Letter: Teaching to tests, rigid lesson plans only school goals

Thursday, March 3, 2005 | 9:27 a.m.

Administrative control is such that teachers are no longer allowed to introduce innovative or creative programs into their curricula. The philosophy of the Clark County School District is for teachers to blindly follow the mandated curriculum in lockstep fashion without deviation.

The chemistry teacher who uses a unit on forensic chemistry to teach and reinforce specific chemical principles is no longer allowed to do so. The biology teacher who wants to use plant cancer experiments to enrich a unit on cell biology can only use experiments listed in the curriculum guide or the approved textbook. Teacher opportunities for originality in developing enrichments for students in all subjects and grades are being stifled and eliminated in the name of district uniformity. Teacher innovation and creativity is a mute point.

The No Child Left Behind mandate has created a teach-to-the-test mentality. Every teacher of a given subject and grade level within a school is expected to be on the same page day after day. Every lesson must be uniform, including homework, projects and unit exams. Our schools have become more like factories than institutions of learning enrichment and enlightenment.

Like a factory producing canned beans, the end product is all that matters. All beans must be uniform in quality and quantity. Every can leaving the factory, including the label, must be exactly alike. In our schools, being able to pass a state exam is now equated with the totality of being educated, and is the only thing that matters.

VIRGIL A. SESTINI Editor's note: The writer is a retired biology teacher. He taught for 30 years in the Clark County School District, retiring in 1990. He then taught until 1995 at the private Meadows School.