New Haven Independent

Posted by: robn | November 29, 2007 10:03 AM

No Child Left Behind is the biggest educational fraud ever perpetrated on the American Public. Our schools need to teach kids how to think creatively, not how to regurgitate data.

Posted by: mary | November 29, 2007 12:58 PM

I agree with you Robn.We need to look at the whole child.Our children are smart,Talented,and rich in creative ability if we only let them channel it.All this pressure of testing is to much and takes the joy out of learning or teaching.As I have often said let the kids voices be heard at the Public hearings,A good choice for
them to let us learn ways to help them.

Posted by: New Haven Taxpayer | November 29, 2007 1:58 PM

The biggest educational fraud is the myth that the New Haven Public Schools are actually teaching. At Hillhouse High School, less that 35% of the kids graduate. Several New Haven high schools were recently featured in a national report as "drop out factories". Regurgitating facts is better than nothing at all, which is what the system was providing before No Child Left Behind. These kids are scoring less than 40%, and are next to dead last in scoring in the 163 school districts in the state. The school administration knows what the kids will be tested on, and they know it well in advance of the tests. So why are these children still failing miserably? The administration complains that they are teaching for testing, so why are they failing to have passing scores? Don't blame the messengers (the tests), blame the school system, and in some respect, the parents.

Posted by: Chris Gray | November 30, 2007 2:21 AM

Oh, man, this argument is getting so old!

The most important thing our schools (and parents) can teach our children is a love of knowledge. Then learning becomes internalized. Teaching becomes a joy. Measurement becomes irrelevant.

One of our brightest, richest and most socially responsible citizens, Bill Gates, is a college drop-out for criminy's sake.

Our President is a graduate of Yale, with a post-graduate degree from the Harvard Business School, but he doesn't believe in basic scientific fact and No Child Left Without Being Tested is his idea!

Don't you people get it?

Posted by: Fedupwithliberals | November 30, 2007 8:30 AM

Too much testing," said Theresa Galbraith, "is already contributing to lots of kids dropping out. With all those added tests" -- she was referring to proposed statewide and state-prepared exams in Algebra One and Two, Chemistry, History, and English -- "there will be just a lot more dropouts."

God, I feel their pain! But wait, I got a great idea! Will help with the budgetary problems looming within the next several years too. Why not just print the diploma and hand it out to every single student enrolled as freshman. Give them each a stipend of $5000.00 per year for the next four years with a promise to stay out of trouble, and tell them to have a great time! We save about $15,000 a year and graduate everyone!!! Who would know the difference?? What could be better???

Posted by: New Haven Taxpayer | November 30, 2007 9:35 AM

Chris,

Do you live in LA LA Land? "Measurement becomes irrelevant"??? Have you even looked at job ads lately? What is all this mumble jumble? Our kids can't get jobs because they are dropping out of school, or getting sub prime education, and you want to give them a big hug and tell them how special they are. Get real, grow up and join the real world Peter Pan.

Posted by: robn | November 30, 2007 10:19 AM

Testing unfairly compares poor communities with rich communities (the richest CT communities have the highest test results with the lowest per capita spending) but more sgnificantly, testing wastes the valuable time that teachers need to help kids think at fundamentally creative levels.

NHTaxpayer makes a point that testing is just a messenger but thats a false assertion. Preparing for cyclical repetative regurgative testing absorbs significant amounts of classroom time which could be better spent learning how to creatively think through problems.

In any event, New Haven taxpayers should stop expecting the school system to be the parents of children. The lack of parenting in poverty stricken pockets of the city is the foremost reason why those kids are failing.

Posted by: FIX THE SCHOOLS | November 30, 2007 10:23 AM

Chris Gray,

I agree that love of learning is vital. But I don't think you have any idea of the kind of educational deficits that we have in New Haven and most other CT. cities.

As of the last round of tests, less than 7% of all city sophomores passed all 3 strands of the state CAPT. This test is supposed to measure the basics, not advanced work. In other close-by suburban districts, the pass rate is MUCH higher.

Now whether or not you believe that the cause of the gap is largely solvable through reform of the urban education system (I do),or whether you think we need to wipe out poverty first (I do not), you have to acknowledge that basic reading, writing, and math skills are not being learned in city schools.

If you don't like standardized tests, fine. Then simply listen to the antecdotal evidence from college admissions folks around the area. They say again and again that kids coming out of our city high schools CAN'T READ OR WRITE ON A COLLEGE LEVEL!!!

Maybe you think that not all students should go to college. OK...while it's tough to ignore that less than 40% of New Haven 8th graders actually go on to graduate from high school (Adult Ed. doesn't count), let's pretend that New Haven just has a WHOLE lot of children who are gifted in the vocational arts. Wrong. If you ask employers (manufacturers, technology companies, service companies) around the area, they will tell you that they can't find qualified applicants for any job beyond the lowest level in this market.

You need to be able to read, write, and do basic math to hold a job. Measurement at this level of learning is not irrelevant. It is necessary and vital.

Posted by: mary | November 30, 2007 9:28 PM

You know what would be nice and people would probably say that I live in the wrong world but if everyone would take an hour or two in their communities to be volunteers or mentors in these schools I bet we could help a lot of these kids move on past High school and help them get jobs in our communitys.So what do you think? How many people are interested in really helping out their communities.I am tired of playing the blame game and just want to see these kids do what I know they can do if we stand together to give them a hand.

Posted by: Chris Gray | December 1, 2007 1:17 AM

I don't believe that I said that we have taught our children a love of knowledge. It is a goal.

I had good teachers in suburban schools; Miss Parente and Mrs. Esposito at Temple Street School, Carrie Doody at North Haven Junior High School, Mrs. Seybold at Amity Junior High School and Art Hovey, Dennis Hunt and Marilyn Ullman, not to forget Choir Director Jack Zito, to name exemplars. I remember the look of disappointment on Dennis' face when I shrugged after he told me, "You made your B!"

I did not graduate from college, never had a job that even gave me decent pay, but I hope I gave good service in jobs with fancy titles like editor, executive director, entertainment director, treasurer, public affairs director, founder, and lowly ones like text book clerk or as a public servant such as certified elections official.

I am all in favor of offering a decent high school education to our children that fosters a love of knowledge. I fully endorse the recommendations Vair makes in the story linked by the phrase "new graduation requirements" and suggest we demand such policies out of a new administration come January '08.

I, also, agree with Robn about the expansion of the testing regime.

I ask that the schools be fixed, too. I just don't think that President Bush has the correct approach, nor could any one in his position who brags of having had a C average. (Just kidding.)

Posted by: Walt | December 1, 2007 10:32 AM

As I see it , the anti-test promoters, consist of the teachers, their union, and the rest of the education establishment who do not recognize the taxpayers" right to oversee their performance,

If not for the tests, how can we measure their worth?

Without tests, how can we protect our kids from the fads of the teachers and their union like new math in its old and new versions and anti-phonics biases?

Posted by: Chris Gray | December 2, 2007 2:56 AM

The one glaring first recommendation, increase the pay of teachers exponentially!

These are the people who are in charge of our future. All people benefit by the proper education of the young. If our children grow unable to be earners, well there goes your Social Security and who knows when the next Enron will evaporate with your pension or your 401k.

We pay teachers at so poor a rate, it is a wonder that there are any heroes in their ranks at all, but there are many. Meanwhile, with low pay, you also attract people who can succeed at nothing else or, worse, predators.

Increase the pay and you will attract talent.

Is that not the supposed rational behind Mayoral raises? I know that's what they said about giving a raise to DiLeto.

I think the logic in the case of elected office is a bit fuzzier, but it holds for attracting talented scientists. Look at the huge number of Indian doctors in American medicine. Money drew them from across oceans.

Posted by: FIX THE SCHOOLS | December 2, 2007 6:50 PM

Teachers' pay has risen dramatically during the last two decades in Connecticut. Connecticut's public school teachers are now on average the highest paid in the country and yet we still have the largest achievement gap in the country. We also have spent the most in the country ($ per student) on buildings in in New Haven. Lack of financial resources is simply not a credible excuse for failure in New Haven. There are way too many examples of places with far better outcomes for less than New Haven spends.

While the law has flaws, without NCLB there would be no accountability whatsoever in CT. Up until NCLB began to label the progress of schools and districts in closing the gap, Mayo and Destefano were actually touting that they have one of the "best" districts in the state! Mayo actually was a finalist for a national superintendant of the year award! How is this possible? Do we have such low expectations for our kids? I don't buy it. And up until recently, Mayor Destefano was touting a "75% graduation rate" in New Haven while he was running for Governor. NCLB has at least caused these people to slow up the spin machine.

Under education improvement legislation that was passed in the state during the 1980's and 1990's, the average salary of teachers in the state doubled within a short period of time. Sadly, the increased compensation alone did nothing to attract a higher quality of teaching candidate. One of the reasons for this was because the teacher unions effectively fought to weight the wage scale to heavily favor the teachers with the longest tenure, such that younger teachers made squat for the first five years of their career. In the last several years that dynamic has improved somewhat but not enough to attract the best and the brightest to the profession.

Another countervailing force has been the walls set up by the ed. schools on certification requirements. We need to attract math and science experts to our public schools, but even if you have a PhD in physics from MIT, you still have to go through a gauntlet to be certified to teach in CT. We lose lots of candidates who just decide that it's too tough to become certified in CT. They opt to teach in private schools instead. By the way, there appears to be little or no correlation between certfication and quality.

Today ed. school applicants rank in the bottom third of all graduate school applicants which means we have not done a very good job in recruiting the best and the brightest to the profession. When we do, we seem to then do a great job of demoralizing under disfunctional political district management by not supporting their efforts.

Posted by: Fedupwithliberals | December 3, 2007 8:28 AM

Chris,

If it's one thing we should have learned since the 60's, throwing money at the problem does not solve it. If anything, there seems to be an inverse proportion of funding to student performance. The teachers already get enough pay and power over this city's politics for working less than 9 months out of the year. Look elsewhere!