| Re "Aim high, California," editorial, March
31: The Bee ignored the total failure of No Child Left Behind law (NCLB)
to address the realities of our public schools.
The organizational structure of our public schools is an industrial assembly
from the early 1900s, and our students are treated like standardized products
who are largely on their own to succeed or fail. Woe unto any students
who do not conform to the rigid operations of the assembly line as they
are pushed from class to class and grade level to grade level.
Our K-12 school system is so organizationally outmoded that despite the
dedicated efforts of our teachers and principals, it simply cannot prepare
all of our students to fulfill their adult roles and responsibilities.
The fundamental issue is not just high standards for all student groups;
rather we must completely transform our K-12 schools into smaller learning
communities that can provide customized, individualized teaching and learning.
We can continue to pretend that the NCLB will move our schools toward
excellence, but until we change the totally antiquated way our schools
are organized, we will continue to betray many of our children and their
productive futures in our society and economy.
- Alec I. Ostrom, Auburn
Re "Opting out of tests," editorial, March 22: The Bee writes
that California has 50,000 students whose parents have signed a waiver
so that students can "opt out" of taking basic reading and math
tests (the Star 9 tests) and that this should no longer be an option because
we need 95 percent participation or lose federal funding.
The repercussions of Star 9 testing are forcing teachers to teach to the
test and are sucking the life out of our children and the teachers. As
a result, we are fostering replaceable economic units rather than caring,
well-rounded human beings. Most teachers and parents would like to see
this bad idea disappear.
If we work together and listen to each other, we will choose to opt out
of these tests all together, replacing them with a more humane solution.
- Joe Tassinari, Lotus
The suggestion that schools discourage low-performing students from taking
tests in order to make district scores look better is inaccurate and unfair.
Districts also lose when parents opt their children out of state tests;
zeroes are zeroes when the averages are calculated whether the absent
student is gifted or struggling.
Like it or not, California parents have the right to excuse their children
from testing, whether it's because they've agreed that their special education
student shouldn't participate or that their gifted student is overwhelmed
by an ulcer-inducing culture of assessment.
The consistently high-performing Mill Valley Middle School failed to meet
NCLB's adequate yearly progress because 113 of 126 students with disabilities
took the math test - seven students short of NCLB's arbitrary 95 percent
participation requirement. Does the school deserve to be labeled a failure?
The assumption that a disconnect between NCLB requirements and the community's
own feelings about implementation is proof that schools are asleep at
the wheel totally ignores the community, the school and the students
an ignorance we had previously attributed only to the legislation itself.
Looks like The Bee didn't do its homework either.
- Scott P. Plotkin, West Sacramento
Executive Director, California School Boards Assn.
Holding children hostage to some score on a disembodied test in order
to get money is a bully tactic.
Parents sign waivers excusing their child from a test for sensible reasons,
including that their child doesn't yet speak English well enough to understand
the test or cried through the last test, or even vomited; their child's
test anxiety creates the feeling of being a failure; their special education
child's time is wasted with a test that's meaningless to him. The Bee
thinks schools should force parents to force their kids to take mindless
tests in order to get money.
If you want more money for education, dismantle the miseducative testing
system. Billions of education dollars pour into corporations that support
high stakes testing and, perhaps, the campaign coffers of policy-makers.
Reroute that money to children and the schools that serve them. Allow
more choice in order to seek creative, viable solutions for all.
- Karen D. Benson, Sacramento
Professor, Department of Teacher Education, CSUS
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001 ("No Child Left
Behind") requires schools to show progress in reading and math scores
for eight subgroups of students: blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, Native
Americans, special-education students, the economically disadvantaged
and those with limited English proficiency. If fewer than 95 percent of
the students in any subgroup fail to take the required exams, the school
will not meet the progress requirements. Where a subgroup consists of
50 students, three students being absent during even part of the testing
results in the school being designated as failing to make "adequate
yearly progress." Twenty-five percent of California schools failed
to meet this inflexible requirement last year. But virtually 100 percent
of California schools will be labeled "failing" by NCLB within
a few years, because the law requires that every student - even the most
profoundly disabled - be "proficient," which is defined as capable
of university work without remediation.
- George Sheridan, Garden Valley
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