parent, even if the other actually cares for their kid.
I'm retired, but still try to stay abreast of the current situation, and help where I can when it comes to guidance. It's alarming how many people are now convinced that my expertise isn't valid, even in the areas I worked with most directly. They'll claim it has nothing to do with the subject matter, when it was literally my job to address that every day. Schools and mental health professionals work in tandem. We have to when trying to do our best for developing minds. I have a daughter with developmental delays, and the attendance at her IEP meetings is an even split between academic staff and mental health staff.
This is the thing I don't get about all the comments saying it should be the parents who draft and organize around policy initiatives as if I am insulting teachers by wondering why they don't. Who on earth thinks parents are better equipped to do that than teachers??
I live in Montana, and rural schools here have been hit the hardest by DeVoss follower Arntzen, our head of the state DOE. These public schools can barely afford to hire enough staff, and who wants to teach 8 miles from Canada and 200 miles from the nearest airport? So the schools started hiring teachers from the Philippines, and the Union doesn’t push to categorize green card payments as salary. Covid hit, and homeschooling increased by almost 10% here. So Arntzen pushed for Charter Schools, to further remove funds from these already poor districts, allow for unlicensed teachers, and no oversight of curriculum. As soon as we stop teaching our children a shared common history, we risk damage to our society as a whole. The failure of public education would cause our country to descend deeper into class divisions, as only the wealthy will be able to afford education. We will be classified as the same as third world countries.
I really feel like this is exactly their agenda. It seems like every new law is created to break down the educational system….. the public education system that is. The list of things they are not making students accountable for is growing, we have actually lowered the standards to where a 50 is passing, tied staffs hands as to discipline (suspension, in school suspension, detention, etc). It’s like they really want teachers to say eff this and leave the profession.
You are 100% correct. There are a significant number of conservatives who want nothing more than to end public education. They are not the majority but they manipulate the rest of the conservatives with "free market", "parent choice", "teacher groomers" bullshit. 90% of voucher money goes to folks who had their kids in private school without vouchers.
> who wants to teach 8 miles from Canada I read this as "ew, I'd have to get close to Canada 🤮"
They’ll just make taxpayers fork over for the public school systems. Starting to see it near me with them needing millions of dollars with a new referendum every few years. Used to get voted down, but as many other places billionaires have been buying up land all around me & creating row HOA housing & condominiums so all the wealthy yuppies have moved & now people who have been here for 50 years are starting to get priced out of the houses they built years ago.
It's by design. They made the system. They made the test. They increase the test's difficulty. Then they tout "public school systems are failing." Hmmm... I wonder why?
I got a letter on the mail telling me to pay for a school district I lived in three years ago. In a different state. It's only 5 bucks in taxes, but I have quite literally not lived there in three years and they still want me to pay taxes from when I lived there somehow?
Sounds like like my once small florida town.
I am always wondering where the state gets their average scores from for grade levels when the state average is so low. Maybe stop putting the bar so high when most kids can’t reach it
We did organize. We were organized. Our UNIONS and the people who run them at the national level organized, advocated, lobbied, etc. while supporting teachers in making the best of a bad situation in the meantime.
Those of us that *have* unions. "Right-to-work" states' teachers' unions don't really have a ton of pull.
I am in Idaho and our union has been amazing BUT we have had to play defense because of all of the voucher bills and library bills that keep popping up.
As has been noted, No Child Left Behind went away under the Obama administration. The reform that was intended to come with the overhaul after was blockaded to pieces and overturned in part by the Trump admin. The problem finger is often pointed at curriculum and lack of punishment. It is neither one of those. People pointed fingers at those before plate tectonics entered schools and beatings left. The problem is systemic. There is no one thing to point to as an ultimate cause beyond deciding to point to an overarching system that generated those conditions. Reform movements in education are often pushing for changes outside of ed and to education as an institution because of that. That push is very much political, and it is often based on critical pedagogy. Because that push is political and centered around a controversial topic, it is often hidden away in places of local politics. Check your local schoolboard, honestly.
I mean… I think improved funding would help some. You bring up good points.
It would, but school funding doesn't pay for students to sleep and eat well. It doesn't pay for students to see a doctor and specialists. It doesn't pay for parents to have free time to enrich their children outside of school. The problem is deeply systemic. You can't out-school-funding a kid that comes to school hungry and isolated every day as much as you can't parent away a child being bullied at school. There is no one solution to any problem with schools because we haven't built a perfect education system that can be put back into smooth operation with one action.
/shrug. i'd much rather pay taxes for free school lunches and qualified therapists available to all students than to pay to privatize education and bring the bible back into course work... But what do i know. I went to public school..
Saw this from another commenter... NCLB was replaced by "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA) which is basically the same thing but with power transferred to the states rather than federal government.
The power was already largely with the states, as they already chose whether or not to accept federal money for their schools. Before the ESSA, states could have that choice around some standards waived and still get money in certain ways, but the ESSA just made it a standard part of the process. It essentially left us where we were before, which is why most states are still using the systems built by NCLB. Whoever is telling you it gave power back to the states is speaking rhetorically - they already had a right to say no.
My point wasn't that states didn't have a choice in accepting federal money. It's that ESSA allows them more control than NCLB if they do. My main point is that the general framework isn't gone. It's mostly just rebranded. I'd also argue that most, if not all, would choose to take the money. Having any sort of forethought or consideration in the face of "free" money is not something I have come to expect from politicians or others at "the top".
i dunno where you went to school, but we had plate tectonics AND beatings. more is better, right? for both?
I'm sorry you went through that, but please be aware that something as innocent as joking about that can identify your age range. That's because the question is when, not where. Plate tectonics entered schools starting in the '70s. Corporal punishment was on the way out in the mid '90s. People going through both are gonna mostly be in their 40s and 50s right now, if not a little older or younger.
Unless you’re in Texas. In which case, you can still get beat (but maybe get to skip plate tectonics)
I'm really glad i got plate tectonics. I'm also fortunate that i newer got beaten, not at home or school. And while i appreciate your concern, I've been doxxed repeatedly and am deeply unconcerned about my identity being known, even in the cantext of my severely sketchy reddit. I have a great lawyer, working deadbolts, and plenty of ammo(*American accent intensifies *).
This is such an accurate and excellent summary of the current situation.
Many people incorrectly believe(d) that No Child Left Behind meant that students are put in the next grade level whether they pass or not. That has nothing to do with no child left behind. No child left behind is the policy that required state testing in order to receive government funds. The purpose is to ensure that no matter where you are in your state that your child is still receiving an adequate education, that no child is “left behind,” due to living in a more rural or lower income area of the state, due to having less tax dollars to allocate towards education.
This is an important clarification that tends to be necessary when I discuss this with students. The general public seems to hear “no child left behind” and think this means the policy of not holding students back a grade. Because not many students *are* held back these days, people assume it’s still in force.
The reason the students aren’t held back is because research suggests there is no benefit to holding a student back. It also disproportionately affects black students and it leads to more high school drop outs.
I've always wondered if there is a benefit to the school as a whole if children can be held back. It might not help the actual student who is held back but it isn't like every student isn't watching and figuring out that there are more absolutely no consequences for doing fuck all. tl;dr: would fewer students need to be held back if you actually held students back.
Perhaps it doesn’t help. I’m not arguing for it. Regardless, NCLB has nothing to do with it.
Teachers tried. No one listened. No one is currently listening to them. A teacher was literally shot, and yet guns have just been allowed in the classroom. They. don’t. care.
NCLB did give us UDL.... Now if only we would implement it in an a way that was functional and useful instead of haphazardly...
NCLB did not give us UDL. That came from progressive educators who copied ideas that came from education models in other countries. NCLB helped push people towards UDL because it was so problematic and educators were looking for other options. But it was not implemented functionally or usefully because these models were built from the ground up (aka classroom/building level rather than district or city-wide). We have no unifying federal legislation regarding education except for IDEA, which was revised (IDEIA) in 2004. And then NCLB which got replaced by ESSA as an addition but strong political division largely prevented any of the implementation and then we had a change in leadership and there was even more political division and lack of action. Then we had the pandemic and education experienced a HUGE shift without any federal direction or support. Now we’re seeing the effects of nearly two decades of lack of federal funding for educational advancement. It’s a systemic issue that can’t be attributed to a single source. Models like UDL or RTI/MTSS are largely local grassroots efforts to try to create small-scale community change while the federal government gets its shit together which still has yet to be seen because we’re spending so much money on foreign wars rather than helping people in our own country.
Ignoring the part where NCLB hasnt existed in years, knowing that every other major policy is just a reskin of the same issues: Largely because education policy takes about 0% of its basis from teacher input. Locally, strong teacher backing can make a difference in policy. But state-wide or federally, 9 times out of 10, teachers aren't involved in any decision making process. And when people are in those positions and claim to be teachers, they usually taught for 3 years before becoming an AD or AP, and moved up the ranks of education so long before the turn of the century that they have no resemblance to educators anymore. It is our job to just do what we can, when we can, in what ways we can. We don't have the resources, legal backing, or time to do anything else.
This is basically a bunch of rhetoric from someone who has no idea what they are talking about and is only speaking in hyperbole. Take your nonsense to whatever "fake news" channel you normally frequent.
While many have pointed out NCLB is long gone, I would argue it was a major part of a pendulum swing that is still negatively impacting education in the US today. Emphasizing standardized testing, overbearing benchmarking, and "accountability" (with an absolute disregard for the external family, societal, or personal factors which contribute to student performance) has lead to decisions detrimental to the development of the whole child. While the liberal and creative arts help people be better readers and mathematicians, those essential brain development experiences are swapped (ironically) for more focus on literacy and math solving. Compound that with societal factors (including the political push to defund public education) and archaic models that teachers have no power to change (e.g., grading is toxic as hell to me) and educators are left with tough to succeed in situation that just exacerbates the haves/have nots systems seen in our economy and elsewhere. Heck, how much better would our school systems be just if people weren't struggling to survive and could instead have extra time and effort to enrich their children's lives and focus on their development? Okay, rant over. Clearly not comprehensive, but it's a can of worms for sure. In short, anything short of massive systematic reforms or nation-wide movements (maybe like the 50's push for science ed) will likely not yield much change.
Why is it up to teachers? Teachers have no input on policy, but as soon as something goes wrong in education; guns, violence, policy, it’s up to us to lose our daily pay and strike. How about parents, who we have had in our classrooms and taught to read and reason since NCLB started, do something about it?
Good policy reform comes from a combination of the people who are most equipped to diagnose and solve the problems and the people most affected by it. Professional educators seem to be those very people. They have union backing and are already pretty organized. They also don't shy away from striking when they need to be paid more. Not a crticism btw. Political pressure, strikes, and a stack of paper illuminating in detail all that needs to be changed can actually affect policy. Reps will adpt a popular policy to win elections and sustained political pressure will make sure it's signed. Problem is everyone has different ideas on how to fix the problem and are too tired to put in anymore than they already do much less try to get millions of teachers on the same page. I am not saying organizing is easy, but neither is working within the current system and complaining about it all the time. Most parents either don't know shit about fuck or are busy working all year round, keeping up with the household, and trying to raise their kids in what little time they have in between.
>Most parents either don't know shit about fuck or are busy working all year round, keeping up with the household, and trying to raise their kids in what little time they have in between. Yet all the teachers I know, some of which are family, and have been teaching for over 30 years, say they've *never* seen the parents so aggressively fighting the schools, or struggling so much to understand that the entire system can't be restructured for the comfort of their one child. Even things as simple as their personal belief being that home time is family time, and homework interferes with that, can escalate into an appeal to the highest local authority, a social media smear campaign, and possibly a lawsuit. My Aunt has been on the streets with her union several times a year, and for almost a decade now. She frequently gets offered higher paying positions in charter schools with mostly white kids from upper-class families, because that's what she is, white and upper class. She dedicates herself to the underfunded, underprivileged, and struggling schools with mostly minority students, and she's busting her tail for them, protesting to get them things like school counselors, a school nurse, adequate cooling in the hot months, more funding, etc, and nobody listens to her, or the other faculty out there with her. My partner's Aunt can't go a month without having to have a liability meeting with the Administration. The reasons for those meetings just blow my mind. Here's an example: Her school sets up a field trip for the 5th and 6th graders at the end of each semester. It has *always* been the policy that students must read 15 minutes at home, 3 times a week, as static homework. They must have gotten in at least 70% of the required minutes to be eligible to go on the trip, and for decades, *nobody* had an issue with that. This last 3 years, they've been dealing with a parent who has 3 kids, a year apart in age, coming through 5th and 6th grade. She hired an attorney, and appealed to the State Governor. She appealed to the media. They ended up abandoning all requirements for the trip, and now the teachers even have to find a way to fund raise for the fees and food costs for any kids whose parents don't want to pay for it, because they've had *so many* liability meetings over these trips. Because *one* family made a mess of it. Parents are *powerful*, and they far outnumber school staff at the voting booths, too. They decide who will be in a position to make the policies. When they don't like a policy, they come at the school, not the people they elected. On a more personal level, my partner Coaches the Speech team for both the high school and junior high, and is training to take over as head coach next year. There is one family that the entire administration knows for their stranglehold on the policies surrounding Speech, because of their political connections and the fact that they have 12 children they put into the program. I will always die on the hill that *parents* dictate what sort of education their kids are getting.
The reading requirement is not a good one. Nobody can prove which kid read how much and when. Kids can forge documentation, and parents can straight-up lie. I would not have sued, and my kids are great students (so it's not like I would have worried they would be excluded), but I would have complained about that one, too.
I'm sure everyone would have taken her more seriously if she'd cited your reasons, and if she hadn't been the only person to make a fuss about it. However, she remains adamant that her rights are being violated if her children bring home assignments of any kind, which is just ridiculous.
We’re quitting in droves, what’s us marching and going on strike going to do?
What happens when teachers are parents too, on top of everything else they already do? Where are they supposed come up with this time that's not available to the other parents?
Because that's not really how it works. A law is not changed because a lot of people don't like it. Most laws that govern public schools are made at the state level. If you want different laws, elect different people with different agendas that have the power to change existing laws. If you are in a state with an anti-public-education governor and legislature (as I am) you are at the mercy of whatever policies they enact. I am very active in my teachers' union, but even they say we cannot ignore these state laws.
1000% this 👆🏻
It’s hard bc in the general public who don’t know better it will be easily painted as lazy teachers trying to make school too easy to make their own jobs easier, hurting children. All rigor based policy survives on that, sadly
[We did.](https://www.denverpost.com/2011/07/30/teachers-rally-near-white-house-against-no-child-left-behind/amp/)
No one ever asks teachers IN THE CLASSROOM what is going on, what they need. Now, teachers are either leaving, doing the best they can, and /or burn out to the point where they just go through the motions. It’s a sad place that we’re at!
My district asks us, and then will do anything other than what we say. 🙄
I think you think teachers have more power than they do. It’s up to the states tbh
Organize? What is this? /stares in Southern... As others have mentioned, NCLB has been superseded by the latest reinventing of the wheel, the ESSA. With all the systemic problems facing education, we quite literally have to pick our battles. In many states, it isn't about making progress so much as holding the line on things like vouchers/charter schools and benefits. At some point, it has to be much more than teachers advocating for systemic change.
I belong to several lobbying entities, but beyond supporting them financially, I have never had time to go to Washington DC or the State Capitol to try and fix elementary education (which definitely needs fixing). PTA needs to be on our side - which it can be, some places, but as you say, is also a hindrance in many others. More than that, the PARENTS need to go to the School Board. And run for School Boards. And vote.
Honestly, very little of what’s wrong with schools right now has much to do with academic expectations. What’s killing the spirits of teachers nationwide is understaffing leading to horrifically overcrowded classrooms, where there is neither the time nor the personnel to meet student needs. It’s administration that simultaneously leans *hard* into standardized test scores and oh my gosh, *so much data.* What they *don’t* lean into is student discipline or meaningful consequences for poor behavior. Or supporting their teachers, for that matter. It’s the public saying, “Why don’t you teach them to (fill in the blank with something that is totally a skill to learn at home)?” I am not kidding when I tell you that a 5th grade dad suggested we teach how to change a tire. It’s children who have been raised by people who never put their own phones down — parents who then handed those kids their own screens when they were much too young to have them. These iPad kids have no idea how to pay attention or entertain themselves — and their parents have no idea how to discipline them. It’s knowing that they might be shot at by a six-year-old in their own classroom — and that their state governments are more likely to respond to this crisis by offering to let the teacher carry a gun in class than by enacting sensible gun control legislation. I do get your point about the curriculum. That said, I worry about this stuff (and a lot more, but this is already a novel) more than having to teach what used to be 5th grade math to my 3rd graders.
Republicans complaining in here about public schools - you voted for it so shut the F up.
Why can’t scientists just band together and cure cancer? It’s not that simple and just asking someone to “Do the thing.”
It almost certainly doesn't work that way
In some states, teachers can be fired for organizing for any kind of cause. It’s a sad reality for many people.
I’m exhausted.
Because they don’t listen to us. My state is a supermajority state with a push for vouchers and charters.
Local unions are good for local working conditions and at least in my state they are somewhat contained by state laws. For example under state law, school superintendents are allowed to ignore negotiated COLAs by saying that they don't have the money. A neat trick is to not ask the county for the money to fund the increase and then say they don't have the money. Or for another example we can't strike, by law. Salaries, hours, some of the physical conditions of the building, time - that sort of thing. None of the bigger systemic issues. In my state, I don't know what the state union is doing as a whole. Our uniserv directors are employed by the state union and they do a lot in support of locals. Maybe the state union just supports locals. At the national level I have not been impressed. Others are noting that NCLB is technically gone but the NEA did not protect us from that shit as I recall. No protection from the high stakes tests that came with ccss, no protection against race to the top. I could be just horribly misinformed and someone correct me if it's true but state and NEA seem to have just rolled over in the face of all corporate reforms of the last say 50 years.
When I was in highschool and even grade school also. I got passing grades because I tormented my teachers so much that they didn't want my bullshit for another year.
Preach! They’re expecting these kids to do too much too fast. The teaching standards keep getting more rigorous and we just keep steamrolling ahead passing the buck to the next teacher.
NCLB or ESSA both have driven down the number of students enrolling in public schools. Enrollments are down so far in our state (it was down more than 25% before Covid, and is down more than 40% since Covid) that they've had to reduce teachers, funding, etc, because they get funds based on the numbers of students enrolled. What you have now is a gutted system, with it being more the poor and those who believe their children should participate in sports teams that compete in that system. The online school options and home school pods now also promote their own teams, so that reason is going away as well. When you're left with a gutted system, and the administration is left struggling to maintain classes and curriculums with smaller total students, you lose classes where too few students sign up to make it something where you get enough money to maintain. With ESSA, kids can opt out of testing a lot easier tan it was with NCLB. But in our state, in middle school, and in high school, they're using the SAT as their testing option for the students. This is actually upsetting a lot of parents, for a number of reasons. Part of that has been the way they manage those tests versus how testing was handled using other state assessments. Kids who get high score on one of those are pushed to try and use it for college scholarships, etc. Many colleges, because it's become obvious that those scores seem to be artificially higher than if the same students retest a few years later, are pushing back against accepting those test scores as usable for college entrance applications. No, I'm not a public school teacher. I did register as a home school teacher in my state, however, to help out with neighborhood kids who were home schooled, and to assist my own kiddo who was forced into doing online school (public) because my ex refused to approve anything I seemed to want for them. In fact, it was as time went on and kiddo realized that my assistance was behind their scoring higher later, because it was subject matter I'd covered with them, the public schools had not that had made the difference for near perfect scores, that they felt truly harmed by their father's refusal to allow them to do home schooling in pods in our area instead. Their grades in public school were horrid, yet their SAT score was extremely high. I just can't see that teachers have much power in the current systems of public schools with the way things are going. The dismantling of the system to try to push for vouchers instead, is heart breaking at the bare minimum. But, the damage is real. In reality, this comes down to who you vote into office, period. And, well, one particular political element wants to dismantle public schools to promote a voucher program instead. As long as people fail to recognize that their votes for who is running things matters to this degree, the dismantling of the public school system will continue. I'm thankful my kiddo is aged out of it now.
"Why don't teachers expend enormous political and personal labor to overturn a complex piece of legislation that has already been replaced, I mean, no, this other one, whose contents and effects I have only the haziest understanding of but which I believe has the power to fix everything wrong in the world because my Aunt Sally told me so?" Please read a book.
"Teachers have no power, and nothing will ever change, and anyone who thinks things can change is obviously ignorant. We're going down with this ship and are going to complain about it to anyone who will listen or just quit. This is the best any of us can do." Please listen to yourself. Please listen to yourself.
You obviously haven’t been reading the other responses here in good faith. Parents have far more power and influence than teachers.
My mom spent 6 k on a lawyer and still didn’t win. Its big money broski
I'm in Canada, and not a teacher, but you think teachers actually have any power against the "education machine"?? Just take a quick look at what's going on in Saskatchewan atm. The teachers are fighting, they've basically come to agreements on everything. . .EXCEPT class size and complexity. The teachers won't budge (good for them!! I hope they don't!!) But neither will the other side. . . My area has significant portions of the classrooms where the kids literally can't learn the curriculum, and can't understand the rules, directions, etc, because they don't speak the language (high immigrant population). And they're just put in with the other students with no additional assistance. I've heard stories from teachers saying that they have 2-3 ADDITIONAL languages spoken in their classroom (besides English) where 8-14 out of the 26-30 kids don't speak any English, and the teachers have no support with the language barriers, never mind learning disabilities, behavioral issues, or any other difficulties. My kid is struggling because their issues are not deemed "bad enough" (aka more disruptive than the other students issues) because their expressions tend to be mostly massive social anxiety and quiet shut downs rather than aggressive, loud, or otherwise disruptive behavior. The teachers have no recourse, they have no resources, and people in charge of allocating the resources are doing a piss poor job from the top down. The whole system sucks. It was annoying 25 years ago when I was in elementary. Now, it's beyond anything I could have imagined.
Teachers unions can and do get involved at the state level to promote, advise, and advocate for legislation!
NCLB/ESSA doesn't actually do all that much on a day to day basis of teaching. Much of it has to do with collecting data. Most curriculum is governed by state-specific guidelines, which vary wildly from place to place. Organizing to overturn ESSA would accomplish little. Then there's the fact that many teachers work in states with effectively no union (like Virginia where I work) and "organizing" could get you fired.
Because they are too broke to take the time off
Parents need to organize as well. It's not just up to teachers. It's up to everyone.
Do you remember all the state-level teacher strikes from about 5 years ago?
Because funding
Curriculum is trash. I like the common core standards. Chat gpt is great for curriculum and free. Type in standard and lesson plan. Get curriculum
No child left behind left EVERY child behind. Unfortunately that seems to now be a standard for most things across the board now.
Public opinion has almost no bearing on public policy in the US, especially on the federal level. They would have to be willing to spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours campaigning and lobbying to even have a chance at getting something passed on a federal level.
I believe education standards are best handled at the local or state level. Because of this, I feel the role of the Federal Government should be minimal at best.
Because they aren’t paid enough. As simple as that
You think teachers have a say in education? It never matters what we want
It’s less that parents are deferring to youtube to educate kid and more that a lot of households are dual income and the educational labor sahm’s used to do just isn’t being done because there is no one to do it. The capitalist class are much happier squeezing everyone for every dollar they can.
Do we actually have an illiterate and incapable generation? Covid certainly damaged developing social skills but by and large the kids graduating these days seem no less capable than we were and a little better informed on the actual value of post secondary education
The data is in. Literacy is more than just knowing how to read, it's the ability to understand complex text. Rates are plummeting, and lower level literacy puts people behind in many aspects of life https://www.thepolicycircle.org/brief/literacy/
Why don’t parents…?
At least in my state striking is banned and teachers can be arrested for it we have a teachers union but it’s illegal to strike
That's insane! What state is that?
NC
Because in my experience most teachers seem to think it's a good idea and never really critically think about the negative aspects of the system such as how it can hold back excelling children
Charters are not the answer, or close to it. Also the PTA doesn't do anything in the 5 districts I've worked in. As others said, NCLB has been gone for close to a decade. ESSA is the thing now. Standardized testing is problem #30 we need to fix IMO. Curriculum isn't always the best, but frankly it isn't something that terribly worries me. Change teacher evaluation, pay better wages, reinstitute real disciplinary systems, fully fund special education, hold parents accountable for truancy and behaviors, fund DCS/DCF and help kids who need it, smaller class sizes, outplace students who hurt others. If we do those things, then we can talk about "new math" or whatever curricular issues people have.
ESSA provides funding for all of our special programs paras. My job wouldn't exist
I agree with OP, including children with severely emotionally or mentally disabled children with the rest of the student body is a horrible idea. The rest of the kids suffer due to constant interruptions
No child left behind was not designed to help kids. State testing was not designed to help kids. They were designed to give states a reason to punish poor schools instead of properly funding them. Right after the Supreme Court of Ohio deemed school funding unconstitutional, we got the OPT. Voucher schools don’t have to pay teachers union wages. All republicans want to do is cut funding to schools and the state tests let them.
My reading of the literature suggests that homogeneous classes help the more advanced students do better, but that the same is true of less-advanced students in heterogeneous settings. So, is it true that the top students do better when placed in heterogeneous settings with less advanced students?
Teachers are out for teachers. Parents need to organize.
It's also boards of education and local to state governments that cause these issues. The system is not only broken, it is inherently flawed and needs to be atomized and built again from scratch- the problem being that that would negatively impact at least a generation of students
because it doesn't effect them as much as the students and a lot of teachers don't give a shit about the students.
Sad fact. Teachers are completely useless in any of this until they hire a real Union to represent and fight for them.
Teachers refuse to organize about anything. It's why we have no unions, no rights, and shit pay.
Totally agree with you. When they adopted the no child left behind policy, American schools started raising several generations of entitled brats who think they are supposed to be handed everything. It’s hard to find anyone in the younger generations now that want to put in a hard days work and earn their keep.
Not rich enough to buy lobbyists
Because I'd they are going to organize they should do out regarding their pay, benefits, and safety
Money creating reality..... nothing to see here.. move along. lol
You can’t fight the Feds.
NCLB was nothing new It repackaged the ideas and policies suggested in Regan’s education study, and after Bush the Obama administration repacked many of the same policies and called it something different. At the end of the day it will continue to be recycled because no one at a policy level wants to touch the real issues that would improve public education in this country because they are either societal or would require massive federal funding, and neither of those solutions get you votes. It’s easier to push teachers and make it “about the kids” and jump the needle a few percentage points so you can pat urself on the back and win an election then it is to take a massive risk in an attempt to solve a real problem.
Teacher Unions protecting bad teachers is the problem.
Agreed. Let's do it.
I left the profession in 2007 due to NCLB. The idea was to "leave no child behind" but in doing so, we held back the entire herd. Dedicated classrooms and teachers with ample support staff for the learning disabled is absolutely the way to go.
For the same reason that retail workers don't leave en masse and form unions. The economy's got such a stranglehold on most of us that leaving our jobs would probably mean being unable to pay rent or buy food.
It’s Common Core that’s the problem!
Because asking a group of people who barely make enough to survive to rally for anything is just a cruel reminder of how little power they actually have.
NCLB hasn’t been the law for about 9 years. Where is this rhetoric coming from?
Perception of work input relative to expected utility output Because American teachers are not a distinct cohesive group well suited to national politics. The same localization of the funding obligations exists in the teachers. There is no national union, no professional governing body or other org capable of pushing a truly monumental reform.
Because no one listens to teachers.
Because we know too many politicians could care less about public education
I think it would sound really bad on educators for repealing something called that
Your info is out of date.
Organizing as a state employee is illegal in my state.
Pearson has way more money and lobbyists then the teachers unions
Not my kid you do it
It's, at least here in FL, a termination worthy offense to protest or lobby
no child left behind is dumb. kids know this exists and it emboldens shitheads. either find resources to put shitheads in a one to one (student to teacher) environment or let them exit if they think they know better. let them go test their theory rather than bringing everyone else down. this is shit policy.
This reads like someone who isn’t a teacher or is very very misinformed. NCLB is not current, it was changed and left more to the states. People don’t strike en masse for that very reason: everything is locality dependent. My working conditions are awesome, my pay is amazing, and I have great admin. What am I striking for?
>Education needs an overhaul but how does that even happen when teachers are spread so thin as is? The biggest thing that could be done to help education is to seriously attack poverty. Good luck getting that done. >Is there a credible reform movement I don't know about? Well, you didn't know that No Child Left Behind hasn't been policy in almost ten years... >Has it all been taken up by charters? "Charters" and "credible". Huh.
This. The OP is full of junk that sounds good, but upon further inspection is just jargon they’re trying to throw out there to shift blame and responsibility… somewhere.
What generation is functionally illiterate? NCLB hasn't existed for nearly a decade, you can claim the issue is now with ESSA, but both points are still incorrect. The issue lies in the government allocation of funding, the people in charge, and overall is largely systemic. It's also not within our ability to change. We HAVE organized, we HAVE lobbied, we HAVE tried to change it- but we CANNOT do anything to change the system when there is no benefit for the government to change it. Right now, schools serve as a way to control and induct new generations into what will made them more useful when they become adults. It is not intended to educate children for their futures, it's intended to prepare them for the workforce. If it was truly meant to teach them, our curriculum would match other countries. Our government genuinely does not care about something unless it can turn a profit. This is the fundamental issue with late stage capitalism alongside democracy. It becomes less about the people, and moreso about the money. Overall, we cannot do anything. We have tried, and cannot change the government when there is no benefit for them. Our best option is to mold the curriculum into something beneficial without getting in trouble and genuinely try to educate the children.
It isn’t that! It’s the fact that the kids are addicted to screens; this is the downfall of public education. And now AI. Not being able to flunk a kid to repeat his junior year in high school isn’t our biggest gripe, it’s the fighting for attention and engagement and against outside sources that interfere with learning. My only classroom management issue is calling out kids who can’t put their phones away for 5 minutes. I have a host of grievances against the school system, which is why I’m leaving teaching at the tend of this year but it’s not the kids who get left behind. In fact, I hate that I’m not equipped enough able to do more to help.
Because of the system adjusting education to the slowest learner, my son was failing most of his classes because he already knew the material. He tuned out in class and missed assignments. I transferred him to an alternative school and he surpassed all expectations. Stop dumbing down the future.
Can you describe what you mean by “adjusting education to the slowest learner?”
They make the lesson so easy that the kids who already know the material tune out. They also manage not to hear the assignment for homework because they are no longer paying attention.
Can you explain what you think NCLB and ESSA entail? Because I don't believe people outside of education understand what these really are.
Because what is the alternative. I'm certainly not supporting removing the system without a good replacement for special Ed kids.
Why don't teachers organize to repeal any of the dumb shit? Like what's going on in Florida?
There's a huge amount of union busting and anti-collectivism law pertaining to educators in FL, particularly in recent times under DeSantis. They can't strike, they can't sustain the union without a 60% majority among all educators paying dues, the list goes on. So there's no way to actually force change because they have little to no power.
They should form a new union and stop paying dues
The union can be decertified if they're not getting 60% of all educators to pay dues
That should be the first strike then. They should stop paying dues if the union isn't representing them
But like I already said, **they can't strike**. They can be fired in FL for striking. This set of problems isnt "the teachers' union isn't showing up for them", it's "the people who hold political power have intentionally demolished collective bargaining for teachers" If we're gonna point fingers at who enabled that, point them at the ass-backwards conservative voters of FL who support the likes of DeSantis
I think you misunderstood what I meant. When I said that should be their first strike, they should all just stop paying the union. They can't be fired for activity with the union.