Mehlville superintendent speaks out on public-forum issue

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Mehlville superintendent speaks out on public-forum issue
TERRY NOBLE

Terry Noble

August 15, 2007 – My purpose in writing is to express my position regarding a matter recently under consideration by the Mehlville R-IX Board of Education.

The issue that has been a topic of debate among some is whether or not the Board of Education should conduct an “open-mic” public forum as a means of communicating with the patrons of the district. I believe this has become an item for discussion as a reaction by a few to our current COMPASS — Charting the Oakville-Mehlville Path to Advance Successful Schools — public-engagement process.  Click here to read on…

The Big Shake Down – No Child Left Behind

No Child Left Behind is a joke. It was flawed from its inception. First, it assumes that educators wanted to leave children behind to begin with; second, it is a completely disingenuous set of government bureaucracy, based on faulty syllogisms; and third, in its current form, 100% of public schools will fail in the year 2014. Can someone please tell me how that makes any damn sense? I have never personally experienced a more ignorant and useless waste of government resources and public tax dollars in my life! No Child Left Behind was nothing more than the brainchild of anti-public education, anti-American democracy, pro-voucher, basement-brains. The people who designed No Child Left Behind care no more about the “sub-groups” of our students (blacks, hispanics, bosnians, special school district, etc.) than the Man in the Moon. You don’t believe me? Just watch C-SPAN for an hour.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB,) is really just an unfortunate piece of legislation that has caused and will continue to cause the useless waste of energies of many capable and otherwise productive educators. Other than the intrinsic philosophical disaster that it is, it has five easy to pin down failures built right in, out in the open, for all discerning individuals to see.

1. It is underfunded, doing nothing to help those historically effected by poverty and racism (which is the real problem) and cash strapping states who have, as a whole, faced their worse budget crises since World War II.

2. It has essentially turned public education into test-preparation (teaching to the test) schools, setting forth bad educational practices and devaluing topics such as history and science.

3. It is legislation that has made it impossible for public schools to succeed; whereas, no matter how good of a school system they actually are, by 2010, 70% of schools will fail, and in 2014, all 100% of them will fail. (It just blows my mind why anyone thinks this is constructive.)

4. It actually provides incentives (the basis behind all economics) for schools to do things they would never do, like allow drop-outs to just, well, you know, drop out. That way the drop-outs don’t count against their test scores. (But don’t think they are no longer costing tax-payers any money. (Think, “Police, Jail, Theft, Welfare, Murder, etc.“) Disclaimer: Mehlville’s drop-out rate is very low and has improved immensely over the last 10 years, so this is in no way an example of how Mehlville treats their students, thanks in large part to the SCOPE program.

4. The legislation is not equal for all 50 states. The reason is that it allows for states to define on their own what proficiency is. Therefore, Maine’s definition of proficiency is different than Missouri’s, and Missouri’s is different than Nevada’s.

5. If you are for local control and state rights, you should be vehemently opposed to No Child Left Behind because it is federal legislation telling states and local municipalities what to do with their school systems, while not providing any additional monies. What does the Senator of Mississippi know about us educating our children in Mehlville?

And here is the kicker, according to a 2006 study by the Department of Education, “When socio-economic status is accounted for, there is no difference in test scores between students who attend public school, and students who attend private school.”

So what’s my point? I propose that we force private schools who want public tax money to accept all students who apply, initiate the same standards of NCLB, and watch how many children they “Leave Behind.”