Teacher punished for disagreeing with NCLB

I bet you didn't know this, but America has an official national religion. It's widely believed that it began as Kentucky's state religion in the mid-1980s. It's called standardized testing.

Standardized testing is a religion, because not only do people cringe a little when you criticize its bureaucracy, but it also has rituals, laws, and core beliefs. Its beliefs are accepted as articles of faith. Central to this religion is what it considers the sacred truth of the results of standardized tests.

Bush's No Child Left Behind law effectively codified standardized testing as the national religion. I vacate this right-wing law under the Spittle Doctrine, but the education establishment has yet to be so bold. Not only do they consider it legitimate law, but they want nothing less than complete ruin for anyone who dares to think this law isn't worthy of constant applause.

In Madison, Wisconsin, a middle school teacher has been punished by the school district for the thoughtcrime of protesting against the No Child Left law. Declaring himself a conscientious objector to NCLB's reliance on standardized testing, the instructor refused to administer the standardized test to his students and allowed other teachers to oversee the test instead. He considered the tests useless for measuring students' progress and said the tests unjustly punish schools. Which is true, of course. Thanks to the rise of standardized tests, schools now have students spend a shockingly high amount of time studying just for these tests just to keep the schools out of trouble. Teachers are now often instructed to teach what's on the test instead of what's actually in their grade level's curriculum.

For his protest, the teacher in Wisconsin got a reprimand letter in his personnel file for "insubordination" (which is the school system's word for "because we feel like reprimanding someone"). The snooperintendent threatened to fire him if he dared to protest NCLB ever again.

Congress or the states need to step in and guarantee the nation's teachers the right to disagree with the Bush regime's unfunded mandates without having to worry about getting punished by their school district.

(Source: http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1524508.html)