I don't get why everyone is blaming NCLB for this screw-up. If I read this properly, the fault rests on the back of the principal who didn't treat the situation with the amount of sensitivity the age group she dealt with required, and is just shifting the blame to legislation because its convenient for her public image. A cheap cop-out answer that the loud liberals will eat up like Nerds candy.

Well, Sass, I'm moreso angry that there's a person in position of authority on the scale of a principal who acts like a complete fucktard. It'll bum the kid out for a while, absolutely. Head person from the school comes up to you (as a child) and says "way to go, pal! You made us look bad. ALL YOUR FAULT."

Main thing is that the principal was childish and stupid about the whole approach and was very selfish in establishing an image for herself. Put yourself in the parent's place. You trust an establishment to teach your child and the head boss of it comes out and tells your kiddo that they fucked up big time over something that wasn't wrong at all. You wouldn't be pleased with the school's administration '~' I'm putting myself in the parent's place. I'm a fan of corporal punishment and all that. Babying the youth isn't something that should be done to a major extent, but the kid didn't do a thing wrong, period.

Plus, my mother was a headmaster/principal. The school board of the private school got flooded with young parents who don't know that she galvanized the school from bankruptcy about fifteen years prior. Some uppity bitch spread rumors about my mother and the board voted her off for no real reason, and now the school is being driven into the ground. Five years later, my mom still can't score a job as a principal, and there are bozos like this running around in the business. Gets under my skin a little. Now you've got folks who are treating children as numbers and benefits to the faculty.

Also... People, please don't try passing the buck to something that Bush passed. This is the principal's fuckup and hers alone. Don't try to spin this around and start going "BLOL REPUBLICUNTS".

edit: Gablar. Packrat beat me to it =d

I totally agree that there shouldn't be a person in this position at all - AT ALL. You should never do that to a young child.

But I think the parents are ALSO wrong for acting like the kid is scarred forever. It's a way for them to over dramatize the situation to self-benefit - which I frankly find morally wrong as well.

I guess I could have been more clear. Sorry~ ;_;

Well o'course there's some spin or tear-jerking going on :3 I'm pretty sure this article was written to catch the bitch principal's skirt on fire (or pants if thats her thing~).

If No Child Left Behind had not been in place, the principal would not have felt pressured to achieve as perfect as possible test scores.

And that's a problem WHY? :tpg:

"No, thats okay Mrs. Busczki, you can go ahead and run your school however you like. The worse they do, the more funding you get from the government to 'try to improve' your grades next time anyways."

You guys haven't seen the ueslessness of standardized testing until you've written the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test). What a load of crap that was.

ofcourse they would do that. That kid was smart. Smarter then most kids his age. I think it's all part of that stupid status quo trash.

If I had a 5 day suspension for every question I skipped on tests like that, fuck I would've been out of school more than in it. Gotta love the American education system. :p

In all seriousness though, I think yeah, the parents are overdramatizing this, and the kid also. On the other hand, 5 days for not listening? Even if they can justify the suspension, 5 DAYS WTF!!! I've gotten less for a helluva lot more than just not listening to the teacher.

The fact that the higher ups think this is perfectly acceptable....fuck even if I ever move to the states, which I won't, but if I did, I would make sure to move back before having schoolage kids, no fucking way that school system is safe for kids. That much weight on standardized tests at that age....sickening.

That's bullshit.

"Good job, bud, you've ruined it for everyone in the school, the teachers and the school"

And that is horrible. Principal needs to be reviewed in her dealing with elementary school children.

To be fair, how bad is suspension really? I've never thought it was such a serious punishment because if the cause was unreasonable, your parents would sympathise with you. Now he gets 5 days out of school doing fuck all instead of working. Sounds like quite a good deal to me; he'd probably get worse for answering the question.

Although yes, the Principal was out of line to blame him for all of that, if he has the reassurance of everyone but her, how much is that going to affect him?

The situation certainly sounds outrageous, but it's a bit strange that the kid didn't acquiesce to the request, even after the principal herself told him it was okay... What was going through his mind, exactly?

Apparently he didn't want the principal to know that he thought she was a witch.

They really should have talked to his parents before taking such actions though.

Well, yeah, weird kid. Looks like his parents try a little too hard to bring up a li'l model citizen, y'know? Kid was deadly afraid of authority figures, and now he's got a taste of how unfair and downright self-serving they can be. Maybe it'll help him in his quest to learn how to think for himself. His parents are tools to think he's scarred from that. Looks to me like he'll get over it after a solid week of videogames, and he'll come out of this with a worldview slightly more realistic than the one his parents have probably shoved down his throat.

But yeah, she was definately out of line, and that kid will have a much harder time trusting educators for the next several years. He'll get over it and grow up to reform the school system, though, so no harm done, right? ^_^

This shit's right outta Daria, kids. :P

4th grade I had a teacher like that principal, and in 8th and a few in high school
hooray for the educational system.

couldn't they have simply contacted the perents first. He didn't want the priciple to know he thought of her as a witch? How freakin innocent is that. I hope that kids broken spirit haunts her forever o-o

Hahahahaha, what. This sounds like a joke. If not, that's even better.

In my day, when we didn't answer a question, we just got it wrong.

It's spelled "principal" guys. I bet this 4th grader even knows that.

Let's me give you an example from my nephew's life:

He had an interest in the way the Titanic was built. In the engineering behind it. One of his teachers automatically claimed he had an obsession with "death."

His father is in the Air Force, so my nephew liked to wear camouflage pants and shirts to school. Immediately, he was considered to be "troubled' because of his taste in clothes.

So, this little boy, who would write he thought his principal was a witch on a broomstick, probably would be considered being into witchcraft and Satan...

My problem with the principal is she LIED to the boy. She LIED, folks. The writing part had nothing to do with the percentage.

And whatever happened to the Minimum Basic Skills Test?

You beat me to it. I was getting tired of seeing "principle" in every other post.

I'm not sure what to say to this. The kid seems to have been put in a no win situation, where if he answers the question, he gets in trouble, and if he doesn't, he gets in trouble. But I guess if he would've wrote down his thoughts, he would've been correct. The principal definitely deserves something for what she did, five days is a huge amount of punishment for such a small thing.

Horrible, etc.

But what relevance does his height and weight have to the story?

Republifuckers. Gotta love 'em.

Both the ones who created the retarded No Child Left Behind and the ones who leave children behind to try to make the rest of their school look good by No Child Left Behind standards.

Yeah that was really starting to bother me. It was becoming ironic people bitching about the education system yet cannot determine which word to use in the situation even though they sound the same, they are spelled and defined differently.

it reminds me of the time I had an assignment to write out a story using new words that I found in the dictionary. I wrote a funny story about my teacher.

She was M-A-D
but guess what? I learned the words, much better than simple memorization

I wrote a sonnet about how much I hated english class. Bitch made me rewrite it.

I also lost my Salutatorian title because I "plagiarized" a homework assignment, en francais. It was a front. I wasn't acting like their model Salutatorian, so they took it away. Everyone knew it. Frankly I didn't want to give a speech anyway, but it's the principle of the thing. ;)

High school really turned me off to the whole education system.