Babble

July 19, 2007 - The editorial board of The Post-Star [Glen Falls, NY] discussed "mandates" with the head of the New York State United Teachers union. (Mandates = teacher union talk for the No Child Left Behind Act.)

NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi said during an interview with The Post-Star editorial board that rather than testing, he wants schools to be less dependent on testing, so more focus goes toward developing the growth of a child.

"From our perspective, it [The No Child Left Behind Act] went at it in a punitive way, a tremendous overdependence on testing — snapshot testing rather than measuring the growth of a child," Iannuzzi said about NCLB.

And then,

The bill has also put pressure on teachers while limiting how much exposure to history, the arts, and foreign languages students receive."What is expected of teachers, in terms of total package of time and energy, is not unreasonable," he said.

"What’s unreasonable is so much of the time and energy is devoted to preparing for testing; testing that is not necessarily as valuable as it should be, and then reacting to the results to tests, as opposed to what teachers are trained for — the art of teaching, looking at the growth of a child, developing awareness and understanding."We move away from that, and move toward testing," he said.

TT - Read the whole thing again and replace "testing" with "teaching."