Yello!

“Believing we can improve schooling with more tests is like believing you can make yourself grow taller by measuring your height.” Robert Schaeffer

“Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.” Albert Einstein

Keeping in mind that I want to keep this blog focused on the positive, I feel compelled to comment on a program of our current administration called No Child Left Behind. However well-intentioned, this one-size-fits-all program has been responsible for many, many, many hours of instructional time wasted in our schools. It has created mountains of paperwork devoted to writing and categorizing standards, testing each standard and reporting test data that could potentially label an entire school system as “failing”. It’s hard to put a positive spin on a program that has arguably taken some of the joy out of learning and replaced it with the fear of failure. I have yet to read any success stories of children, parents or teachers who credit this required system of testing as being the determining factor in their quest for academic excellence. With all of this emphasis on assessments and testing, many important areas of the educational experience such as career and technical education, music and art have sometimes been minimized or completely cut from the school curriculum. Although these areas are not considered core subjects, they are critical, core components to a child’s potential success in the real world. Unfortunately, there are some who have been elected to positions that make them the … um…”deciders” who don’t always seem to share the same “real world” as the rest of us. I could go on and on, but I’d rather that you take a minute to click on the link that follows. It will lead you to a video by Tom Chapin that sums up my take on NCLB quite nicely. http://notonthetest.com/