Readers of the AJC Get Schooled blog were divided on the legacy of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which turns 12 in 2014. This year is also the point in the law where all students were supposed to be proficient in math and reading. Georgia is now free from the law, having won a state waiver that requires schools to now meet a state-created College and Career Ready Performance Index. Here is a sampling of comments:
Quidocetdiscit: What I have found in every school in which I have worked, regardless of the level of funding, quality of teachers, discipline issues, etc. was the students who were most successful were the ones whose parents instilled a respect for education and a hunger for learning so that their children were motivated to do their best. Yes, it is hard to lift a child out of poverty through education. It requires dedication on the part of the child, parent and teacher. If any one of those individuals is not willing to support learning, it is much harder.
Pop: Yes, all students are now proficient in reading and writing. Now, our next challenge: All children will be able to dunk a basketball by 2025.
Astro: NCLB was just another failure of imagination. The supreme educrats inside the Beltway never imagined that teachers unions; lazy, indifferent parents, and an ossified education system would respond the way it has to the carrot/stick/meddling approach contained in the act. Administrators never imagined that the regulations and goals couldn't be gamed, rigged, jiggered and phonied up enough to fool the parent/taxpayers and the federales scratching the checks. Teachers couldn't imagine bringing a kid up to grade level when he/she was absent or tardy 5 days out of 10 and didn't give a hoot when present. And finally, we taxpayers couldn't imagine that those caring, loving, unselfish people that we elected would ever lie to us.
Proud Parent: We have left NCLB for the new world of Georgia's College and Career Ready Performance Index and value-added evaluations. Both CCRPI and value-added have taken the old world of test-focused accountability to a new level. The number of tests reflected in CCRPI has expanded from the reading and writing focus to all core content areas.
Math Mom: Oh, please. My lower-level students — all of them well-behaved (at least at school), delightful young people — have gotten dumber and dumber every year since the beginning of NCLB.
Centrist: Those who aren't proficient can still go to that top-tier UGA if they play football.
SouthGeorgia: To CCRPI or not to CCRPI? I think the change will be worse than what No Child Left Behind has given us. The valued-added measure and the false hope that is hidden with the evaluation within CCRPI will only hide more students with data. They can change all the numbers they want and move the bar here and there, but this will not fix the issues that abound. It will take another 10 years to undo what NCLB has done. We need to come to the conclusion that good teachers and strong parental support is the magic formula … not iPads, more testing, and implementing developmentally inappropriate standards for $400 million.
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