That is the title of a piece by Melanie Quinn originally published in Rethinking Schools and is also available at The Forum for Education and Democracy. Here's the beginning:
One mid-September night, when I was tucking my 5-year-old son Eamonn in bed, the standardization madness came home to roost. With quivering lip and tear-filled eyes, Eamonn told me he hated school. He said he had to read baby books that didn't make sense and that he was in the "dummy group."
Then he looked up at me and said, "I just want to read Frog and Toad."
I am an experienced elementary teacher and college professor, with a long-standing disdain for "ability" grouping, dummied-down curriculum, and stupid, phonics-driven stories that make no sense. And yet here I was, seemingly unable to prevent my own child from being crushed by a scripted reading program of the type so beloved by No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
I do not teach elementary school. I have taught reading at the Middle School level. What you will read in this piece - and you should read the entire piece - is symptomatic of what NCLB is doing to real learning. We are turning school into little more than test prep, we are destroying the joy of learning, of reading for enjoyment. Our test scores MAY increase temporarily, but the damage we will do to our children and to our schools may be irreparable if we do not stop now the punitive and limiting approaches of NCLB.
One sentence from Quinn's piece makes the damage clear:
But then the desire to quickly "fix" struggling readers and standardize curriculum descended on the primary grades at his school.
Fortunately this particularly situation has a more propitious conclusion as we see in the final two paragraphs (and please, go read the entire piece, or you will not understand the pneultimate paragraph):
I am angry that Eamonn did not get to write his own knight story, and that he and his classmates were denied the opportunity to critically think about the stereotype being perpetuated in White Knight. Instead he had his time wasted by filling in "about" on a workbook page while the teacher tried to distribute the next book in chronological order.
This fall, Eamonn started 2nd grade and his teacher granted my request that he be allowed to read actual books during reading time, not photocopied nonsense. He has become an avid reader and falls asleep every night with a book in his hand. He prefers reading real books with real stories — the kind you find in public libraries and bookstores but, increasingly, not in our nation's elementary classrooms.
Today there was an e-chat at Education Week with David Berliner and Sharon Nichols, authors of the new book Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America's Schools (about which I wrote in The insanity of our high-stakes testing policy). You should be able to go to the ed-week site, register for free and be able to read the entire chat (it is long, but worthwhile). I want to note just a few remarks made in that chat. One of the first things David says is
I am sorry but high-stakes testing, as is true of all NCLB testing, always--yes always--narrows the curriculum.
and that is something all of us in classrooms - teachers, students and administrators - are seeing.
David also notes
If we really believed in accountability we would hold communities accountable for sending to the schools kids who are healthy and have health care, who have not been fed junk food and watched tv until late, who dont work over 20 hours a week in high school, and so forth. We dont hold our communties accountable for sending kids to school ready to learn, but then we hold the schools accountable for the results of that. It's a one way accountabiltiy system we have and we need a two way accountablity system, where community health and welfare is demanded before we punish schools for a lot that is out of their control.
Let me add one complete exchange, from a statement by someone who really does not understand the context of education and Dvaid's extensive response:
Question from Larry -Ind. Observer:
If we have students that cannot read and write at an eigth grade level, the government needs to hold teachers accountable for this. Bottom line.
David Berliner:
This is a simple statement and quite wrong as it stands. You would be right if the eighth grade child were born under lucky stars--a two parent family that earns enough money to provide medical attention and cultural opportunities, a parent that has time to help with homework, parents that provided a high quality preschool, and so forth. But would you hold the teachers responsible for the kids being on "grade level" if it was the kid of a single parent working two jobs while the kid has some responsibility to help his/her sibs? Where no one ever has had health care in the family and so the kid was born a little under weight affecting his/her IQ a little and then misses 20 school days every year due to asthma? Or where the neighborhood is crime and drug ridden so the kid has to live behind locked doors in fear of a bullet? How about the million plus mostly low income kids that are lead poisoned and mercury affected? What about the kids that have immigrated by the millions in recent years and arent at grade level because they are never given the benefits of good bilingual or dual immersion programs? No, Larry--you are much to glib. Teachers are responsible and so is our nation for the kids we have. If many urban teachers (who may be the newest and the ones most likely to be teaching out of field) get kids who have trouble learning they need to do their best, but they are not the only ones responsible for achievement. Large numbers of our kids live impoverished lives and this is not easily fixed in 6 hours a day for 180 days. Sorry Larry, it takes a village that includes more than its teachers, and we have failed to take that proverb seriously.
I put added the material from David Berliner because it is directly relevant to the material from Quinn. NCLB is further leaving our most vulnerable and least prepared students behind. They begin with lower test scores, so we cheat them of real learning, narrow what they get in school. Years ago Richard Rothstein opined that the simplest way to improve test scores would be to make sure every kid got a good breakfast before coming to school. We not only cannot guarantee that, but the quality of junk food we make available in school aggravates the situation.
Schools are a reflection of the society in which we find them. We are increasingly saying that many of our young people really don't matter. We have them going to school in decrepit buildings (yes, I have blogged about that as well.
I apologize for the ranting nature of this diary. Take that back, no I don't. We make learning into punishment. Learning should be exciting, inviting, an absolute turn-on. And it can be. Oh to be sure there are things that require some drill, explanation, but the amazing thing in any class is to see a kid get it, to be so involved in what s/he is doing that s/he loses track of the time, and doesn't want to stop. If we really want to leave no child behind, we have to stop the idiocy of turning school into drudgery, reducing it to test prep, and find ways of invoking the natural desire of all young people to learn. Instead of worrying "Is our children learning?" as measured by mass-produced tests, perhaps we should ask why what we are doing doesn't make them want to learn?
Or, as this diary began, "I just want to read Frog and Toad.