Change in education

I always try to write about something that interests me, something I can connect with, something that I care about. I am aspiring to be an elementary teacher, in fact, I should have been student teaching this semester had UWO not messed up my progress report. So, I am invested in what is going on in the world of education, both personally and professionally. I have written numerous papers over the last three years and a great number of these have focused on the Bush administration and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
NCLB had the best of intentions, to make sure that every student received a good education and that teachers worked at providing this education (accountability). However, there are many many pitfalls of this act. Just a brief and rough look at NCLB. NCLB is based on improvement and proficiency of students based on standardized test, tests which are only provided in English and which no help is allowed to be given. The tests focus on English and Mathematics, not taking in to account that students possess a vast amount of knowledge, talent and skills (see Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences for a little more info http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/education/ed_mi_overview.html this is a great overview site) Schools are required to make annual progress, and this progress is based on the results of the standardized tests. If annual progress is not met, schools can lose valuable funding (usually after so many years on non-progress). Some category's such as those of English Language Learners (ELL) never show improvement because as a student becomes fluent in English they are removed from the category, creating a never improving category.
I was extremely happy this morning when searching through Yahoo highlights I came upon an article for the associate press titled "Obama promise: Focus on getting kids to college". Myself and many other have been waiting for this. Some positives of the reform are taking other subjects into consideration during testing, provide rewards for performing schools (especially in the areas of ELL), and focusing on preparing students for either college or a career. This is going to take a lot of pressure off the teachers to teach to the test and provide students with a well rounded education.
I am not saying that this reform is perfect, nothing ever is, but this is definitely a step in the right direction.