no child left behind

[lnblackard]

I have only been teaching for three years and wanted your opinions on President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" program that he has started. I feel this program is setting teacher's up to fail at their jobs. They want scores to continually get better each year or your school gets penalized and does not get funded as well. To me, it seems that the schools that need the most money are those who are in trouble. If they get more money, then the schools can get more programs like Title 1 to help students who are struggling. Am I just looking at this wrong? Please if someone could explain this new program to me I would be grateful.

[daisy]

Hmm..... in theory "no child left behind" is a most admirable idea. But how to go about it? I will most probably get loads of abuse heaped on me now but I'll say it anyway..."if you pay peanuts you get monkeys" and in Britain we don't pay our teachers a fantastic wage..Before you all jump on me, I have known fantastic teachers who have ALWAYS wanted to teach and inspire and who really did have a true vocation...but I've also known those who went into teaching because their degree wasn't good enough to do anything else. But yet they have been entrusted with educating our young. As to penalising schools who may have an "underprivileged catchment area"...you can't measure success by exam results...only by how many kids they've managed to guide and set on a path to some kind of success, whether it's helping them into a trade or even stopping them from playing truant. And that doesn't show up in league tables. I repeat....I know there are fantastic teachers out there but the profession does also attract those who can't use their degree for anything else. I have kids....I know what I'm talking about.

[VendingMenace]

i think you hit the nail on the head, daisy.

 

As far as i see one of two things (or both) need to happen in order to really attract people to teaching.

 

1) Teaching needs to be seen in a better light by the puplic. Currently, most people view teaching as kinda a "lower" level job. A job that people fall back onto when then don't know what else to do. As such, teaching is not considered by society to be a job for "driven" people or "sucessful" people. Until teaching revieces more prestige in the public eye, it will continue to be a job that many people will try to activley avoid.

 

2) Pay. Like daisy said, this is a major isssue. Many people do not consider teaching to be a good job becuase the pay cannot afford them the lifestyle they would like. So, unless the pay is raised, people will also tend to avoid teaching.

 

Of course, just deciding to pay people a bunch of money will not be the best answer. Becuase then you will get people that teach just for the $$, instead of people that really do want to teach. Becuase of this, i really think the raising the prestige of teaching is what needs to be done. Let people see that teaching is a nobel profession. One that a person can take pride in.

 

Put teaching back into the pulic eye as a desirable profession and you will see both the quality of teachers and the effort put out by these teachers increase.

 

At least that is kinda how i see the problem.