NCLB: the music teacher's point of view

Let the record show my incredible restraint in deleting the rant I started to write on the evening of writing this post.

I was going to let this topic (NCLB) sit for a while. I’ve got lots of thoughts about it, but I’m far from being an “expert”. Jason’s commentary this morning has encouraged me to post a little further on the topic, however. I will try to do it in small bites, and try to link to other, more informed sources when I can get to it.

I don’t have all sorts of research handy right now; I just want to share a few stories from my own experience, just for the heck of it. I’ve got a pretty good idea of who the 30 or so people are who are reading this blog, and you are, with one or two exceptions, not public school classroom teachers in the U.S. That being said, I can assume that you, my beloved reader, don’t know anything about the day to day effects this legislation has on the “front-line” classroom teacher. You may be especially ignorant about the forms it takes in less-than-affluent communities.

Just today, while making the rounds in my fabulous new school to start rounding up the children who will be playing music with me this school year, I walked into a fifth-grade teacher’s room. She seems to be a good teacher, very competent and “together”, very friendly and comfortable with her kids (you’d be surprised how many teachers are very obviously not comfortable with the kids in schools – especially during the first weeks: it’s not as easy as it sounds!) She was in the middle of a lecture/group questioning session/math practice. They were tallying up the amount of tests they would be taking over the course of the school year. As I walked in, they had just finished the multiplication portion of the number sentence – it had something to do with the number of benchmark assessments they would take per subject area (math and ELA). They had added the two products, added the official State tests in those two main subjects, and were just starting to add the additional tests in other subjects – the ones that are now considered “ancillary” in large part due to the current federal legislation: Science and Social Studies. Forgive me if I’m missing anything – I’m only a music teacher, after all.

The amount of tests they would be taking over the course of the school year came to the magic number of 19. As this fine young teacher said, nineteen big tests. Important tests which would have some effect on the children’s future (the point this teacher was emphasizing). What she didn’t mention was how important these tests would be to the school’s future. You may know that the NCLB regulations require lots and lots of assessment. But you may not have picked up on the other side of the equation: lots and lots of threats and penalties aimed at schools and school districts.

Her point was well-made, and the students seemed to “get it”. She would not realistically be able to give them very much help in preparing for these tests. They would have to learn everything the first time. It is time for them to get serious.

To be continued