Reform 'No Child Left Behind'

I wish I felt better about agreeing with JCTA President Brent McKim.

Perhaps if he had not spent so much time defending poor teachers rather than Kentucky's children I'd be less suspicious. Whatever inroads McKim thinks were made installing pro-educaton legislators in the Kentucky General Assembly will have to be demonstrated to me. I don't see it.

But that said, McKim speaks the gospel to C-J readers today. NCLB needs fixing and funding. School accountability should be an efficient outgrowth of good pedagogy rather than an expensive preventer of best practices - and the ruination of CATS.

This from C-J:

We have all worked very hard during this election season to put pro-public education officials into office, but now the real work begins. Louisville, along with the rest of the country, faces immense hardships, so we must continue to remind our new officials of what is important to us.We must also hammer home to Washington and to Frankfort that No Child Left Behind has reduced teaching to nothing but test preparation, leaving behind the whole child, and has drained all financial sustenance from millions of schools.

Just completing the paperwork required by the federal government to comply with the reporting provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act costs states and local schools $135 million every year -- and takes more than 6.4 million hours away from time that could be spent teaching students. We need to remind our elected officials of the
children and educators they promised to support. We must remind them that teachers should be involved in finding solutions to the problems that plague our schools and that we're counting on them to be supportive partners in education, not dictators who impose more testing and unfunded mandates.

We must urge these government leaders to stop No Child Left Behind, end the interminable testing, and let teachers do what they do best -- teach.