NCLB In Your Face

What to Say When Challenged to Replace NCLB

First, I would recommend that all measures of accountability for public ed be repealed. I would recommend that the focus, and resources, be addressed towards adequate housing, employment, healthcare, childcare, nutrition, safe communities, parent education, counseling, and job training for the segment of our population most needing help.

Concurrently, I would mandate that all students in the U.S. would attend a clean, safe,
uncrowded, well-staffed school with low class sizes, super-sized libraries, and support services for anyone who needed them, with or
without a qualifying label. I would insist that this mandate be fully funded.

Then I would formulate a very few broad, national standards.

Perhaps:

1. All students will be offered multiple opportunities to become literate and numerate at a developmentally appropriate level.

2. All students will be offered a rich curriculum which will include music, arts, citizenship/character development, health education, science, social studies, critical thinking, and a 2nd language.

3. Instruction and assessment will be customized to meet the diverse needs of individual students using a wide variety of instructional methodologies and assessment tools determined at the classroom and site level.

Finally, I would require teachers, schools, and districts to maintain a simple portfolio of evidence that they are meeting those 3 standards.

Kelley Messina, 5th grade teacher in Palmdale, CA.

INDEX OF NCLB IN YOUR FACE