Speaker addresses future teachers about NCLB
The No Child Left Behind Act will be around after many current USU education majors graduate and begin teaching, and they should understand how it affects them despite its shortcomings, said a former U.S. assistant secretary of Elementary and Secondary Education.
“Education has become a political issue,” said Susan Neuman, Thursday. “It is not just something that happens in teacher education institutions. All of us need to be involved. All of us need to know what they are saying about teachers.”
Neuman, the former assistant secretary and current professor at the University of Michigan, spoke to faculty and students in the College of Education and Human Services Wednesday and Thursday in workshops on student improvement, funding, research and policy.
She focused on NCLB and what future teachers need to understand about it in order to become high quality educators.
As an undersecretary in the George W. Bush administration, part of Neuman’s job was to implement NCLB in public schools, she said. Legislators intended the 2001 act to improve the U.S. education system by setting high standards for schools in each state for both students and teachers.
“Don’t throw tomatoes at me for No Child Left Behind,” Neuman said, smiling at the group of current and future teachers. “Forgive me. We learned a lot from it.”
The act was a good and well-intended strategy when it was passed, Neuman said. No one could have assumed the consequences. One problem with it, she said, is that its aim to show how qualified teachers are according to test scores fails to focus at all on individual teaching methods. It’s not just about being highly qualified but highly effective, too, she said.
Neuman explained in her Thursday workshop what NCLB’s educational policy is and what it takes to be a highly qualified teacher.
The way teachers are trained needs to change at some colleges and universities, Neuman said. The focus should be on performance.
“I want to see more indicators that you can’t just talk about it, but do it,” Neuman said.
Leslie Brown, a senior majoring in elementary education, said she thinks a highly qualified teacher knows his or her students’ needs and shapes instruction for them individually.
“I feel like a highly qualified teacher has content, knowledge and pedagogy,” Brown said. “She knows what she’s teaching and how to teach it.”
Teaching is a craft, not just a certification, Neuman said.
“I don’t think people are born to be teachers,” Neuman said. “We become good teachers.”
Money, although an incentive to be better, does not drive the teaching profession. Also, people do not become teachers just because they love children, Neuman said.
“I want to be the best teacher I can be for my students, because, yeah, I love children, but I want them to become effective adults,” Brown said. “I think the real goal of teaching is teaching children to be self-motivated.”
Individual states were left to decide what standards to set for NCLB. As of 2008 all teachers have been certified as highly qualified under each states’ standards. Neuman said some teachers may be certified on paper, but not in reality.
“Just because someone holds a credential does not mean they are highly qualified,” she said.
Some of the best teachers quit because they are fed up with trying to meet NCLB’s demands, but education senior Shannon Howard said she’s not afraid of losing her passion when she graduates and starts teaching.
“As long as I can teach kids, that’s what I’ll do,” Howard said.
– la.stewart@aggiemail.usu.edu