teach1st
08-17-2005, 05:07 AM
http://news.tbo.com/news/MGB7Q8T0HCE.html
WASHINGTON - Connie Gillespie, an eighth-grade counselor at Tomlin Middle School in Hillsborough County, is struggling with the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
She says the law puts so much emphasis on achievement tests that Florida schools focus on test-taking. If she could, Gillespie would ask Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings this question:
``Your assistant secretary, Dr. [Susan] Sclafani, recently stated that, `School counselors must help schools recognize that assessments mandated by NCLB are just one measure of what students know. They are not all that should be accomplished by our schools.'
``But in my state, the money and therefore the focus is geared toward one measure: the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. How can No Child Left Behind be restated to encourage states like Florida to be more balanced?''
Normally, Gillespie would have no way to ask Spellings her question, but Media General News Service sat down this month with the education secretary and asked Gillespie's question and 21 others submitted by teachers who read Media General newspapers.
Many teachers feel affected by No Child Left Behind. Every school must make ``adequate yearly progress'' toward getting students proficient in reading and math by 2014. Schools that miss that goal from year to year are singled out as needing improvement. Some schools even have to give students the option to transfer to better-rated schools.
As President Bush's chief education adviser in his first term, Spellings was instrumental in creating the law. As education secretary in Bush's second term, she implements it.
Read more (http://news.tbo.com/news/MGB7Q8T0HCE.html)
WASHINGTON - Connie Gillespie, an eighth-grade counselor at Tomlin Middle School in Hillsborough County, is struggling with the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
She says the law puts so much emphasis on achievement tests that Florida schools focus on test-taking. If she could, Gillespie would ask Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings this question:
``Your assistant secretary, Dr. [Susan] Sclafani, recently stated that, `School counselors must help schools recognize that assessments mandated by NCLB are just one measure of what students know. They are not all that should be accomplished by our schools.'
``But in my state, the money and therefore the focus is geared toward one measure: the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. How can No Child Left Behind be restated to encourage states like Florida to be more balanced?''
Normally, Gillespie would have no way to ask Spellings her question, but Media General News Service sat down this month with the education secretary and asked Gillespie's question and 21 others submitted by teachers who read Media General newspapers.
Many teachers feel affected by No Child Left Behind. Every school must make ``adequate yearly progress'' toward getting students proficient in reading and math by 2014. Schools that miss that goal from year to year are singled out as needing improvement. Some schools even have to give students the option to transfer to better-rated schools.
As President Bush's chief education adviser in his first term, Spellings was instrumental in creating the law. As education secretary in Bush's second term, she implements it.
Read more (http://news.tbo.com/news/MGB7Q8T0HCE.html)