CURMUDGUCATION: King's No Excuses

CURMUDGUCATION: King's No Excuses:

King's No Excuses

Well, of course it was about no excuses for the students. That as pretty much the whole point. It's the kind of setting Those People need. "We don't a care if you're poor or dyslexic or homeless or just plain not very bright. We are going to demand that you succeed." That's what Those Children need, and it's what No Excuses schools have always promised and demanded. So the first part of this quote is baloney, one more attempt to revise history and avoid having to defend the indefensible.

No excuses for educators has certainly part of the landscape, with teachers and principals have been told, from the first days of No Child Left Behind, that no excuses would free them from the punishment that will be meted out for those students who don't get above-average test scores.

Who gets all excuses? Elected officials and education bureaucrats. Does a school have too few resources, old materials, crumbling building problems? Then clearly the school is to blame. The teachers are at fault for not getting their students to pass the Big Standardized Test-- if they had done that, the school would no longer be poor, or something like that. 

But the legislators fail to get schools the resources they need (or even actively oppose such a thing)-- those guys get all the excuses they want. Are there stupid laws getting in the school's way? That's not the lawmakers' fault. Is the school chronically underfunded? That's not the legislature's fault. Are schools stuck in a morass of foolish rules and regulations because the feds laid down the law? Is there an expensive mess that erupted from the federal force-feeding of CURMUDGUCATION: King's No Excuses:

Big Education Ape: Judge calls evaluation of N.Y. teacher ‘arbitrary’ and ‘capricious’ in case against new U.S. secretary of education - The Washington Post -http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/05/judge-calls-evaluation-of-ny-teacher.html