ED 100 Introduction to Education
Syllabus
Calendar
Moodle
Unit 1
Unit 2
Unit 3
Unit 4
Unit 5
Unit 6

Overview: How have we tried to reform education? NCLB and its successes and failures

We've spent the last couple weeks talking about some of the challenges of educating all students in a pluralistic society. Clearly, there are multiple challenges and multiple paths toward dealing with them. Your federal government has also offered a solution path - it comes in the form of the re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education act and is, colloquially referred to as, the No Child Left Behind legislation. At one level, who can argue with a slogan like that? Of course nobody wants to leave children behind. Some have argued that the feds overstepped their bounds trampling all over the constituional provision that education is the province of the state - local control, and all that. So... in recognition of this, the feds put together the NCLB legislation with a great deal of wiggle room - telling states, if you want our money, here's the standards and kinds of policies you need to put into place. We won't tell you how to do it - just do it if you want our money. The result has been a flurry of activity across the last two years trying to respond in an effort to improve our nation's schools.

Readings:

We will first read some things related to NCLB from the US Department of Education website - stuff in support of NCLB that gives lots of details, a kind of overview that is important. To get started... read each of these pages and focus on the various components of the legislation and what it is designed to do. Keep in mind, this is all from the US Dept. of Ed... might they have an interest in portraying NCLB positively?

Discussions questions - each also appear in the corresponding Moodle forum:

  1. What's good and what's bad about NCLB? Think from multiple perspectives - teachers, students, administrators, parents, community members, society as a whole... Is this good legislation? I'm leaving this almost completely wide open as this is a big, big topic - with lots of room for debate. One caution - try to leave your own political perspectives out of this. In other words, don't argue about people or ideology, argue about the merits of the legislation and how it is affecting what is happening in the schools.
  2. There are many other kinds of systems for schooling that exist - systems where students decide what they are going to learn, how that learning will occur, and how they will demonstrate what they have learned. Contrast this with the kind of test-centered system of education we have today - I'm sure you all took lots of state tests across the course of your education experiences - what would be some good things about a system that let kids determine for themselves what they should learn, when they should learn it, and how they would demonstrate what they learned? What possibilities does this have? What risks might it incur? Think widely for a moment... would such a system be a good idea? Defend your answer.


Supplementary materials:

Here's some additional great stuff... check it out!