Elementary School Simply Isn't Fun Anymore? (college, public schools, assessment, grades)
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I think it depends on the elementary school. My first grader LOVES his school. He does a ton of projects, has art class, computer class, music, and gym. They carved pumpkins for Halloween, they have parties with the parents to celebrate the various holidays, etc. His school offers after school enrichment classes. My son took pottery after school and loved it.
There are A LOT of things going on at his school that help develop the whole child, not just teaching to a standardized test.
After NCLB or NO Child LEft Behind, elementary schools aren't fun anymore. What do you think?
What are you basing your assertion on?
My two elementary-aged kids can't wait to go to school each day, and they were really ready for the Christmas break to be over during the holidays. Like the above poster, they have a variety of diverse classes and get to do lots of special projects. If the OP's kids are not having at least SOME fun, perhaps it's time to look into a different teacher or school.
I never cared if school was fun or not. It was better than being at home.
I never could figure out why people would go though the religion of teaching to get what amounts to a near poverty level job. NCLB is designed to leave almost all the children behind except the kids in private school. Just another strike at the nasty old egalitarians.
After NCLB or NO Child LEft Behind, elementary schools aren't fun anymore. What do you think?
Since I'm older, I understand what you are saying. I work with mothers of elementary school aged children and they seem to have so much more pressure put on them than I did or my kids did while in elementary school. I'm not saying the new boost in education isn't good, but it seems to me that it is harder for kids to just be goofy kids like we used to be.
I am an elementary school teacher, and I see the frustration in some of my students' eyes, when I tell them that I have to teach them skills that are above and beyond their readiness.
Arts and crafts and PE have become secondary because we only have so many hours in a day to cover subjects. In fact, we have very little in the day for those types of activities.
I was just wondering what fellow elementary teachers who have been teaching longer than 10 years think about the curriculum and what elementary school has become today.
This comes up every so often accompanied by many of the same complaints such as, "I see the frustration in some of my students' eyes, when I tell them that I have to teach them skills that are above and beyond their readiness," etc.
The truth is that nationwide, student achievement is actually much lower than most people think. Each state's education officials establish their own state standards, commission/construct their own tests, and set their own 'passing' scores. This has resulted in manipulations that make it look like public schools are educating our children, when in reality the majority of students in many states are far below acceptable levels of proficiency. In some cases, there's as much as a 70 percentage point difference in proficiency levels between state achievement tests and the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) tests.
If you want to see your state's reported proficiency level vs. the NAEP proficiency level (to see if your public schools are being honest about providing an adequate education), check here: NAEP Researchcenter - NAEP and State Equivalent Percent Table
For each grade level, the first column lists the percentage of students scoring as proficient (meets or exceeds state standards) on the state test for NCLB; the second column lists the percentage of students scoring as proficient on the NAEP (National test).
IC - IMHO - Testing measures the ability to take tests and not much more. Grade school kids have to learn how to tell the difference between friend or foe and how to act appropriately. Of course learning to read, write and think would be a good idea. Learning to take "achievment" tests is nonsense except to the kids foemen giving the tests.
If the tests are constructed well, that's not necessarily true. I'm sure you wouldn't make the same claim regarding the Bar Exam, Medical Board Exams, etc. They test for the knowledge and skills that people in those professions are expected to have. Same is true for academic testing. The kids can't build on and develop knowledge and skills if they don't have the necessary educational foundation.
The problem with not testing kids yearly beginning in elementary is that by the time the kids get to high school, it's too late to remediate for the decade (grades K-9) in which curricula may have been aimed far too low academically. That's why we now have NCLB testing beginning in the elementary grades. Parents/politicians/college profs/employers, et al, have had enough of our kids' education lagging most of the rest of the industrialized world.
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