No Child Left Behind means no Civics courses?

[jackofallgeeks]

OK, so... I've heard a lot that "No Child Left Behind" is dumb and has
probably hurt schools a whole lot more than helped them. I've always
figured that it pretty much revolved around the SOLs and school "teaching to
the test" because they'd lose government funds otherwise. But I just read a
comment on teh webs here that Civics courses have been removed from school
curriculums because of "No Child Left Behind." That seems not just dumb but
actively counter-productive.

Does anyone other there know what NCLB is, what it does and how in
the world we ended up with it? (That last is probably answered by this
post, reprisentative of our general lack of information on a national policy
that's several years old now.)

Comments

[nif.livejournal.com]

Basically, the actual text of NCLB is a lot of funding drivel. It stipulates what goes where, when, and to whom.

But it's guided by specific goals such as these little gems:

-All students will attain proficiency in reading and mathematics by 2013-2014.

-All students will be proficient in reading by the end of third grade.

-All students will graduate from high school.

Which leads to rampant stupidity such as "In Pennsylvania, for example, the State Board of Education has defined proficiency in reading and mathematics achievement as 'above average', which means that in order to meet the conditions of NCLB, 95% of all children are expected to perform at levels that were average in 2001."

Furthermore, NCLB stipulates yearly monitoring of each school's progress. If a school fails to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), then it is taken over by the state or privatized. Meaning all the teachers will be fired and the school will essentially start over. So teachers are scrambling to meet these impossibly broad goals while being monitored to death and afraid for their jobs.

Also, individual states have helpfully instituted statewide standardized tests like the SOL or FCAT to show compliance with NCLB, when all they are really doing is taking more time out of the useful curriculum.

Additionally, NCLB gives more funding to high performing schools, and far less to under performing ones. Needless to say, these low schools are often in economically disadvantaged areas and need the most help. So really, NCLB is helping to keep the uneducated poor down. Good job, federal government. As a result, teachers are under even more pressure from the administration to keep scores up because if they slip, funding becomes a vicious self perpetuating cycle of decline.

Aaaaanywho. That's NCLB. Quotations and info in this passage was taken from "Content Area Literacy: An Integrated Approach" by Bean, Readance and Baldwin.