SJ, your...er...speech there, really blew me away! You put what I have been thinking into words, that's for sure. Again, I don't know everything about NCLB, but what I do know spells disaster.

My education professor is highly against NCLB, but he sees it's slightly altered good points. He believes that if we had moved our asses years ago, this would not have been put into effect. The education world is drastically getting worse and worse as time goes on. There are a lot of those "bad" teachers out there that really do need to be weeded out. A lot of them are there because there were no other jobs that they wanted or could do. Kind of like that saying "When all else fails, teach" -- I disagree whole heartedly with that.

I'd also like to point out that it surprised me that your hubby is a Secondary English educator I'm sorry to hear what happened to him...sadly that does happen. I hope it doesn't happen to me. If you go into a teaching career, you need to know your stuff, very very well (I'm not saying he didn't!). One of my arguments to the NCLB was just that -- People learn at different levels....Everyone learns differently from each other! A lot of people don't understand that...

And as far as this whole pass/fail thing is concerned with State Mandated testing? Right now it is up to the child to pass or fail for the most part. No one else really suffers from it but that child (Unless of course over half the class can't pass it, then it falls back on the teachers, school...etc..). But now it is changing. If a student doesn't pass this test, then it is automatically someones fault. It doesn't matter if that child simply could not learn the material, or if the child didn't want to try...

Ugh..my nerves will get raw on this subject, I can tell. We have a debate coming up in my education class...can't wait.