Tuesday, February 15, 2005
My Portfolio
I have been so worried about my teaching portfolio lately. I was worried that I didn't do it correctly or put enough thought into it. Well I probably didn't put enough thought into it because I procrastinated WAY to much. I got an e-mail from a professor today though that took a bit of my anxiety away. She said "You really worked to impress. Nice Job." it made me feel soooo good about the work that I did put in. I think I worked the hardest on the formatting of the website. I like it anyway. Feel free to check it out if you want. www.usiouxfalls.edu/~memertens. Comments are appreciated as well. Do you agree with my standpoint on say Standardized Testing or any other point I made in the work??
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I looked at your portfolio, but did not know where to look for standardized testing.
Two of my aunts, my mother, my grandmother and grandfather, many members of our church here, are or were teachers or otherwise affiliated with the school system. Not one of them thinks "NO Child Left Behind" is a good or effective program. They come to this conclusion for the following reasons.
1./ Teachers are punished for the difficult family lives of students--When Johnny shows up only twice a week to school because most of the time mommy is stoned or drunk from the night before this affects standardized test scores and teachers get punished. I would say this makes up around 5-10 percent of my mothers classroom at any given time. Not to mention at least one or two students where one parent murders another during the year. Now throw in the 7 year itch into it as far as marriage, and you have another 10 percent of kids at any one time that are going through a divorce. Another 1-2 kids in her classroom that have a full-time aide because they are emotionally disabled. So now we are somewhere around maybe 75 percent, not to mention ADHD kids, and other learning disabilities. Yet, in most states, if you dont have 95-100 success rate then you are in trouble.
In most states if one student fails to take the test, the whole class fails, or often the whole school. Now, each year you have the one kid who only shows up once a week and skips the test day, and at least one or two parents who pull their kids out because they cant handle the test without having an emotional meltdown. Automatic problems.
Whats the point of no child left behind? To usher in the end of public education. It promotes the evils of the voucher system, which will make sure that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And Brown versus the Board of Topeka is gone in urban environments. So we will have more and more of good schools for wealthy kids, who are mostly white. And bad schools for Latin American and African American youth, because the vouchers alone wont be enough to get them anywhere except public schools and few crappy private ones.
Also note that the Christian school movement is founded upon racism. It was a religious excuse for parents to get their white kids away from poor black kids after desegregation. Homeschooling a lower-income version of the same movement. Both are founded and upheld by institutional racism. A voucher system is just another tool to abuse the poor. No Child Left Behind is a tool to punish those who strive to help those less fortunate, and keeps teachers from helping kids who need it most.
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