No Child Left Behind

Obama recently granted waivers or exceptions to ten states having to comply with the requirements of “No Child Left Behind.”

I find this pathetic.  How can we not make sure that our kids have even the most basic fundamental skills?

Some have argued that NCLB encourages educators to “teach the test.”

Let me propose this:

Teaching the test is OK, providing the test covers those subjects that are truly important.

Isn’t the goal for kids to learn the essential things?

If we do a good job identifying those essential things, what difference does it make if they learn them to pass a test?  The point is….they are being learned!

Most of us had classes in school where we had to guess what was going to be on the next test.  Every once in awhile, a teacher would say emphatically, “You just might see this on the test!”  That was a signal…and we all got it.  Nobody missed that question on the test.  We all knew it was going to be on it, and we all learned it.

Somebody once told me that learning was what remained after we’d forgotten what we had memorized.

We need to make sure that our kids have learned the essential core concepts, so that when they graduate, they can become independent, functioning, positively-contributing members of society.

We should not leave them behind, and if the means teaching the test, then so be it.