No Child Left Behind

[warning: I'm venting. If you want to avoid any excess angst, stop reading now] I'm sure that most of you have heard of the questionable legislation called "No Child Left Behind." It seems to affect teachers as much or more than students, and most teachers I've talked to are pretty against it. Pretty much, the government increases standardized testing for all grades to make sure that all children are measuring up to the levels set for each grade. Schools that comply with the legislation and show improvement receive more funding than those who do not. Now there's even talk of determining teachers' salaries by their students' test scores. I think the government meant well when they passed this legislation, but they obviously don't know much about teaching and how students learn. Something I have recently come to love about NCLB is something called the Praxis test. Each teacher must take a Praxis test for their major and minor, as well as a teaching methods Praxis. I think it's great that teachers are being held accountable for their content areas, but the system is completely flawed. For instance, my history test covers the history of the world in 130 multiple choice questions. I haven't even had time to take a college level course about the Revolutionary War, so the last time I covered that in class was 11th grade. For my psychology minor, I take the same test as the psychology majors even though I took half the classes they did. If I don't pass these tests, I can't teach. Another thing that really burns me up is that each state sets their own pass/fail levels. Currently, the state of Utah has no set pass level for the Technology Education test, so my tech friends just have to take the test to pass, while I have to achieve a certain score. I just took my history praxis this morning (which started an hour late, by the way, and might have been the wrong test) and my teaching methods praxis starts in an hour. At this point, I'm ready to switch to a career where I won't be hemmed in by an unintelligent government on one side and hostile students on the other. All right, I'm better now. Thanks for listening.