I intially made my choice to switch my child to the one of two choices I was given for my child under the no child left behind plan based on the repuatation of the host school that I would later house the annexx of this no child left behind school.  I had initiallly called the principal of the school and told her that I had read about the great things she had done for the school she was at, and I was extremely impressed by the positive messages on the school’s website.  She called me back and thanked me but told me that she would not be my child’s prinicpal and wished me well.  I think I can honestly say that at the time I did not understand the depth that she would not be his principal but said OK and we finished the conversation. 

I would soon learn that my child would be annexed into an empty part of the building in the larger school.  I immediately recognized this as a divisive dicriminatory practice designed to seperate the no child left behind children from the general population of the other school because it is and was assumed that children who come from failing schools are impoverished and undesirables. Though since I am pretty familiar with the area, I was aware that the range of homes in the schools that failed AYP ranged from about 105,000 to 800,000 dollar homes.  In any event beingeing from the South I recognized the annex  tactic as a particulary southern ruse of seperatism.  While historically whites are known for seperatissm in the south, blacks know the practice very well  in the south.  This Annexx was Dekalb Counties version of seperate but equal in our so called modernized society.  As an African American I always find it amazing that black’s whoop and holler for rights and then turn around and participate in the same behaviour that they don’t want to expereince.  Rosa Parks did not want to sit in the back of the bus and many blacks fought so that blacks and whites could eat at teh same lunch counters, use the same bathrooms and have the same educational and emplyment oppurtunities.  Finally here was a group of black educational leaders creating the practice in a definite seperate but unequal fashion.

Event though the NCLB school was not the ideal situation throughout the first couple of weeks my child did settle into a routine which seemed to be OK. My son was consistently bringing home A papers. The teachers used positive enforcement on his papers such as good job, and even though I made a comment in another blog about no checked papers throughout my early school years. There were  positive actions that this school was performing that reflected my educational experiences in primary and secondary school, such as in depth instruction, reinforcement, and telling students what they wanted. Overall I thought this situation would work, and of course my son bought home A’s and I am always satisfied with earned A’s. He worked like a little beaver to get them. I have a child who works hard because he is determined to be a success in life, a teacher can tell him anything and he will do it and believe it.

The problem came with this experiment when my child was abruptly uprooted from his classes and sent to another group of teachers. My son had a teacher who would literally lose his papers and then say they were not turned in. She would also give his papers back if she thought they were unacceptable. Unacceptable meant not colorful enough. My child came home to me very upset because a project he had literally worked on painstakingly typed the definitions, cut out the words and pasted them, and had drawn pictures on to the flip book she had given him, to top it off our printer broke down and I had to email myself a copy of my sons definitions so he could do all of the prior actions. He told me that she had given the flip books back to the majority of the class and said it was not good enough. The really terrible thing about this is that she had not even bothered to check the assignment and then told them they could bring their grade up by doing it again. In other words if it was not up to her standards the assignment was just not turned in. Well my son gave me the assignment and I lost it. In another instance, I had helped my child with a general “basic” assignment, because for some strange reason the answers to the end of chapter questions were not in chronological reading order so I had to point my child in the right direction of the answers. Well this teacher stated that my child had not turned the assignment in, which could have been true but if my child says that he has done something I know that he has. A perfect example of this is my child has asthma, his science teacher (a very good teacher) assigned him makeup work that he did. They were working on a project so my son consistently forgot to turn in the makeup work, I would ask him everyday did you turn in your makeup work and he would say no! Finally I warned him about not turning it in as well as emailed the teacher and the work got turned in. However he never lied and said he turned it in. I would like to add that on this project my child did well but could have done better. This teacher gave them a grade first and then told them they could improve their grade. In any event to end a tangent, after hearing about the behavior of the losing work teacher, I immediately called the vice principal and asked for a conference with this teacher. I also asked that my child be sent back to his original set of teachers. I was not scheduled for a conference until after progress report cards came out and what happened in the conference convinced me that some middle school teachers have a skewed view of the world.

This conference left me feeling that like there are dirty cops, there are dirty teachers out there also. I arrived and told the principal that I was there for the conference. She told me that I had the option of speaking with all of my child’s teachers because they were all there because they had a prior conference scheduled or I could meet with the one teacher. Considering that there was only one teacher I had a problem with, I told her that I would meet with this Ms. C only. I went into the room the conference would be held in and all of the teachers were there. I said hello and it was nice to meet them, but since my child was having considerable problems in Ms. C’s class I wanted to meet with her only. I also mentioned that the principal said that I had the option of meeting alone with one teacher. Well this particular teacher stated to me that through the middle school concept teachers share everything with each other about the child most especially grades. I was horrified. I asked her well do you plan on using grade collusion to get a grade for my child. At this point another teacher spoke up and said he’s having problems in my class also. The grade on his report card for this teacher was a 96. I politely told her that at this time I really did not want to speak with her but would talk to her later. Ms. C continued to try to convince me that this had to be a group conference, she also mentioned to me that she had a masters degree in some field that made her qualified to be an administrator. I suppose this is why those teachers never left because of her administrator designation, even though she is not an administrator at the school. Even though I constantly said that the principal said I could have a single conference they would not leave. Finally I said that I thought I had a right to confidentially regarding my child’s grades. I wanted to have a confidential discussion with one teacher and I insisted on it. Instead of anyone honoring this, the principal had to be called to dismiss the teachers and had to sit in on this conference with the teacher the whole time. This conference was really unproductive for me considering the only thing the teacher basically wanted to talk about the whole time was the flip book and a chart that my son had not looked up sentences for but had made up sentences on. When I asked her why she had not given him any credit for the sentences because it was his first time doing the assignment, her response was “even my best student got this wrong” they have to learn. In my mind I thought even if your best student got it wrong then obviously the directions were not properly given. In any event this conference finally ended due to lack of time.

However, let me remind you about the lengthy discussion concerning a teacher’s right to share information and that I did not want the teachers colluding about my child’s grade. The Language Arts teacher several days later sent home a language arts paper where the children had to do math word problems, this was the only “math” paper ever assigned to the children by the language arts teacher, I assume they were attempting to establish a legitimate right to educational interest in my child’s other classes. During the same week, Ms. C, the Social Studies teacher sent home to me a project where my child was asked to use story elements, and a whole lot of information with language arts terms. I assumed that these teachers had colluded together to establish their right to educational access to the students records even if they were not teaching these subjects to these students. I don’t know how the law views it but as a parent I do not want non subject related teachers discussing how my child is doing in their classes. This is collusion and in the business world when business owners discuss what prices they will charge consumers even if they are selling the same goods it is called price fixing and is against the law. I’m not sure if children have the same rights to privacy and equity.

The Day had come when I would go and visit the “no child left behind school” I arrived at the school facility that would house the school within a school and I honestly have to say that I was really impressed with the overall building presentation. The school was clean throughout the whole building, the gym was just gorgeous and as the daughter of a former teacher who watched my mother toil over boards year in and year out until she eventually became known as the board queen. The boards in the school were just awesome.

There were a few glitches that were a little disconcerting, as I moved towards the office for more information, I was told that my child’s school office was around the corner which literally turned out to be some sort of resource room. It looked like my child’s school office was at one point the computer room. I met the vice principal of the school who turned out to be a wigger, a white woman who has adopted the black culture as her own and is white in appearance only. I was a little taken about by this because wiggers are sometimes stereotyped as being willing to do anything for a black man or black men. My thought flashed back to the jim crowe setup of the school and I seriously wondered if this woman would be a tool to try to knock down the no child left behind law through our children by making them fail for some black man’s relief. It did not help that she is known as the expulsion queen of DeKalb County. In any event she seemed intelligent and concerned and determined to do positive things as it related to the children and I honestly think that she’s working towards helping the children to achieve and if it had not been for one teacher who I really believe she herself is trying to be the principal of the school in an underhanded way I probably would not have ever posted this blog, or written about any of any of this, I would have kept my thoughts to myself.

I met the teachers and they seemed nice, looked intelligent and ready to teach. I was ready for this experiment and from what I initially saw thought that it could go well. In the beginning for the most part it did go well until the school started to mess with my son’s schedule and the teachers I met ended up not being his teachers but ended up being another team and this is where the strangeness of no child left behind came in, in terms of intent.

For years the news has reported that the basic concept of no child left behind’s school choice plan was if a school failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress for two years than parents and students would be given a choice to transfer to a school that was making Adequate Yearly Progress.  Inmy child’s school district this tactic was horribly skewed and frankly disregarded.  I was initially told that my child would attend a school that had made AYP.  I was initially assumed that of the two choices my child had to make from two schools that he would end up at one of them.  I made the choice of a school thinking this.  However after my my choice was made I learned the following:

1. My Child would not be attending a school that made AYP, but would be attending an Annex of another school not housed in the building. ex.  the annex is housed at coffee high but takes on the name of cream high and becomes an annex known as cream high at coffee. 
2. In our case the principal was not on campus and we have yet to meet the “so called” Principal of the school, as far as I know. I do know that I emailed the principal and he never responded back. For all intents and purposes the vice principal is the principal of the school which essentially means that the principal at my child’s school has never been a principal before.
3. The third fact that is very important is that the no child left behind children in my child’s situation have no interaction with children other than themselves, they are cordoned off from the overall middle school population.  Essentially they are ostracized from a normal experience.
4. Finally these children entered a school with no infrastructure. NADA
5. It all amounted to a new untested and untried school which I seriously doubt would get approval from any accrediting body.  The whole structure could be summarized like this a large successful church agrees to rent out a portion of the church to a much smaller jackleg church.  If you get this picture you get what’s happening in this school districts definition of no child left behind.

A brief check of the no child left behind powerpoint presentation states that no child left behind students are to have the same resources as other schools however the sad fact is that administrators and superintendents are intent on not following the letter of the law but frankly pushing the policy into failure.  As I write about my and my child’s experiences further, readers of this blog will see how this policy is insidious and designed to harm our children.  When educators coldly calculate to harm our children, it’s literally time for some sort of Federal intervention to aid our children’s and keep people only interested in getting a salary and compensation from harming our children.  I am convinced that the individuals at the annex are not their to teach but in some cases to break the no child left behind policy.

On a rainy day in late July or early August of 2007, I went to register my child at the local middle school in our area.  As I walked in I was impressed by the cleanliness and orderliness of my surrounding and thought well my child could adjust to attending this school.  I met the Assistant Principal a tall slim responsible looking and acting individual who I chatted with briefly as she looked my child up in her computer.  I told her that I really liked her office with the positive words on the walls and left for the most part confident that my child would have a positive educational experience.  As I arrived home from registering my child, I looked in the mailbox and saw a letter from the school that I just left.  I assumed that it was just another welcome letter, but as I opened it I was shocked to find out that the school that I had just registered my child for had not made AYP for two years.  Not only had they not made AYP but they had not made it in MATH and the scores was extremely low in the core subjects of Math and Science.  Their one saving grace was their extremely high scores in reading, language arts and social studies.  After looking at those scores I became very disappointed that the Vice Principal could have spoken to me like nothing was wrong and not even mentioned the little problem. As I continued to read the letter I was given two choices for the No Child Left Behind School to transfer my child to if I so chose.  I was familiar with one school and the excellent principal at this particular school so excitedly chose this school.  However I would soon discover that their was a huge caveat to my choice. “A SHOCKING ONE”  In any event I faxed in my information and received a letter stating my child would be attending this middle school. In the meantime I received a letter from my child’s original school inviting me to come and hear why they failed no child left behind.  I attended and discovered that the front entrance of the school hid a terrible and run down back part of the school.  As I walked into the cafeteria of the school I was shocked to find plastic plants, all over the cafeteria, and even on the podium.  This was extremely disgusting and made me want to literally scream, this along with bottle of water in a bowl and small bags of potato chips as refreshments on the table was a little hard to take, but I stayed.  I however had to go to the bathroom and found toilet paper behind my head at standing level and graffiti all over the walls.  By this time there was nothing that could be said to me to let my child go to the school, add to that a PTA President that seemed to have autism like symptoms and I knew this was not the school for our family.  I did sit through the presentation and was not convinced to stay.  Even now I have to imitate a SIMS character and say un un and shake my head no!  It further hit home to me the disrepair of the school as I attended a jazz festival at a park across from the school and watched brown ooze stream down from the back of the school creating a huge brown stain running from the roof down the body of the building.  I shuddered at the festival.

I started this blog today because I can honestly say that I have no place to turn or no place to turn regarding the educational situation of my child.  I live in a county where the dropout rate for our children is 50%.  I am a member of the African American Race where our drop out rate is 50%.  After entering my child in middle school I have begun to realize that the problems our children face black, white, yellow, green and otherwise is because of a system that has betrayed our children and leaves our most precious resources to many people who are just working for a check and will coordinate their efforts to work against parents, children, and society so they can protect their way of life.  I am fed up afraid and literally have no place to turn hopefully as I write I will find individuals to connect with regarding the dismal failure of our educational system.  I am in DeKalb County Georgia and I can honestly say that since Georgia is at the bottom of the list as it ranks for quality of schools, I honestly hope that the situation that I find myself in is an absolute exception to the rule and not the rule.  Thank you for reading and I will now begin to record my experiences as a parent in DeKalb County Georgia, a parent of a no child left behind middle school student and as a totally disappointed and disgruntled human being as it relates to my child’s education.  I welcome comments, and suggestions and thank you in advance for them.