COMMENTARY | Since it was signed into law in 2002, No Child Left Behind has been holding schools accountable for their students' performance and offering parents options for the education of our children. Among its tenets are a research-based approach to teaching and state and district flexibility to use federal funds to their best advantage in this regard.
However, in a huge shift in policy, the Associated Press reports that ten states (including Florida) have been granted waivers to ease the restrictions that determine how those states spend their funding.
What it Means for Florida
While the implications aren't by any means simple, one primary advantage is that the state now has the option to allow teachers to do what they do best: teach, rather than leap like well-trained animals through administrative hoops.
No Child Left Behind is a program which, while good-intentioned, does not in practice bear out. It's not a Republican-versus-Democrat issue. The problem is that legislators have determined what should work in a classroom and how it should happen. The state-mandated programs as teachers receive them are little more than recipe books that do not allow for any improvisation and very little accommodation.
However, step into any Florida classroom and what you'll see is a far cry from those through which you may have matriculated back in the day, particularly if you were schooled in Florida. Teachers function in relative lockstep, rigidly following prescribed curricula with barely enough wiggle room to introduce a different (perhaps even novel, these days) approach to education... even if it works.
One Size Doesn't Fit All
I left my own career in teaching just over ten years ago, when I enjoyed the flexibility to tailor my classroom approach to each group, using the best and most effective resources at my disposal. Today's teachers aren't given the same options.
Forgive an old English teacher a bit of hyperbole for the sake of explanation... if you've ever read the book Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, you might recognize a similar educational approach in the way that the fictional Ministry of Magic imposes rigid, inflexible and ineffective restrictions on the students at Hogwarts (sans, of course, magical quills that draw blood). Florida residents who haven't taken a close look at the issue might be surprised at the transformation in our classrooms.
When I volunteer in my children's classrooms these days, what I see are very bright, engaged children who nonetheless understand alarmingly well that everything they do centers around their performance on standardized tests. Anything else they might be learning, if it doesn't fit into the prescribed curriculum, is completely irrelevant.
In evidence are a lot of workbooks and worksheets. In any given grade level, every teacher will be at precisely the same point in precisely every lesson. Move to a different school and you get pretty much the same program.
It's killing teachers to do it. It's driving the best of them away. Worst of all, though the mandates have most certainly been passed down from the halls of higher learning and crystal palaces, they're not working.
Kimberly Morgan taught high school English in Florida, and currently writes for Yahoo! Voices, where she is a Featured Contributor for Education.
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