Dear Mr. Obama

This is a letter that I have recently sent to Bill Gates. I have decided to forward it to you, Mr. President, as well.

Mr. Gates,

I have some concerns after having watched your recent presentation for TED on the internet today. I am a fourth grade teacher in North Carolina and I have been teaching for about five years now. I teach at a magnet school for gifted and talented students and we have a highly diverse population with over thirty percent of our students on free and reduced lunch. My county, Wake county, has regularly been recognized as an area that is at the forefront of education, and above average with regards to national standardized testing.

For all of the years that I have been teaching we have collected data and used the data to attempt to better prepare ourselves to educate more effectively. This year I have seen an increase in the amount of data that we are collecting and as the year has progressed I have also been increasingly frustrated. Before our school year has ended, and before we give the state mandated end of grade tests, I will have given seventeen assessments to my students for which the intended use is measuring progress. If you include the end of grade tests, then that is more than one test every ten days. Now this does not include assessments that I might wish to give for my own personal understanding of my student progress. Twenty tests.

More than eighty percent of these tests are covering language arts or math. Three of these assessments will cover areas of science. Essentially I feel as though my classroom is being taken from me... and to what end. The schools of our country have been measuring growth by formal standardized testing for more than eight years now. We have designated schools as "failing" for not raising their level of achievement, taken their money away, let go their teachers.

Through it all I have seen the data analyzed. Witnessed truly exceptional educators rack their brains attempting to understand how they were able to show a measured growth where previously their had been none. Still we find that we are a part of a system where a level of achievement in testing has plateaued and there does not seem to be a light at the end of our tunnel.

You might suggest that I look at the KIPP schools for light, that I see their progress as a potential guide for improvement. I would point out that KIPP schools average around nine and a half hours a day, while most public schools offer only seven. KIPP requires four hours on Saturdays, public schools none. KIPP expects three to four weeks during the summer, public schools none. KIPP, likely due to the extra available time, offers a wealth of extra curricular activities, hands on learning experiences and what sounds like a more creative learning environment, while our public schools are being forced to cut more and more of the extra curricular due to an increased focus on improving our scores for math and language arts tests.

I have great fears about what our country has elected to use to measure achievement and herein, I believe, is where we lose students. We have begun to assess our students from the moment they enter school. Many of the kindergarten teachers that I know have a nearly unending battery of diagnostics that measure what the children are capable of. Children enter our schools on an unlevel playing field for which we offer no compensation. Children who have had the opportunities of having literature in their home since birth often enter the school with twice the working vocabulary of their less fortunate counterparts. Data will show that a child, birth to kindergarten age, who has the opportunity to interact regularly with literature is virtually predestined for success as a reader. Some children enter our schools without ever having opened a book.

So they come to school and what do we do? Collect data... and often our data shows what we should already know, that a certain percentage of our population is not making expected growth. In a sense, these students begin their academic careers by failing an assessment. Then we place undue burden on our teachers by assuming the same expected achievement for the entire class, regardless of where they start.

Here, I believe, is a comparable example: Let me give you two trees, one that has been cared for as a seedling, having already sprouted from the daily care, fertilization and water. Then another that is still not more than a seed, a healthy seed, but a seed none-the-less. Now, let me suggest to you that by the end of the year that I expect both of these young trees to be over four feet in height, and that really the seed that has already sprouted should grow beyond that height since it is already measuring over twelve inches.

Just as trees want to grow, our students enter school with the natural curiosity engendered to all people. They come thirsty to learn, but after regular assessment, and, for many, a repetition of never quite measuring up, most of our students stop being interested in growing, actually stop believing that growth is possible at all. After all, how could a seed possibly force itself to grow faster?

Now I am a person who strongly believes in accountability, and I myself would welcome you into my class any time, unannounced. But I believe that if we move in a direction where teachers are held accountable solely by the data collected from a formal standardized test, then a lot of superb teachers will be lost. Not because they could not prepare their students for the assessments, but more likely because they refused to. I refuse to cut the creativity from my classroom because it does not offer an opportunity to prepare for an assessment. I resent burdening nine and ten year olds with the stress of meeting growth. I am terribly saddened by the increasing lack of focus on any areas that are not directly related to math and language arts.

I believe that it is a slippery slope on which we currently tread, and while I applaud your concern, and your philanthropy towards solving this problem, I beg you to reconsider what seems to be your current solution.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Nate Barton

Dear Mr. Obama

Dear President Obama,

I am currently an elementary school teacher in Raleigh, North Carolina. I have been a teacher now for about five years and as it stands now I am on a course to track out of this profession in the next few years.

I am a part, I believe, of a generation of teachers who is not going to submit themselves to the increasing degradation that educators are currently being subject to. While I have no doubt that it will sadden me greatly to leave what has been a primary choice of profession, I have come to a place where I feel that there is no other alternative.

The current and increasing expectations that are being placed on the schools of America have effectively taken the creativity out of the classroom, replacing it instead, with an ongoing series of preparation for another formal assessment. My students are increasingly over stressed and overanxious with regards to the demands that we place on them. Many have lost the love for learning, or worse still, not ever known this love in the first place.

I write today because I have hope, because I believe that change is possible and because I would like to trust that you are someone who may be able to enact a new direction. Please help me to change my direction and to continue to do what I love... educate.

Thank you for your time.

Respectfully,

Nate Barton