Essays --

The author of the article Why I changed my mind captured the received picture of the monstrous shadow that stalks t to each oneers in public crops. The NCLB might afford been conceived initi ally with good intentions but had spawned into a creeping threat creating nightm ares to educators. kindred what Diane Ravitch said, accountability became the stick that is used to punish schools. I think it in addition created resentment and this resentment has taken away the joy of teaching and discipline. The non-stop sound judgement to measure if standards have been taught left teachers always on their toes. In bowel movement to cover all concepts included in the test, teachers are left with no choice but scratching on the surface without getting deeper on the content. Not only this leaves students with no mastery, it also resulted in the widening of learning gaps. Teachers, year after year, inherit students who are unprepared and lacking strike out level skills. This is evident to s ome 5th graders in my school who are in still struggling to subtract with regrouping, much much across zeroes. Subtraction with regrouping is first taught in second grade. In addition, with assessments used as a measure of teachers performance and determinant of incentives to teachers created inequality. Teachers with students scoring high and receiving fiscal incentive may feel elated. While in contrary, teachers who somehow got a group of students who did not perform well are left demoralized. Teachers cannot shoot their students. With all the factors stated in the article that determines students performance, there are new(prenominal) aspects that are beyond the teachers control. I personally know a teacher who teaches at a regular public high school, he is very(prenominal) dedicated and almost yearly trained at ... ...w the concepts based from note and work samples. In several occasions, during benchmarks or in the real test, her hit were one or two questions away from passing. I saw how her team spirit and self esteem deteriorate. She became so unsure of herself becoming anxious each time a test. Her mother even considered transferring her to a private school so she will not be subjected to state testing. With her morale destroyed, the more she became unfocused during testing. To help her cope, I tried to appease her dismay with encouragement, play up her strengths and stressing that her scores are not reflective of whom she is. She seemed to have understood. However, I knew that as she move up to middle school, her test scores will be the first data being looked at. It is a sad reality that all the learning and effort of this student are summarized to her test scores.