Re: Texas Talk: Keeping my fingers crossed...

This is my comment on Julie's wonderful post regarding scrapping NCLB and implementing a new program:

Julie, I'm so glad you posted on this topic! My sister is a high school teacher, and I took the liberty of sending a link to your blog post to her, even though she may (or may not) already know about the issue.

We all know that teachers state-wide are positively thrilled with the impending changes, as it will streamline their job requirements back down to "educating" in the best way each teacher sees fit for each student.

I think it's important to emphasize, as you did in your second paragraph, the stress taken off of the student. In high school, I was a PAL (Peer Assistance and Leadership), which is a mentoring program for HS juniors and seniors to mentor 5th graders. My 5th grader was Maria who got held back from moving on to the 6th grade. When I asked her why she thinks that happened, she said it was because she didn't speak "good enough English." She failed the TAKS and had to repeat 5th grade, even though she excelled in science and math, and spoke English and Spanish fluently (besides the minor grammatical error and her struggles with spelling English words). She was also placed in remedial English and History courses, which under challenged her.

Also, as for high school students, the exit level TAKS was taken in the Junior year, and yet Seniors in AP level classes were forced to spend weeks reviewing for TAKS tests which they would not be taking.

So, after these years of NCLB, we all have personal and/or secondary "horror stories" of the TAKS, and reading your post seemed like a breath of fresh air to me! I'm glad for the kids I know who will get to experience the new regime, and we can only hope and pray it will be a success unlike its predecessor.