I know I'm late on the bandwagon here, but...
I wasn't shocked or surprised when a Champaign teacher ('eighteen-year veteran Champaign Central High School mathematics teacher Kathleen Smith,' according to the News-Gazette) resigned because of the shackles placed on educators by No Child Left Behind (just another of the W-imbicle's unfunded crack pipe dreams). See http://www.news-gazette.com/localnews/story.cfm?Number=18204 I admire her courage and conviction.
What's surprising to me is that more teachers haven't followed suit. The problem with such mandates -— beyond the fact they're not funded — is they halt the teaching (and more important the learning) process. Now, instead of teching mathmatics, Smith and thousands more teachers are now teaching a test. The students no longer get an actual education. But they learn how to take a test and how to pass it. All they gain is answers that will be lost as fast as it takes the test monitor to say 'put down your pencils.'
It's not surprising that it's difficult to find and more difficult to retain good teachers. What is surprising is that the W-imbicle (and a lot of others in Washington D.C.) believe this will actually help education.
It's just another variant of the end justifies the means, I guess. Doesn't matter what you learned; you passed the test; our school can keep its funding for another year. and our teachers can keep their job. Some of them.
And so it goes.
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