Questioning the "Self Esteem Fad"

Here are some questions culled from the ongoing debate in educational circles in response to the DNR's editorial on October 19 concerning "The Self-Esteem Fad." These issues are routinely ignored or de-emphasized by the governmental policy known as “No Child Left Behind.”

Question: Some researchers say that pre-natal and early childhood care, environmental contamination, parental attitudes, family income, language facility and many other factors affect student performance. In well-run NCLB (No Child Left Behind) schools, are these irrelevant?

Question: NCLB relies on market forces to shape schools up. Does this mean that learning is unnatural and won’t happen unless teachers and kids are threatened or bribed?

Question: NCLB is rapidly pushing “frills” out of the curriculum. Has research now established that art, music, physical activity and so on have nothing to do with scientific and mathematical reasoning ability?

Question: Education is supposed to teach kids to think for themselves, not just recall what they’ve been ordered to remember. Are the centerpieces of NCLB (corporately produced, machine-scored tests) able to judge the relative quality of complex thought processes? If so, why aren’t they already doing that?

No Child er... no fatcats... left behind

And now we find that the way cool Reading First program that is the centerpiece of the administration's No Child Left Behind initiative, is an unproven pilot program that is a financial bonanza for the 5 lucky companies that are in the pocket of the ruling party. Once again we've been told that the preferred programs that are in the pocket of the Republican Party will replace any programs in place that are successful or are actually working. Check Michigan, New Mexico, etc, etc.... The game is simply that if you want Federal Funds you've got to accept the untested and unproven textbooks and curriculum that are favored by the government dogma and are lining the fat cat pockets. That this is happening to children is appalling! That even children are fair game for profit taking and partisanship is a particularly foul and grotesque display of incompetent governance. Is anyone reporting this besides the Washington Post! Come on people! Shout about it!

High Stakes Testing... the cause of it all...

I'm down to the last six weeks of my thirty three year career. I'm having trouble letting go. What will the program look like and sound like. I'm concerned that kids and families won't ever know what they will miss. I've mourned the loss of the music program I built and nurtured for 17 years and before that for 12 years at my previous school. It's like the school system saying, "We love you, but what you did doesn't mean anything to us." The administration will say how much I've contributed to education and how important my work was, but these will be just words. The hard truth is shown in actions.

The community, the school administrations, and the school system administrators are now under the pressure of high stakes testing. The effects of this are subtle, strong, pervasive, and entirely negative to the advancement of children and learning. The effect of this testing program is the cause of my retirement. It's caused personal attacks on my professional abilities. It's caused children and their families to rearrange priorities at school to include test remediation and advanced placement courses instead of music classes. It's caused the staff at my school to focus entirely on test preparation, excluding curricular materials and experiences that are not tested. It's caused professional artists who are also educators to become irrelevant and out of step with the current educational climate. The arts are not tested. The arts are not part of the testing program. The arts educators are not included in the planning and teamwork shown by the rest of the staff in preparing for the testing program. If any choice is to be made concerning school-wide programs, curricular and extra-curricular schedules, or course offerings the decision will ALWAYS be made in favor of the testing program with the arts curriculum left to pick up the pieces.

It's the high stakes testing! It's political! It's absolutely the wrong way to educate the children! It's the children who are being harmed! It's the arts that are being damaged! It's good, experienced teachers who are being lost to irrelevance. We care about test scores not kids!