High Plains Panhandler

First Day of School, 2007

Meet the Teachers

Today was meet the teacher day at our friendly neighborhood elementary school, so we made the rounds, dropping off mounds of Kleenex and crayons and, generally, being well-behaved.

We were very excited about Megan's fourth grade teacher (Colleen had the same teacher two years ago). He's really quite a great teacher, pushing the kids to learn more, putting passion into the curriculum, and just nailing some advanced math and science, which is absolutely terrific. But when we met him he told us he was a little bummed. Apparently he had had his hand slapped for being a tough teacher, a compelling teacher, an inspiring teacher. Apparently he wasn't teaching to the mean and cultivating mediocre students, so he got in trouble. Now he has to pull back and be less challenging.

Nice.

This is the legacy of No Child Left Behind: it becomes No Child Becomes Excellent or Inspired or Incredible. Now teacher's teach to the standardized test, and they're judged on their student's scores.

So what do school administrators do? Tell their teachers to dumb it down to the test. Don't push the kids. Don't ask more of them. Ask less. Ask enough to pass the test.

Pathetic. What a way to undermine this whole Jeffersonian ideal of public education.

So when this teacher told us about this, and I could hear the despair in his voice, all I could say was, "What a fraud."

At which point Megan strode up to me and thrust out a model of a toad. "Not a fraud," she said. "A frog!" And then she ran off laughing.

No standardized test can measure that.