Mel’s Life

So I see today that there are going to be some changes in the No Child Left Behind laws - you can read about it here.
Apparently, there is going to be more state involvement in things like testing. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Pretty much everyone I know agrees that the education system in this country could use some help, but no one really has any good ideas on how to go about that. I’ve always been undecided on this subject. Take school funding for example, part of me thinks that it makes more sense for local school boards to decide the best use of funds because local people should know the needs of their community. But then I remember being in high school and I know that there are a lot of school boards that believe new football uniforms are much more important to their district than a computer lab. Of course, I would say that because I went to high school in a very small town (Greenwood, Arkansas) and we had 3 basketball stadiums, but no auditoriam - we had a cafe-toriam.

Apparently, the old No Child Left Behind (hereafter refered to as NCLB) laws allowed states to test 1% of students at their developmental level rather than their grade level - sounds fair to me - but now their going to allow 2% and some people are not happy. I don’t see what the fuss is. Lets see, I graduated in a class of about 250 - multiply that by four grades and we have 1000 students. If Greenwood High had tested 1% at a developmental level that would be 10 students. I’m here to tell you that there were at least 10 students in my grade with no hope of ever reading on even a 9th grade level - no matter how good their teachers were. I feel confident that out of every 1000 students, 20 lack the mental capacity (for whatever reason) to test at their grade level. I don’t think that more or less state accountability is going to change that. Though, there must be a reason that states like California produce better test results than states like Arkansas. I went to school in both those states. The elementary school I went to was considered a very good school, the Junior high was considered bad. In Arkansas, the high school I went to was considered academically good (though I can tell you a secret about how they pulled that one off) and lets look at me. I can’t spell for shit, but despite the way I write blog posts, I know my grammar. I’m good at certain types of math and sciences, but don’t ask me about history and never, ever trust my geography skills - though I make up for it be being an expert map reader. Does this have to do with my education or is it just who I am? I think it’s who I am. I have a friend who can spell anything - she went to a catholic elementary school, same high school. Can she spell because she went to catholic school? We’ll never know. I don’t know that we can compare math or science skills since it hasn’t ever come up - I suspect that I’m better at math just judging what kind of grades we made. But this has little to do with how our intellegence compares. I might be better with history if I had taken a history class in high school. No one ever believes that I didn’t have to take any kind of world or american history in high school - but I swear it’s true. I think all the debate and stuff I took somehow allowed me to escape it. But I had several history classes in college and I still say things like “Oh yeah, I had forgotten the role of Japan in WWII.” I don’t know these things because they aren’t interesting to me. But I think the point of NCLB is less about adults remembering which ammendment gives women the right to vote and more about turning people out into the workforce who can read and understand a newspaper article and work out the area of a triangle (just try and tell me you don’t use what you learned in algebra). That’s a noble cause - but it just isn’t possible. There are some people who have no mental or emotional disease and they just don’t get geometry. Everyone knows these people. I remember a girl that sat next to me in high school algebra. She would sit and take notes, ask questions, pay attention all through class. She would come in on test day and show me all the notes she studied with and tell me that she had re-worked every homework problem we’d been assigned. She was really trying. We’d get the test back the next day and she’d have at best, a low C on her paper. My paper would be marked with an A after the 30 minutes I’d spent looking over the chapter the night before the test. What’s sad is that she had no learning disabilities, she wasn’t emotionally distraught, and that algebra class was taught by one of the best math teachers I’ve ever had. She just wasn’t that bright. So when it came time to report test scores, the state of Arkansas had to report hers along with countless others who didn’t have anything wrong with them to allow them to be included in that 1%. So I agree, something should be done about the educational system in this country, but I think it may be time to just face the fact that some kids just aren’t that bright and the best teachers and the best programs aren’t going to change that.

As a side note: The way Greenwood high boasted good ACT and SAT scores were that you had to meet with a counselor before scheduling these tests was “allowed”. I had several friends who were told by the counselor that there was no reason for them to take these tests and talked them out of taking them. The vast majority of the students that took those tests in high school were the ones who made really good grades or were considered above average intelligence. The rest were encouraged to pusue either vocational school or join the military.

Another side note: I hear that some student attending Greenwood High created a website mocking the administration and the school suspended them and made them take remove the site. I guess the parents sued and the judge made the school distrinct take the students back, remove all reference of the incident from their “permanent records” (Have I mentioned just how many jobs I haven’t gotten because of all those damn detentions I had to serve?) and allowed the stundent to keep the website. If anyone out there knows the link for this website, please send it to me - I’d love to see it.

Filed by Mel at 5:30 pm under In the News