Hello.
I could rant on about the candidates, but watching them shadowbox each other is so boring I can’t be bothered.
However, I can rant on about the new No Child Left Behind regulations that Margaret Spellings is rolling out.
Miss Spellings , a woman who has never been in a classroom, whose degree is in political science, has decided we need more ‘accountability’ from the schools and more programs to involve parents.
I live in a place where all three high schools have failed to meet the NCLB standards for the past five years. The city’s solution has been to make ALL of the teachers re-apply for their jobs for next fall. When I ask student’s about it, I get an earful. They are afraid that the teachers they are familiar with enough to take their problems to will be gone next year. When I ask teachers about it they just roll their eyes and shrug, as if to say ‘What can you do?”
Spellings is not concerned about the students or failing schools. In this district there has been a significant elevation of students who are classified as Emotionally Impaired, most of them being conduct disordered. However, there are few solid programs to deal with this influx and many EI students end up in general classrooms, where they are disruptive. Overcrowded classrooms, lack of educational aides, run down, non-functioning schools are just some of the actual problems facing Administrators. Where are the increases in Federal funding to help? Don’t hold your breath waiting for Spellings whose real concern is mirrored in the following statement:
“Over their lifetimes, dropouts from the class of 2007 alone will cost our nation more than 300 billion dollars in lost wages, lost taxes and lost productivity,” said Secretary Spellings. “Increasing graduation rates by just five percent, for male students alone, would save us nearly eight billion dollars each year in crime-related costs.”
Because being fully educated means one will never commit a crime. Alberto Gonzales, Paul Wolfowitz, various Republicans caught with their pants down.. these people have cost our nation millions in prosecution and work loss but apparently, if you’re over educated this is more acceptable.
As for parental involvement. In this district they practically drag parents into meetings and programs. Every night I get phone calls about town meetings, forums, PTA, special programs for parenting…. it’’s endless. The fact is, some parents just don’t care. Many do but, some just don’t. All the regulations that Spellings wants to impose on the schools won’t make them care. It just makes the NCLB goals that much harder for the district to reach.
I have a solution. If Margaret ‘I’m a Political Hack” Spellings were replaced with an actual Teacher or School Administrator whose primary concern is real students rather than imaginary numbers things might change. Continuing the number crunch and calling it Educational Reform is just garbage. The NCLB is churning out students who can take a test but can’t hold a job, spell or do basic problem solving. And people like Spellings are taking it out on the only people who are willing to work for low pay and even less respect, Teachers.
Education is about the students and their futures. It’s about making sure that student’s have the basic tools to live and work in an increasingly complex system. NCLB and Margaret Spellings are throwing political wrenches into that system at will and then blaming the very people who are trying to do what they ask.
Our political system, the one that controls our education system, is full of twits. And Spellings is the worst of the lot.
Dogwoman
