Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/381166
"With one-size-fits-all education, we couldn't meet the needs of our students. With pacing guides, we didn't have time to go back and reteach standards that students didn't understand. We were expected to just move along. PE, social studies and science were put aside. There was no art in the classroom. We spent a lot of time analyzing data and a month of prepping for the test. Kids hated school. A lot of them said it was boring, they never got to do anything fun, and they didn't want to be here." GEORGE ZEPEDA, elementary teacher, Fresno Teachers Association "At my dual immersion school, we constantly had to defend why we were teaching Spanish. We lived in fear that the state would step in, change our administration, and move teachers around. As years went by and we missed AYP, staff became beaten down. Stories in the media became more negative. The higher-achieving students were relegated to the side. In my view, NCLB was part of a conspiracy to tell the public that schools were failing in an effort to privatize public education, make money for corporations and attack labor. It was never about the kids." LAURA GONZALEZ, middle school English teacher, Windsor District Education Association "Mandatory credentialing was a good thing that resulted from NCLB, and many teachers agreed with the idea of accountability. But the NCLB concept of accountability was too narrow, with one multiple-choice test that occurred one day of the year. You couldn't use the results to help students learn, be- cause by the time you got the results, they were gone and you had a different crop of kids. Teachers felt they had their hands tied with scripted lessons. In my view, NCLB was a naive attempt for the government to impose a business model on a social program." PATRICK GUGGINO, high school English teacher, Charter Oak Educators Association "I wanted to be the teacher who prepared them for life, not just the test. Unfortunately, it took away a lot of the fun and creativity. I was constantly be- hind in the pacing guide. But I felt an obligation to my students, so I wouldn't move to a new topic if they were not getting it. I took the consequences and stood up for my students. My students felt bad when they were not proficient. It hurt their self-esteem. I tried to reassure them that anytime they showed growth or improvement they were a success in my eyes." LISA DENMON MAYS, elementary teacher, Inglewood Teachers Association "I'm 18 and was in the first student cohort to complete an NCLB education. It was an ethos of test preparation that went far beyond the STAR test. It made a game out of school. The question was: How well did you play the game? That's one of the most ignored parts of NCLB. It was distracting and destruc- tive to the learning process. I don't blame the teachers, because they were under the pressure of an unfunded federal mandate to meet these misguided standards. However, now it's time for change. We need to step up to the plate and be that change." HARLEY LITZELMAN, UC Davis student, Student CTA CTA MEMBERS REFLECT ON HOW NCLB CHANGED TEACHING AND LEARNING were the first to roll during NCLB restructuring, further traumatizing school employees. Under reconstitution, all school employees in so-called failing schools were told to reapply for their own jobs. Districts used reconstitution to punish outspoken staff. Fairfield- Suisun Unified Teachers Associa- tion members were outraged that the majority who were reassigned were active union members prone to ques- tion district policy. Regina Williams even wore the Scarlet Letter "R" to show the humiliation and stigma she experienced from reconstitution, bless her heart (see page 10). S t o r i e s b e c a m e m o r e h e a r t - b re a k i n g . I m e t w i t h t e a c h e r s a t Hubbard Elementary School in San Jose shortly after they were informed they were being reconstituted for the previous year's low scores despite having met Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for the current year, after much hard work. They cried, and I cried. The pacing guide ruled supreme. W h i l e w a l k i n g i n a n e l e m e n t a r y school, I heard teachers reading the same page at nearly the same time as I walked by their open doors. NCLB had created the Stepford schools. Race to the Bottom I n 2 0 1 1 , t h e r e w a s h o p e N C L B would be rewritten in a reasonable way and reauthorized by President Obama. But Education Secretary Arne Duncan's solution was Race to the Top, a new competition where schools competed for crumbs. Educa- tors who had campaigned for Obama were outraged. School employees had hoped for relief from this awful law, but somehow NCLB had morphed into RTTT, the sequel. Duncan came to California and met with CTA President Dean Vogel and Dennis Kelly, president of United Educators of San Francisco. I was 13 V O L U M E 1 9 I S S U E 2