I have been addressing the Madison School Board every month since January 2008 concerning NCLB. In January I presented them with my say “No To No Child Left Behind” manifesto.

I have posted one section of it below. If you would like to read it in it’s entirety my web site is http://www.sealk.info

What Can We Do?

It is easy to be critical of NCLB. The challenging part is addressing the question of what can we do to change things?

1. We need to unite and get politically active locally and nationally to eliminate NCLB. We must go back in time and start over again when the Bush Kingdom took over the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and changed it to NCLB. The problem is that political change is slow. We as a nation have been taking steps backward in the education of our children for five years now. We will continue going backwards on a daily basis as long as NCLB exists as it is today.

2. It is critical for Wisconsin to change the way our public schools are funded. The elimination of revenue caps and the use of property taxes as a major way to fund public schools has got to change.

3. Third, we need to educate many of our co-workers, parents, and the voting public as to the truth about how our schools are being deliberately set up for failure and how our schools are presently failing on a daily basis to meet even the basic needs of all our children.

There are also at least three things we can do immediately as a progressive and accountable school district.

1. Stop the one dimensional focus on academic learning and teach to the whole child. We need to teach and give every child the opportunity to grow socially, emotionally, physically, and creatively as well as academically.

In March 2003 I addressed a Madison school board committee suggesting that our school districts emphasis on testing and academic learning at the expense of social, emotional, physical and creative learning was developmentally inappropriate. Since then our approach to teaching to the whole child has become even more one dimensional with the developmentally inappropriate mandates of NCLB.

2. Change the focus of the Madison summer school program. Instead of using behavioral issues as a deterrent to getting into the program, children with behavioral issues should be the first to be enrolled. The public needs to know that when a classroom has just one socially inappropriate child, that child takes educational opportunities away from every child in the classroom. Social development is similar to reading and math development. They need to be taught every day, in every classroom, at every grade level.

3. We need to remember Rosa Parks and say no to NCLB. Our school district should be commended for having the courage to say no to the Reading First program. Lets have the courage to say no to NCLB. As a community lets find ways to fund our schools without having the George Orwell effect tied to federal dollars.