2008 Woodie Awards
No Child Left Behind coming to colleges?
Marcus Heerdt
Issue date: 1/31/08 Section: Opinion
The No Child Left Behind Act, President George W. Bush's "brilliant" piece of education legislation, failed miserably in public schools across America.
With this being said, why would there be a push to bring something similar to public universities? Enforcing something similar to the No Child Left Behind Act would be devastating to universities around the nation because not only is the reasoning behind it nonsense, but also it would have a negative effect on the teaching methods of professors.
The way in which this plan was devised is absurd. Sam Gingerich, who is the system chief academic officer for the South Dakota Board of Regents, is one of the leading men pushing the poorly thought out legislation. He believes that in the near future, a college level No Child Left Behind Act will be passed within the federal government.
He believes universities should get out in front of this and start enacting legislation before they are required to by the federal government. Of course, the only problem is that there is no talk of a college level No Child Left Behind Act anywhere in the federal government. In turn, the No Child Left Behind Act is used to enact standardized tests.
Standardized tests are bad; there is no doubt about it. This is important because if Gingerich gets his way, there could possibly be government made standardized tests in courses such as geography, history, biology and so on. The point is, if this kind of thing gets approved in one university, it could spread like wildfire to other universities around the country and might even come here to USM.
The problem with government imposed standardized tests is that professors have no part in making the exam. Obviously professors would have to "teach to the tests," like high schools are already doing because of No Child Left Behind. This limits what the professor can teach in class. For instance, if a geography teacher thinks the different climates in America are important to the class, but the standardized test has questions about the climate in Africa, the professor is more than likely to teach about Africa rather than America. This certainly would be true because if the students in this hypothetical geography class score poorly on the standardized test, the professor is responsible for their grades, in turn, endangering his or her own job.
When asked to comment about the matter at hand, Gingrich confessed that there are discussions about having mandatory assessments and that the results of these tests "can show to the public that our universities are accountable." With that being said, one has to ask: is this really about education? Or is it all for public show?
With this being said, why would there be a push to bring something similar to public universities? Enforcing something similar to the No Child Left Behind Act would be devastating to universities around the nation because not only is the reasoning behind it nonsense, but also it would have a negative effect on the teaching methods of professors.
The way in which this plan was devised is absurd. Sam Gingerich, who is the system chief academic officer for the South Dakota Board of Regents, is one of the leading men pushing the poorly thought out legislation. He believes that in the near future, a college level No Child Left Behind Act will be passed within the federal government.
He believes universities should get out in front of this and start enacting legislation before they are required to by the federal government. Of course, the only problem is that there is no talk of a college level No Child Left Behind Act anywhere in the federal government. In turn, the No Child Left Behind Act is used to enact standardized tests.
Standardized tests are bad; there is no doubt about it. This is important because if Gingerich gets his way, there could possibly be government made standardized tests in courses such as geography, history, biology and so on. The point is, if this kind of thing gets approved in one university, it could spread like wildfire to other universities around the country and might even come here to USM.
The problem with government imposed standardized tests is that professors have no part in making the exam. Obviously professors would have to "teach to the tests," like high schools are already doing because of No Child Left Behind. This limits what the professor can teach in class. For instance, if a geography teacher thinks the different climates in America are important to the class, but the standardized test has questions about the climate in Africa, the professor is more than likely to teach about Africa rather than America. This certainly would be true because if the students in this hypothetical geography class score poorly on the standardized test, the professor is responsible for their grades, in turn, endangering his or her own job.
When asked to comment about the matter at hand, Gingrich confessed that there are discussions about having mandatory assessments and that the results of these tests "can show to the public that our universities are accountable." With that being said, one has to ask: is this really about education? Or is it all for public show?
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Chippawa
posted 2/06/08 @ 6:30 PM CST
Where was this my Sophmore year of College. I flunked out of school. If we had had NCLB for colleges I could have blaimed my ptofessors!
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