No Child Left Behind

Yesterday, I finally finished (praise the LORD!!!) my CLAD course work and photo copied it, mailed it off to University of San Diego and celebrated with an iced coffee from Pete's Coffee. That is 12 college units off my back and now I can sleep better at night. Thanks be to God, this child will not be left behind (as a teacher and as a child of God- two completely different issues).

I have been working on this course work for several years now and basically have not applied myself as faithfully as I should have. This summer I have spent many of my summer vacation hours on finishing the course work. Last week I received a dreadful letter from my school district (I am sure there were hundreds of teachers in my district who received the same letter and thousands in the state of California who received the same type of letter from their districts), a letter in which I fully deserved. Let me quote one paragraph from the letter,

"Recent legislation has required the _____ Unified School District to audit all credential holders to make certain that credentialed teachers working with English Learners have proper certification. As a classroom teacher, if you have an English Learner in your class, an English Learner certificate is required. _____ schools are wonderfully diverse and as such, English
Learners are throughout most, if not all of our classes. If you do not have the proper certification, the State of California maintains you are not properly credentialed to teach the class and you could be transferred or dismissed".

The CLAD certification is now federally required of all teachers teaching in the public school setting, regardless of the subject that you teach, under the No Child Left Behind law (also known as NCLB). There are many options that I could have chosen from to satisfy the requirement. I chose the independent course work, mainly because I am a terrible test taker when it involves regurgitating massive amounts of information in written form. Sadly, when I received my initial teaching credential, the CLAD was not embedded in my credential. While in the credential program in college I remember being advised not to receive the CLAD certification because "you will NEVER need it as a PE teacher". My classmates who received the CLAD certification only had to pay an extra fee, were in the same classes with me and had to write one extra paper. Now the CLAD is embedded in every credential program.

I have my opinions on federal policies and laws but I often keep those critiques to myself. The general premise of NCLB is good and is a great goal to have for our students but there are some major flaws in the law. I will briefly discuss only a few of the problems of the law as they directly pertain to my teaching world and myself.

Problem 1- the law expects that ALL students, regardless of mental ability, language barriers, home life (I could devote a whole new blog page to the issues of home life or lack of home life), behavior and educational background, will be proficient in the areas of reading and mathematics by passing standardized tests in those areas. There are so many issues that strike out at me that my mind screams "impossible". Again, I am only going to talk about a few of the things I listed above. Working with disabled children, mentally and physically disabled, has been part of my teaching career since before I started teaching. These precious children who are not capable of performing mentally at the federal standard are included in this mandate. More precious children who are emigrants to America for a better way way of life are under this law. These children most often do not speak the English language and they are expected to perform well on the standardized tests that are in English. Yes, they should learn the language and should be given the opportunity to succeed in the educational environment. Then we have the students that are transferring from the inner city to suburban schools. These precious students have had a life of crime, drugs, violence, and any kind of sin imaginable all around them. They may not even know what it means to have a safe place in their home where they can sit down and study to do homework. Please don't get me wrong, I don't want to make excuses for any of these precious children but blankly say that NO CHILD WILL BE LEFT BEHIND is a very far cry from what will happen by 2010 (not sure if that is the correct date but that is what sticks in my mind). There are so many issues that need to be addressed, funded and planned out before every child will be up to par. I think the current law will be going under a revision sometime this year, thankfully.

Problem 2- the law states that all teachers will be "highly qualified to teach" to insure that no child will be left behind. Again, this is a great premise of the law and in theory is really good but the law's definition of being "highly qualified" has major flaws. Let me give you a little background of my educational history before I talk about being "highly qualified". I studied at California State University, Northridge. My degree was a BS in Kinesiology with an emphasis in Adapted Physical Education. I hold two teaching credentials- a clear teaching credential preK-12th grade in Physical Education and a lifetime credential in Adapted Physical Education preK-college. My undergraduate degree was a very rigorous and intense program. A sampling of my classes: anatomy, physiology, exercise physiology, motor learning and control, sports socialology, sports psychology, motor development, structural biomechanics, and 30 units of my adapted PE courses. After my BS degree, I was in the credential program for a year and half. Let me continue with my teaching experience. My first full year of teaching started in '94 and I was an itinerant adapted physical education specialist (I traveled to 7 schools and had a case load of 90). The next 3 years I taught 7th grade bilingual health/biology, PE and APE, the next 2 years just PE and APE, and for the last 8 years just PE (the disabled students are integrated into my PE classes). I have been teaching for 13 years. 8 of those years I have been the PE department chair person. Back to NCLB and being "highly qualified". Last year the district came in a held a meeting with all the teachers. We needed to fill out paperwork determining if we were "highly qualified" according to the NCLB law. The paper work covered several different areas: subject taught, years teaching, being department chair person, credentials held, STUL evaluations, and other areas. It was based on a point system. Almost everyone sitting in that room were credentialed teachers and after filling out the paper work were classified as "highly qualified", except every single PE teacher. The law allowed math, science, ART, MUSIC, English. . . to be "highly qualified" but not the PE teachers. We sat there dumbfounded because now our jobs were on the line. The law states if you are not highly qualified that you should not be teaching students (because they could be left behind, and remember NO Child Will Be Left Behind) and that we could lose our jobs. As a unified group of PE teachers we worked long and hard with the district and finally received paperwork that said we were "highly qualified". Oh thank the Lord.

Anyway, long post, sorry. What does this all have to do with CLAD? As teachers we need to have the techniques to teach English Language Learners (ELL) so that these students have equal opportunity to not be left behind.