That’s just one example how the federal No Child Left Behind law has negatively impacted schools, Lancaster County teachers said.
While teachers overwhelmingly said that they like that the law has held them accountable for how they educate children, they worry it has also caused students to miss out on other vital, aspects of education.
Because of the increased emphasis on testing, teachers say they have less time for classroom creativity, student social time and enrichment classes such as art.
Also many teachers believe the law penalizes special education and gifted students.
“We spend so much time teaching to the standards that there isn’t a whole lot of time left over ...,” said Susan Doub, a fifth-grade teacher at Fulton Elementary in Ephrata.
Also, if a parent volunteers in her classroom these days, she doesn’t ask them to put up bulletin boards, and cut and paste things to help out with fun activities. She needs them to review lessons with students.
Also because of the law, some schools now have less time to offer rewards such as parties for a job well done, said Doub, who is also a Manheim Township school board member. Kids need activities like that for socialization, she said.
No Child Left Behind has also meant that subjects not on the test are not being taught in the depth they once were. Many schools have scaled back or cut electives such as world language and art and even some social studies, teachers said.
There’s less time overall because the classroom has become all about preparing students for the test, teachers have told Russ Garman, who is in charge of giving out assessment tests for the Ephrata School District.
The PSSA tests students in reading, math, writing and soon science.
Teachers have also complained that the results of the state tests, called the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, come too late to do much good, he said.
Students take the PSSAs in the spring; the results are in by late summer.
To give teachers more data sooner, schools perform more in-house assessments, such as the 4Sight test.
4Sight mirrors the PSSA in how it rates a student’s abilities in each subject, allowing teachers to gauge how well a student might perform on the state test.
Brian Ellis is the assessment and testing consultant for the Manheim Township School District. The district created his position this year.
“I would doubt that my position would exist if No Child Left Behind didn’t exist,” he said.
He gathers test data and breaks them down for teachers to use for tailoring their instruction.
That, teachers said, is one of the most positive outcomes of the NCLB law. The data give them a focus.
But all of this focus can divert attention from students who are academically strong and scoring advanced on the tests, says Jason Perkowski, teacher of gifted education at Conestoga Valley High School.
The requirements of No Child Left Behind force educators to spend too much money and too much time helping students reach proficiency, and “we forget to address those students who are already proficient ... to stretch them to reach their full potential,” Perkowski said.
On the other end of the spectrum are special education students.
Nancy Hudacs, a Swift Middle School learning support teacher at Solanco, says there’s no way 100 percent of special education students will reach proficiency.
It’s “contradictory” to expect special education students to achieve the same levels as a regular education student, she said.
And trying to get all students to 100 percent proficiency might hurt them all, according to Perkowski.“Mathematically, it’s just an impossible goal to reach unless you lower what it means to be proficient,” he said.
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