(no subject)

[mockingbirdq]

Today I handled documents I'm not allowed to even SEE, and "actively monitored" a room full of 10th graders for 5 hours straight. At one point I heard giggling and realized I was nodding off STANDING UP at the front of the classroom. Active monitoring means no sitting down, no reading, no ANYTHING except staring at students struggling with a hideous standardized test. Hell for everyone involved. Vote democrat so there will be a chance NCLB may be repealed! Please!!

I came home and made Fox scrambled eggs with ketchup, and Tomu and I a bastardized version of Okonomiyaki. I take some pancake mix, add 4 eggs,soy, cooking sherry, some onion and a package of shredded cabbage and carrots (cole slaw mix). Cook in a pan and serve with Tonkatsu sauce. It's really good.

I'm ready for bed now. Bleah!

Comments

[kracken.livejournal.com]

Considering all the good things it's done for Janice, and even my sons school, I have to disagree about getting rid of it. It's made a world of difference for my area and my circumstance.

[mockingbirdq.livejournal.com]

And it's tortured my immigrant kids who are required to take an on level TAKS test after only being here 2 or 3 years maximum.

Worse, some students "count" more than others. 1 of my LEP kids can count against the school the same as 4 mainstream white children, because the school submits their scores as immigrant, LEP, hispanic and economically disadvantaged. It's unfair to schools with large minority and immigrant populations.

As to it helping students in Special Ed - Do you believe ALL special education students will be able to perform at grade level by 2013?? Because that is what is currently stated in NCLB. Some of the Sped teachers I work with have choice things to say about that regulation :P

If NCLB isn't thrown out, it needs major overhaul by people with backgrounds in education, not politics...input from families of Special Ed and Immigrant students would be a good idea as well.

[kracken.livejournal.com]

We found that most immigrants learn functional english in less than half a year. I have personaly seen students in Sean's class, who could barely speak English, take honors at the top of the class at the end of the year. They have bilingual teachers, paid for by NCLB, who help them in class, and make certain that they don't fall behind.

As for my daughter, I've heard other people make the statement that she is expected to meet nomal student requirments. She is not. She is only given an opportunity for the same education. They must try to teach her math, spelling, etc, and she must be tested on those things to see how much of them she has learned, but that test is far different from a normal student Fcat test. Her education has a special category, as well, and her goals are written up in an IEP, that me and the teachers agree on.

Before NCLB, they warehoused children with disabilities, of all kinds, in one small, ill equiped place downtown. Janice wouldn't have been given adequate teachers, and their focus was mainly, on life skills, rather than stressing a regular education. I work with a young man who went through that system. The things he tells me about that place, make me glad that Janice never went there.

As for our schools, they were given a great deal of funding for new programs, because they followed NCLB, and didn't try to fight the system. Sean's school went from bottom of the barrel to an A plus school. Janice's school is now top ranking in the district for art, music, and test scores. The teachers do grumble about having to prepare for the tests, but none of the ones I've talked to complain about the funding or the results, which have been really outstanding, at least in my area.

[mockingbirdq.livejournal.com]

Ah. I didn't realize Florida had still been doing that so recently. Texas began doing away with the isolated special education rooms and moving students into the mainstream in the 1980's. I have Special Ed students in my classes and so does every teacher in the school where I work. We receive extensive training on Special Ed mods, which is great since many of those modifications are used for my ESL students as well during their first 3 years.

At an elementary level student can pass the standardized tests quickly because a)they are young and can learn language faster and b)the academic material they are being expected to manage isn't very difficult.

Students at high school level can manage survival English in one year as well - the problem is that the academic language they are expected to manage is at a much harder level. Their classes are reading Shakespeare,"Animal Farm" and Elie Wiesel's "Night". Add this to the fact that many of them had a poor education or missed years of schooling, and there is the problem. I can modify work for their classes (just like an IEP) but I can't give them any accomodations on TAKS. They aren't even allowed to use a bilingual dictionary for unfamiliar words :(

NCLB states that by 2013 ALL students in the US, 100%, will pass standardized testing at grade level. This is why more and more special education kids have been taking unmodified tests each year. I'm sure that provision of NCLB will be overturned soon, but what if it isn't?

I know we won't agree on this, so I'll just drop it. Apparently the schools were you live were not following laws that changed many years ago, and definitely weren't following current educational practices. FOr Janice's sake, I'm glad that's changed.