Week 7 Spring Ch 7, Anthology Ch 10,19, 20 Class 7 Folder

“NCLB mandated that 100 percent of students be proficient in reading and math by 2014. Any school not on track to meet this utopian goal—one never reached by any nation in the world—would face a series of sanctions, culminating in the firing of the staff and the closing of the school.” (Obama’s War on Schools, Diane Ravitch)

This is utterly absurd that so many schools are facing these punishments. These standards are so out of line and I am disappointed that this “reform” has not been changed in a positive way when there have been so many negative affects from it. There is no logic behind these procedures. If there are schools not meeting these standards or are not on track to meeting them, why would they not receive the help that they obviously need? From the start of NCLB there was an unfair advantage to schools that have the money and means to getting their students what they need included capable and certified teachers and materials to prepare them for the tests. The schools that were already disadvantaged are not going to be able to reach these scores in these areas because of a new incentive to reach the goals. I’m sure schools across the nation already have the goal to have their students improve and reach goals this money incentive will only help those who are already close to the scores needed because it will give them an extra push. But schools not even close to these goals can not make up for so much lost time for the years and years of bad conditions and no accommodations for students in great need.

“These and other experiences left her increasingly disaffected from the choice and accountability movements. Charter schools, she concluded, were proving to be no better on average than regular schools, but in many cities were bleeding resources from the public system. Testing had become not just a way to measure student learning, but an end in itself.” (Dillion, “Scholars School reform U-Turn Shakes Up Debate”)

 In this quote Diane Ravitch has made the realization that reforms such as NCLB and Race to the Top, Charter School being developed are not solutions to the issues in education in American. She expresses how Charter schools are not even proven to be a more affective school system.  If we do not have supporting evidence for new ideas after they are put in place why would we keep them in place and keep putting much more money into them. When there are other places in need of the financial support? I wish people that have the power to make these decision did not have selfish reasons for their choices. The only reason for important choices should be what is best for the students! This I’m afraid is not up on the list of priorities for these people.

“We need a sense of purpose for our professors, not a timetable. Better that they show us a way to find our own ways that they hand out their own detailed maps of the territory.” Pg 107, Marlowe (Anthology)

            This quote was enlightening to me because I feel like I have been a student in my teacher education classes wanted exact answers to help me as a future teacher. But here I realize that I really don’t and shouldn’t want that. I need to find these answers myself and that is what I am afraid of. I fear being wrong but worst of all I fear being wrong and not knowing that I was wrong. I never want to affect children in a negative way. I always wonder if there was something else I could have done to help the child more than I did. I see reading this chapter by Susan Ohanian that I need to have more confidence and trust in myself, to learn as I experience working with children. If professors or other elementary teachers gave me all of their lesson ideas and plans where would I fit in to those? I need to find my own way of doing things rather than have answers from other people. Making your own decisions as teachers sets up your own philosophy and that is where you can make special connections with children because what you are doing is through your own passions and feelings.

 “ The larger goal of education is to assist people in seeing the world through their own eyes, interpreting and analyzing through their own experiences and thinking, feeling themselves capable of representing, manifesting, or even, if they chose, transforming all that is before them. Education then, is linked to freedom, to the ability to see and also alter, to understand and also reinvent, to know and also to change the world as we find it.” (185, Ayers) – Anthology

This section from Chapter 19 had a beautiful way of describing what education should be all about. It was wonderful to read how important this person believes the student’s freedom is. This is what I think is largely missing in the process of creating standardized tests and state standards. It is disappointing that there are so many teachers that are being limited when they have the ability to provide this assistance and inspiration to their students, but they are not given the time with their students to be able to fully reach this opportunity to have a higher level of thinking. Teachers and schools have requirements such as Race to the Top and NCLB that make them have a focus on testing which is the complete opposite of the goals that this quote describes. What a waste is what I say!