The president turns education into a game with winners and losers

President Obama turns education into a game

Race to the top had winners and losers, funny I thought education was about elevating everybody. Now he gives waivers to ten states for No Child Left Behind, um I’m sorry, does this mean it’s bad for just those states and fine for all the others?

To get the waiver States had to promise to improve how they prepare and evaluate their students. I shutter what the evaluation part might mean for Florida, which is already the land of the high stakes test.

In case you were wondering what the big problem with No Child Left Behind is, according to the law every child is supposed to be proficient in reading and math by 2014. To give you some scale, only about a third of Jacksonville’s high school students arrive proficient. Think how insane that is, both the one hundred percent figure and how poorly our kids here in Jacksonville are doing.

Another part of the waiver requires states to develop new teacher and principal evaluation tools with a big component being how their students do on standardized tests. Think for a second, who is going to want to teach at the inner city schools where gains will be small and hard fight? Especially if it means you can lose your job? President Obama has all but assured our best teachers will stay away from the schools where the kids need them the most.

The right looking to pounce on everything he does says this is an over reach of his authority. Well why didn’t he really over reach and just scrap the whole thing? NCLB hurts schools by closing them, kids by failing them and bussing them out of their neighborhoods and teachers by often blaming them for things they have no control of, poverty anyone?

Shouldn’t our education policies be about elevating children, improving schools and assisting teachers? You know the opposite of what No Child left Behind does.

I wish we could get a waiver for that.