TEACHERS, PARENTS LINING UP TO DUMP NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

EDUCATOR ROUNDTABLE - Thousands of educators, parents, and concerned
citizens are participating in a coordinated movement to end the No Child
Left Behind Act. Spearheading the effort is the Educator Roundtable,
which has issued a petition calling on legislators to vote against
reauthorizing the law. In its first week the petition received over
12,000 signatures. For the full text of the petition

Longtime educator Marion Brady - one of the petition's authors—explains
that opponents of the legislation are "fed up with the law's simplistic
approach to education reform and how it wastes student potential,
misallocates teaching resources, shrinks the curriculum, and threatens
the future of our democratic republic by undermining public education."

News of the petition has spread with great enthusiasm among parents and
teachers, who often leave poignant commentary along with their
signatures. Writes one teacher, "I am retiring early. We feel we are
fleeing a sinking ship, after giving our entire lives to our students
and our profession. It is a sad way to end a career." And a parent
offers, "I feel like my little boy is being groomed for a life on an
assembly line rather than being taught how to think and be creative."

The Educator Roundtable petition cites several arguments against NCLB.
Chief among them are:

- NCLB misdiagnoses the causes of poor educational development, blaming
teachers and students for problems over which they have no control.

- NCLB uses pseudo-science to justify policies and programs that are
damaging public education—including diverting taxes away from
communities into corporate coffers.

- NCLB rates and ranks public schools using procedures that will
gradually label them all "failures" by creating unrealistic Adequate
Yearly Progress goals, which set schools up to be "saved" by vouchers,
charters, or privatization.

http://www.educatorroundtable.org.

SUSAN OHANIAN - NEA bigwigs have denounced our grassroots petition
advocating the dismantling of NCLB, instructing members not to sign.
They say we have offer no positive alternatives. What we offer is
democracy, the voices of thousands of teachers, which probably scares
NEA as much as it scares the corporate politicos.

OK, we have only 20,876 signatures. But this is strictly by word of
mouth--no help from the press--Undernews being a notable exception. We
are operating with no money--just a conviction that public education is
important enough to fight for.

Assorted comments made by petition signers tell the tale:

- NCLBA undermines children's insatiable desire to learn and replaces it
instead with coercion, threats, isolation and intimidation.

- I think this a part of a plan to reshape the good old USA for people
who do not believe in "by and for the people"

- I am a Principal of an Elementary School. I would love for a
legislator to see my boderline MR children cry their way through this
Standards Based Assessment we administer each year.

http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_outrages.html?id=2499

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