No Child Left Behind is one of the worst things to ever be incentivized in schools. It was signed into law when I was 14. Reading Rainbow was my show as a kid. LeVar Burton played a big part in why I became an avid reader to date. The joy of it. It’s an adventure around the globe and through different time periods without stepping on a plane or time machine.
Children parrot behavior. In grade school, I always wanted to read the same amount of books as my teachers (50 books) and managed to double that each year. Before No Child Left Behind, book fairs and Scholastic catalogs were a serious matter like your grandma’s Fingerhut catalogs. Libraries were (and still are) a wonderland.
Reading comprehension and proficiency in schools has been declining for decades. A crisis. The joy of books isn’t pushed anymore and I’m always saddened by it. It’s one of the reasons why I post my book reviews and recommendations on here, as well as posts from others to encourage reading and (novel) writing. Kids will parrot your behavior while the education system sadly fails to return as that example.
For those of us who aren’t from the states, what - apart from apparently a shitty law - is that?
A law passed by Bush that cut funding to public schools whose students didn’t improve every year on a set of standardized tests- meaning not that each student was supposed to improve during their time in school, but that this year’s first graders had to do better on the tests than last year’s first graders, and next year’s had to do better still. Obviously this was really difficult over the short term and completely impossible over the long term.
This concentrated schools and other education programs entirely on those tests, especially schools with students who were already struggling, at the cost of art and music programs, home economics and shop type programs, and any in depth exploration of pretty much anything that wasn’t on the test, which were pretty narrowly focused. Reading Rainbow was a relaxed encouragement to be imaginative and curious. It didn’t teach kids the answers to questions on the test. So it didn’t make the cut.
The program also incentivized schools to cut their losses on struggling students, expelling or encouraging them to drop out to bring the test averages up instead of being able to spend the effort to actually help them.
No Child Left Behind was an absolute disaster for education, poorly hidden behind an insidious name. The real goal of it was not just to defund education (in order to reallocate those funds to appease Republican lobbyists), but to stop teaching critical thinking. Not only did struggling students get left behind, but by prioritizing students who did well on standardized tests, the focus shifted entirely to teaching students memorization without understanding context, and how to guess their best on a test in order to pass. The focus became passing tests, not actual learning. In the process, students were taught that they don’t need to understand the material, they just need to know how to follow directions and give the answers deemed correct by the school boards. They were deprived of agency in their own educations.
This widened the gap between public and private school educations significantly, because students in public schools learned mostly how to regurgitate information, while students in private schools learned how to understand it, analyze it, think critically about it, and apply it - in short, if you could afford to go to private school, you still got to have agency over your education. And sure, many public school teachers were dedicated and still taught their students more than the curriculum demanded, but they were under a lot of pressure and scrutiny and their hands were often tied. Many of them couldn’t sustain the effort it took (and how little they got paid) and changed careers. Meanwhile basic necessarily skills disappeared when arts and non-academic budgets were slashed into oblivion - you used to be able to learn how to sew, mend, cook, budget, do woodworking, fix a car (hell, build one), paint, draw, do pottery, and so much more in elective classes. What’s mostly remained is performing arts programs, which struggle to continue existing, but since you can charge admission to performances they’ve had a better chance than shop class and home ec.
You have no idea what it’s like to have watched all that happen under the Bush administration and now see the second emerging generation of young people who were deprived of the education they deserve and don’t understand critical thought or media analysis. Those of us who are old enough to remember the Bush era are frustrated, but not at all surprised to see how reductive and binary fandom discourse is, or that critical media analysis has diminished significantly and turned into fandom discourse instead (ie. that being a child during the “what you feel is more valid than facts” Bush administration has led to the second emerging generation of people who struggle to separate their personal feelings about a piece of media from the idea that fiction is social commentary, who struggle to understand nuance and are more concerned about judging others for their even slightly divergent political views than about what makes for effective activism, or that fandom has become a way for people to judge and condemn others).
You have no idea how terrifying it is to have watched No Child Left Behind unfold in your early 20s and have thought “this is going to lead to generations of kids who will be ripe for manipulation by propaganda” and to now watch how hard it is to get Gen Z and Alpha to understand the ways they’re being manipulated by fascists. Believe me when I say the very real purpose of forcing education to focus on tests instead of knowledge was to create generations of people whose brains are trained at an early age to accept information unquestioningly. That’s what I see when people reblog screenshots without sources and base their political opinions on tumblr funnymen.
No Child Left Behind was devastating. We knew it then and we see it now.
people blame ipads and cell phones when they should be blaming president george “war crimes” bush
Hello, so I’m originally from Costa Rica and there’s actually a good reason why the Yigüirro was chosen over so many other more colorful birds.
All those toucans, parrots, and the like are quite beautiful but your average Costa Rican person rarely gets to see them, because they mostly live out in the rain forests and other places far away from human settlements. But Yigüirros live in towns and cities, so most folks are much more likely to see and appreciate them on a regular basis. Yigüirros have a strong, beautiful song which heralds the start of the rainy season, so you always know when one is around during that time of year. This trait has caused the Yigüirro to appear in a lot of Costa Rican literature as well.
I think the fact that they were chosen over visually prettier species speaks to how the government let Costa Ricans vote on the national bird, rather than just making a declaration. Truly a bird of the people!
Having said all that, it is undeniably hilarious that there is a genus of bird named “Turdus.”
I do love the tradition of compiling Historic Current Events into montages with a soundtrack of “In The Hall of the Mountain King.” It’s both educational and funny. I’m sure future generations will enjoy watching them in history class.
Hopefully this tip can really help someone, please take this advice or suggest to friends and family if you feel it could really assist them
ID: Twitter thread by ashley fairbanks @/ziibiing reading
The number one best tip I have for anyone dealing with chronic illness is to make your health binder.
I’m waiting in the lobby at urgent care, and I swear, even when the intake nurses see it, they treat me so differently.
In my binder I have all my current prescriptions, a log of my hospital visits, and treatments. I also have the names of my doctors and specialists and my blood work. Being able to reference an official looking thing has really seemed to help from my concerns being dismissed.
I no longer feel like I get dismissed as drug-seeking. It feels easier to get the medications I know work, or talk through other treatment plans that are informed by my history.
It’s such a gift not to have to explain everything when I am in the middle of a debilitating migraine. /End ID
I saw this post fairly soon before my most recent appointment with a new-to-me health care provider, so I made me a Google doc and brought my tablet to the appointment, and holy shit the difference is night and day
#OnThisDay in 1960, the F. W. Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, was desegregated.
Six months earlier, four North Carolina A&T State University students known as the #GreensboroFour “sat-in” at the whites–only lunch counter of retail store. When they were refused service, they sat peacefully until the store closed.
Their actions that day sparked a sit-in movement that eventually spread to 55 cities in 13 states, desegregating lunch counters one-by-one across the nation.
64 years later, we honor the #GreensboroFour’s bravery, and share this history as a reminder that young people have POWER. 🙌🏿
This is the ideal gymnast body. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like…
Natalie M’phylgwnth from Carcosa just finished her beam routine, which has left another judge screaming and blind. We’re going to take a break as they look for another volunteer.
I keep having to tear down extremely predatory/misleading Scien.tology flyers in my school’s art building. This is the third fucking time I’ve ripped the fuckers up and I’m getting Real Fucking Tired of it.
If you see shit like this DO NOT call the number, do not do anything to interact with these fucking people. Take down the posters if you’re able to. They do NOT want to help you. They are a literal fucking cult who openly despise psychology and any actual proven mental health science, and are actively trying to trick mentally/emotionally vulnerable people into joining.
The red flags here are “Hubbard,” the name of their founder, and “dianetics,” the crackpot theory they teach for “auditing” your sins from your past lives.
I’d like to add what @jaspertheshark said in the tags because I feel it’s important
