Bill Heller, a public school teacher, has written a pretty good open letter to President Obama regarding education, highlighting the successes of his own school as well as problems that federal involvement has caused for public education through the passage of No Child Left Behind.  (All block quotes are from the letter, but there is a lot more to it than I’ve selected here).

He makes it clear that problems being faced by some schools in some areas should not direct policy and law making for all schools.  I haven’t seen much vilification of public school teachers in the media, but then my radar is a little more sensitive toward the vilification of homeschoolers.  As a teacher, I received nothing but respect but maybe that is a curiosity of working in a 100% Hispanic school district.  At any rate, he does a fine job of outlining the main problems with No Child Left Behind and the testing craze it has spawned.

I.  Watered down curriculum:

First, by forcing all students to pass certain tests, we’ve essentially had to “water down” important courses. In New York, for example, the biology curriculum has been gutted of content so that everybody can pass a “Regents level” science exam. The new algebra curriculum is great, but the cutoff score is so low that students have figured out that practically anybody who can fog a mirror can pass it. Under the guise of raising standards for all, we end up selling short our most capable students. There is little reward to excel, only to “pass the test.” Both ends of the spectrum get ignored at test time just to get enough students “over the cut score.” By their very design, “magically” determined cutoff scores can be manipulated to produce a predetermined number of students who will pass a given test. Beating the testing game has become an end instead of a means to an end. (Emphasis mine).

There was a time when teachers in my district were shown a graph with a little bubble, the target students.  Children above that bubble would do fine with or without you, children below that bubble were too far from the target to waste resources on.  Almost all instruction was focused on that small bubble near the middle where the teacher was most likely to to be able to have a measurable effect come testing time.

II.  Waste of instructional time

Now, all year long, precious days are lost and enormous amounts of money are spent on annual testing. Out here in the country we have a saying: “Nobody ever fattened a calf by weighing it.” Unfortunately, we’ve figured out that only tested subjects “count” anymore. Many of our limited resources get pumped into the few areas that get tested; other areas are given short shrift when it comes to funding, staffing and, more importantly time. (Emphasis mine).

Yeah.  Once I counted up the required hours for all the “core” (meaning tested subjects), I had exactly five minutes left in the day to teach science, art and history.  I can’t help but laugh when people talk about homeschoolers potentially weak in science.  Who in the public school system cares about science anymore?

III.  Boxing Children Rather than Developing Individual Talents and Interests

In order to play the NCLB game and to avoid having the stigma of being labeled a “failing school,” there is a lot of pressure not to classify needy students in order to avoid having to disaggregate data and make AYP for special education students as a separate subgroup. In addition, students with very limited abilities are dumped into classes that are way beyond their developmental abilities instead of being given appropriate instruction at a level at which they can be successful. Some have been forced to sit through lengthy exams that they have no hope of passing. In the same vein, we need to recognize that not all students will want to pursue a four-year college degree.  (Emphasis mine)

So, uh, now that we’ve established what the current fixation on testing is really accomplishing in many schools, let’s make the homeschoolers play the game, too.

Make homeschooled students take the same tests as public school students are required to take in order to continue homeschooling.

How much sense does that make?  But I’ve written on this subject at length before and shan’t go into it again:

• Why would homeschoolers object to state testing.
• A more concrete objection to testing homeschools.

But it does seem a bit ironic to spend most of a letter attacking testing and then throw a few more kids into the crazy mess it has created.

homeschool homeschooling No Child Left Behind standardized testing