Meier Chapter 5

Chapter 5 of “Many Children Left Behind” focuses on the growing privatization of schools and testing measurements. The No Child Left Behind act promises to have all students to a satisfactory proficiency level by the year 2014 by giving states, schools and teachers a great amount of responsibility and accountability. It is hoped that with higher accountability there would be a nationwide improvement involving the rigor of states’ curricula, teacher performance, parent involvement, and improve administrative capacities. However, from what we have seen so far, NCLB has failed to bring under-performing students to competitive educational levels. Meier expresses that standardized testing, a provision of NCLB, creates a “one size fits all” quality of teaching. Also,teachers work under a system which advocates testing rigor and not understanding. Meier concludes that this testing is basically dragging down educational performance because testing, by any means, is not able to fully assess a student’s ability, comprehension and intelligence.
Although Meier makes valid points about excessive testing in grades 3-8, there hasn’t been a comprehensive plan to assess a student’s learning progress. Since standardized testing can somewhat assess general understanding, it can and should be used minimally. Excessive testing only causes the “teaching to the test” phenomenon and anxiety. Realistically,tests are a part of education. However, testing shouldn’t be used to the point where teachers are forced to drown their students in testing techniques instead of fully explaining and engaging students. Standardized testing should only be used at certain critical stages in a student’s educational advancement and rigorous standards should be set in a curriculum where the school and teachers will determine if the child has a satisfactory understanding of the subject area. In other words, a happy medium between standardized testing and school/teacher grading.
Another issue that the book addresses is privatization. Although the author is very passionate about her stance against privatization, she is somewhat vague in explaining why she believes NCLB supports this movement. She leaves it up the reader to decipher if there are any private monetary benefits lurking behind privatizing schools. The author goes on to explain that grants and private funding clearly depict favoritism by large companies who only provide funds to schools which benefit that company’s interests. Also, she believes that public schooling should remain as such, public. In my opinion, privatization can be a double edge knife. Up to now school are failing for the dramatic incompetency of the system and schools. It is unfair to blame just one. Privatization would increase responsibility for schools since they are under one single, possibly very demanding private organization. This would be substantial difference from the disjointed bureaucratic system many public schools answer to currently. The downside, however, as pointed out by others in class, is that education would not be seen as an intrinsic benefit for the nation but as a piggy bank . Many of these companies may lack the professional knowledge to fully understand the dynamics of education and be limited to only seeing quantitative results; which brings us back to the issue of testing.
It is definitely an alternative that should be thoroughly explored before exposing the students to its potential dangers. All in all, it is the government’s and our responsibility to fix what is presently broken. By examining and truthfully acknowledging the flaws in the system and working with every branch involving such system (including teachers, students and parents) will there ever be some progress.