For years teachers have been saying that one of the main problems with education is that the standards for what students are expected to learn varies from state to state. This is fine if you move from Massachusetts to Mississippi and you’re okay with having your child learn a lot less, but if you move from Mississippi to Massachusetts, your child will have serious problems trying to catch up.
The No Child Left Behind Act has done little more than make states more aware of the problem, though for states like Massachusetts and Pennsylvania the entire initiative has been a waste of money. The Act has also made it easier for states to pretend that test scores are going up because they have the ability to raise and lower standards as they see fit. To have national standards is not necessarily a violation of states rights, especially if the states have full authority on how to achieve those standards.
Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said…
Bad news in the UK, bizarrely we seem to be trying to take inspiration from the no child left behind program.
Taking education policy from the US is always a bad idea.
We should look to Europe for clues.
7:09 AM
United We Lay said…
UGH! That’s awful. Standardized tests are horrible. If we want to improve schools we should be looking in our own backyards. Small community schools are the way to go. Parents are more involved, the teachers live nearby, and everyone knows everyone. It makes it harder to forget your homework and misbehave.
7:31 AM
daveawayfromhome said…
Daniel, if you want a clue to why the UK is taking up the American model, check into connections between the makers of that policy and the testing companies who’ll be providing the tests. At a price.
8:07 PM
TomCat said…
Sadly, American education found itself in its current state by looking to Europe for a model during the Nixon years. We adopted an educational methodology, first introduced by Hitler in the 1930s, that centers on teaching students WHAT to think, not HOW to think. The effect has been to dumb down the system so thoroughly that my Geometry book is still in use for high school Juniors in Portland. The difference is that I used it in the 7th grade.