Why do the teachers unions hate No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and why is some testing such a bad thing?
First of all anyone who has been to school knows that teachers do not think that testing is a bad thing! This is an issue of the federal government meddling in an area it knows nothing about. Washington provides 10% of school funding but they would like to control 100% of the decisions. No wonder such diverse politicians as George Bush and Edward Kennedy support NCLB. Here is a list of the problems. 1. The Congress has never supplied the funding for NCLB that was promised in the legislation, but local schools have to comply with the mandates and therefore their budgets shrink. 2. NCLB mandates that 100% of students will be proficient in math and English by 2014. It doesnt matter what year you select we all know that there is no place on earth where 100% of the students are proficient. 3. NCLB tracks subgroups like special education students (some with severe handicaps) and English learners (some who are very recent arrivals) and socio-economically disadvantaged students (some who have
