She's just getting warmed up....

My wife is a teacher at a local high school. She teaches biology. Our pairing may seem surprising considering my strong tech background, but I feel that we compliment each other quite well in that we do not overlap in our areas of expertise.

Naturally, we discuss issues in each of our individual fields. Unfortunately for me, the ability for her to cross over to tech discussions is significantly more difficult than me crossing over to education. This isn't surprising considering that everyone has been involved in education yet only a few of us choose to pursue software development (the few, the proud, yada yada....)

Over time, mostly through her studies and research, we have discussed various education topics including the sensational and much maligned No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

Here are some choice quotes from my spouse on the topic:

"NCLB is the result of people who have never stepped inside a public school in their lives trying to tell those who have been there all along how to do things."

"The act's one-size-fits-all approach fails miserably. Austin East and Hardin Valley High are subject to the same rules. Which one do you think will get screwed?"

"The public is getting wise to NCLB. Take a look at this."

Despite the good intentions of the act, it fails miserably in several areas. In many cases, it actually harms education. Perhaps the only group that the act benefits without question is testing services like ETS due to the blind adherence to standardized tests. Don't get me wrong, standardized tests are important, but what you learn from it, and how you react should not be an overly simplistic equation that pushes our schools towards mediocrity, which, I would like to point out, is the opposite of exceptionalism.

It is my hope that my wife will be able to sit down and take a turn guest writing a blog in the near future.... after all, she now hold a Masters degree (huzzah!)

Other news:

Yes, I switched the normal order of topics. This will enable me to live-blog from the road while we make our way up to Wisconsin overnight on Thursday. I'm not sure how this will turn out... maybe one post, maybe more.

I'll be on hiatus during vacation. Not a big surprise there. With any luck, I'll come back refreshed and ready to write about plenty more topics.