yea, there are no longer pushing of standards....the bar is lowered... ITs such a shame too. children start out with such beautiful curiosity about the world around them but the interest is lost...and high school graduates turn in papers that are practically one sentence..no grammer or english skills to speek of... they just skip over everything..and teachers get the short end of the stick..God BLess 'em all! my mother had my brother held back in 1st grade because he had trouble with his alphebet and all...but the school wanted to push him ahead so he can be with his peers...

its all a big mess. Now he is honor role, but has trouble with the standardized testing and almost failed...

but yea, its bull hockey...yet I'm jumping into the calvery and majoring in education.. maybe i can help the struggle!

All I know is after the school system (Indiana) passed my daughter (ADHD and other issues)with all F's then they tried to pass her into middle school this year. After watching her struggle everyday I have finally pulled her out and teaching her myself. Luckily (?) I am disabled and can take time to teach her and hopefully get her up to where she is supposed to be.

No child left behind needs to be looked at again and needs to be corrected!!!

My kids are in a private Christian school, and before that I homeschooled them. I will not put them in a public school.

They are using the A Beka curriculum, with a few others in different subject. It's good, that's all I know.

This subject is dear to my heart! So much so, I've used it as a topic for college papers. (Yes, I am an older student).

Standardized, multiple choice tests fail to measure a student’s true academic and social development because these tests do not allow for a fair measurement of a child’s abilities. The focus of standardized testing has created an atmosphere where students think good grades and high scores are more important than understanding concepts and lessons. In addition, such testing can cause anxiety resulting in lower test scores and poor performance.

Some options for measuring the academic and social progress for students are good teacher observation, documentation of student work, and performance-based assessment, but NCLB no longer allows our teachers to do so. They are bound to teach to test material and their jobs dependent upon test scores.

I understand that standardized testing is used by many states in an effort to hold schools to a high standard of instruction. However, NCLB has not achieved it's "intended" purpose.

I must disagree:

You talk about how parents have the right to this and that, but when it comes to education, it's not entirely true:

You speak of parents having 1) the right to exit, and 2) having the ability, knowledge, and or time to organize and make changes.

1) In the US, education is mandatory through high school, so no child can be simply pulled out in protest. If taken out of the public school system, a child must receive another form of education. However, many parents cannot afford to pay for a private school or have the time to home school.

2) Education one of the most important aspects of any society. Parents should *make* the time to organize for change when the government and education boards fail to. However, many parents are not doing this. I think the reason is that many American parents do not value education very highly.

One responsibility of government is to take care of citizens when they cannot or do not know how to themselves.
Traditionally, parents would provide private tutoring for their children. Few parents could afford this, though. Public schools and mandatory education not only made education available, but obligatory for everyone.
Now, we are again counting on the government to look out for our children, to step up to its responsibility of ensuring the quality of our public schools.

This is America, for God's sake. We are among the richest, and most powerful countries and we're struggling with education? I, for one, am ashamed and deeply frustrated.

The problem with education today is that it is overpopulated. Back in the day when you had mom at home and dad making enough money to support the whole family, everything was fine. The taxes were based on homeowners contributions to school taxes and it evened out. The problem today is that many inner city single family homes have now been converted into multi family dwellings that have several more children depending on the school system.In other words, the taxes on a piece of property have not been adjusted to accomodate the amount of children that a property owner may want to introduce into the system. The system will inevitably crash unless people are held responsible for the amount of offspring that they bring into the world. This is a topic that nobody will discuss because the bible says to make more babies. My philosophy is that if you can't feed them don't breed them

That is the opposite in my city. The old schools were built to accommodate more children then what attend the schools today. The cities' population has decreased as people have moved to the county and outlying areas. I suspect that is happening in most major cities - urban sprawl.

Due to the decreased amount of children living in the city, quite a few our schools have been sold to the private sector. They have made condos out of these beautiful old buildings.

I've read that our city is getting ready to close more schools this year.