[A_perfect_lady]

I've been urging our principal to consider rejecting the federal funds (that is an option.) I mean, we get a million dollars a year, most of which seems to go to stuff that I consider a total waste, like these elaborate agenda/planners that the kids are supposed to carry around (but they don't), and I'm pretty sure that horrid HighPoint ESL program is funded by it... and then the kids get tested and tested to see if that million is doing any good.

And year after year we find that the white and Asian kids are doing fine and the black and Latino kids aren't... but out of the last nine weeks, we spent three weeks on various standardized tests!! I can hardly believe anyone thinks it's a good idea to teach them for six weeks and then test, test, and test some more...

[af_vet_rr]

And year after year we find that the white and Asian kids are doing fine and the black and Latino kids aren't... but out of the last nine weeks, we spent three weeks on various standardized tests!! I can hardly believe anyone thinks it's a good idea to teach them for six weeks and then test, test, and test some more...

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, it's not really a racial thing, it's an economic thing - schools in the worst neighborhoods are going to do worse than schools in the richer neighborhoods.

The Jesse Jacksons and the like try to make it about race, but really it's economics. Maybe that's a taboo thing to say, but we've had our kids in schools in half a dozen states, and when I was growing up, I went through the same number of schools, and it was a given that the best schools were in the best neighborhoods, regardless of race.

With NCLB, that simply told us what we already knew. The federal government was trying to throw its weight around, when all it did was tell us that schools in bad neighborhoods are going to do worse than schools in good neighborhoods.

The biggest problem we face, at least in my area, is that as soon as a teacher has so many years in, they can transfer to other schools (i.e. away from the school the district placed them at when they first came on board). That means that teachers with 4-5 years of experience are going to move to better performing schools, and so the bad schools end up with a constant influx of teachers just out of college, which is the last thing they need - teachers with no experience.

I can't even blame the teachers - if you are paying me the same amount to teach at a school in a bad neighborhood or in a good neighborhood, I'm going to go where there is less stress and where the job is easier, and that means the better neighborhood.

That's not to say that there can't be good schools in bad neighborhoods, but a good school requires competent, experienced teachers (who don't have a "oh geez, just two more years and I can change schools to a better one" mentality), a competent staff, and parents who give a damn. The best teachers and most competent staff can't do much good if you have parents who don't care (or who aren't very educated themselves), and every time we transferred and started looking for schools for our kids, it was easy to spot the schools where parents didn't care (liberals will pull the "the parents are holding down multiple jobs and don't have time to help their kids" crap, but that's a cop-out as far as I'm concerned).

[MissEdie]

I can hardly believe anyone thinks it’s a good idea to teach them for six weeks and then test, test, and test some more...

Especially when the results of these tests are not used to modify teaching in order to hit the areas the students are struggling in the most.

[SoftballMominVA]

When you say 'the last 9 weeks' do you mean that in every 9 weeks the school spends 3 weeks on standardized testing or do you meant that during the last 9 weeks of the year the school spends 3 weeks on standardized testing?

The first way leads to 12 weeks of school year spent in testing, the second leads to 3 weeks of the school year spent in testing.