I think the No Child Left Behind Act proves what I said in my last blog. The No Child Left Behind Act was mandated to try and create a higher level of equality in the educational system. This act increases the amount of standardized exams students take. The government thinks the only way to evaluate a student's level of understanding is by these multiple choice exams. These tests only leave room for one answer, there is no understanding for the thought process behind the answers. A student can guess and get an answer right or really think about a question and have good reasoning and yet get a question wrong. I can not even recall how many times I took multiple choice tests and believed more than one answer can be right. Sometimes more than one answer was right but we only received credit for the one which seemed "more right". How can something be more right in a society where we were led to believe things are "right or wrong", "black or white"?
http://nochildleft.com/2006/sept06killing.html
This article discusses why No Child Left Behind must go. The biggest one I think is the narrowing of the curriculum. This act takes away freedom and creativity in the classroom. It takes away focus on the individual and places emphasis on the whole class. Students who learn in different ways won't have the chance to. All students will have to focus on the same things and work in the same way, maybe this appears equal but in reality the children who can learn by taking exams and who exel in math and science have the upper hand. The visual and spatial learners are in reality left behind because they can not learn in this one general way.
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2 comments:
I agree with your statement about how tests are extremely "black and white" and leave no room for thinking outside the box. The problem is however we need some way to evaluate a student's work/knowledge of a specific area. We are so quick to say this is bad this is wrong but we need to come up with ways to fix it. I know you said in class that it would be nice if students could write why they chose an answer, which I think is a great idea. It shows the teacher/grader the student's thought process and their true comprehension of the materal.
Freedom and creativity in the classrooms are two characteristics that can be detrimental to students when removed. It is absolutely imperative that we keep things in perspective in classrooms. What ever happened to learning for learning's sake? NCLB takes the joy out of learning.
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