Re: A Petition Calling For the Dismantling of the No Child Left Behind Act

[Bonnie.blustein@att.net]

just signed, thanks

-------------- Original message from Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>: -------------- 


> 
> This petition now has more than 27,000 
> signatures, and is growing daily. Please consider 
> signing and joining in the struggle to save our 
> children. Go to this site to sign and write a comment. 
> 
> > e.org/>http://www.educatorroundtable.org/ 
> 
> 
> UPDATES: (1) You may not agree with every point 
> on this document, written trying to take into 
> consideration as many complaints as possible. If 
> you agree with one, you should sign, and then 
> spread the word. (2) Conservatives and Liberals 
> wrote this legislation; we need both to help us 
> end it. (3) We are NOT associated with the NEA, 
> whose leadership has misrepresented our 
> organization and our movement. In place of NCLB 
> we offer federally supported, EDUCATOR-led 
> reform, something NEA leadership should support. 
> (4) Teachers have written us asking if they can 
> be fired for signing. This is, the last time we 
> checked, still the U.S.A., and teachers are 
> entitled to voice their opinions?just do it from 
> your home! If you are a teacher, please identify 
> yourself as such when you sign. (5) Want to do 
> more than sign a petition? Switch your email 
> address to ?public? AND WE WILL ADD YOU TO OUR 
> MAILING LIST, or register at www.educatorroundtable.org. 
> 
> ---------- 
> To: U.S. Congress 
> 
> We, the educators, parents, and concerned 
> citizens whose names appear below, reject the 
> misnamed No Child Left Behind Act and call for 
> legislators to vote against its reauthorization. 
> We do so not because we resist accountability, 
> but because the law's simplistic approach to 
> education reform wastes student potential, 
> undermines public education, and threatens the future of our democracy. 
> 
> Below, briefly stated, are some of the reasons we 
> consider the law too destructive to salvage. In 
> its place we call for formal, state-level 
> dialogues led by working educators rather than by 
> politicians, ideology-bound "think tank" members, 
> or leaders of business and industry who have 
> little or no direct experience in the field of education. 
> 
> THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT: 
> 
> 1. Misdiagnoses the causes of poor educational 
> development, blaming teachers and students for 
> problems over which they have no control. 
> 
> 2. Assumes that competition is the primary 
> motivator of human behavior and that market 
> forces can cure all educational ills. 
> 
> 3. Mandates data driven instruction based on 
> gamesmanship to undermine public confidence in our schools. 
> 
> 4. Uses pseudo science and media manipulation to 
> justify pro-corporate policies and programs, 
> including diverting taxes away from communities and into corporate coffers. 
> 
> 5. Ignores the proven inadequacies, 
> inefficiencies, and problems associated with centralized, "top-down" control. 
> 
> 6. Places control of what is taught in corporate 
> hands many times removed from students, teachers, 
> parents, local school boards, and communities. 
> 
> 7. Requires the use of materials and procedures 
> more likely to produce a passive, compliant 
> workforce than creative, resilient, inquiring, 
> critical, compassionate, engaged members of our democracy. 
> 
> 8. Reflects and perpetuates massive distrust of 
> the skill and professionalism of educators. 
> 
> 9. Allows life-changing, institution-shaping 
> decisions to hinge on single measures of performance. 
> 
> 10. Emphasizes minimum content standards rather 
> than maximum development of human potential. 
> 
> 11. Neglects the teaching of higher order 
> thinking skills which cannot be evaluated by machines. 
> 
> 12. Applies standards to discrete subjects rather 
> than to larger goals such as insightful children, 
> vibrant communities, and a healthy democracy. 
> 
> 13. Forces schools to adhere to a testing regime, 
> with no provision for innovating, adapting to 
> social change, encouraging creativity, or 
> respecting student and community individuality, nuance, and difference. 
> 
> 14. Drives art, music, foreign language, career 
> and technical education, physical education, 
> geography, history, civics and other non-tested 
> subjects out of the curriculum, especially in low-income neighborhoods. 
> 
> 15. Produces multiple, unintended consequences 
> for students, teachers, and communities, 
> including undermining neighborhood schools and 
> blurring the line between church and state. 
> 
> 16. Rates and ranks public schools using 
> procedures that will gradually label them all 
> "failures," so when they fail to make Adequate 
> Yearly Progress, as all schools eventually will, 
> they can be ?saved? by vouchers, charters, or privatization. 
> 
> While any one of these issues is serious enough 
> to warrant discarding No Child Left Behind, the 
> law suffers from all of them. The number of 
> signatures on this petition should be a clear 
> indicator to state and national policy makers 
> that it is time to move beyond this harmful, highly restrictive law. 
> 
> Sincerely, 
> 
> > m/mod_perl/signed.cgi?1teacher>The 
> Undersigned 
> ---------------------------------------------------------- 
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