Six years ago Congress enacted No Child Left Behind, which sets ever-increasing standards for public school students. Today, those standards are quickly becoming unrealistic, administrators say, and Mountain View schools are in danger of falling short.
In 1953, William Shockley left Bell Labs in a disagreement over the handling of the invention of the transistor. After returning to California Institute of Technology for a short while, Shockley moved to Mountain View, California in 1956, and founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. Unlike many other researchers who used germanium as the semiconductor material, Shockley believed that silicon was the better material for making transistors. Shockley intended to replace the current transistor with a new three-element design (today known as the Shockley diode), but the design was considerably more difficult to build than the "simple" transistor. In 1957, Shockley decided to end research on the silicon transistor. As a result, eight engineers left the company to form Fairchild Semiconductor. Two of the original employees of Fairchild Semiconductor, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, would go on to found Intel. It was in Silicon Valley that the integrated circuit, the microprocessor, the microcomputer, among other key technologies, were developed.
Mountain View is the home of Google Inc., who also provides free internet service to any Mountain View resident who has a computer with a WiFi adapter. You can learn a lot about nearly any subject from the internet, and ISP service is free.
That's right folks, Silicon Valley started right here. Mountain View is not some backwoods city. There is no excuse for ignorance. The solution is simple. Turn of the TV, put away the video games and read a book! OK school administrators?
Also, students who are falling behind, quit watching television and go read a book.

It always seems like these school administrators are arguing for lowering the requirements to graduate from each grade level.

What good or purpose could that possibly serve?

If everyone is allowed to graduate on their terms, then our economy will really be doomed!

NO, NO, NO. As usual, the Voice gets it all wrong. No Child Left Behind did not create ever-increasing standards. Rather, MV schools have steadily been falling behind the standards and creating an ever-increasing gap that they will never be able to correct at the rate they are going under the current leadership. The standards and benchmarks of No Child Left Behind are nothing more than those required of each grade level if we can ever expect children to graduate with the skills necessary to succeed in life (at the very minimum, the skills required to know what a good mortgage is and whether or not they can truly afford one).

Lastly, I find it ironic that these schools are threatened to fall under the category of Program Improvement schools, despite the superintendant's adoption of his flawed Continious Improvement strategy.

ned, go look it up-yes the Bush-created NCLB act does increase its standards almost exponentially to the point of ridiculous expectations-when the act was originally created there was supposed to be a second program running concurrently that would provide extra support to help reach these extremely high expectations-this program was conveniently dropped when NCLB was implemented. Its still no excuse, but I think the bigger problem with the district is the ever revolving principal problem!! No leader, no progress....

It's don't see how it's the NCLB fault for raising ridiculously low standards. It's up to MVLA to stop slacking and start teaching. I have had enough with lazy hippie teachers who have continue to fail our youth. California has no excuse for depriving our childrens education.

It's funny how the administration that advocated NCLB failed to fund it! The Bush administration sang the praises of NCLB, but when the budget came where did the funds go? This program was doomed from the begining, it was not meant to succeed. Shame on all US citizens for allowing the government to spend $10 billion dollars a MONTH on war but not invest a fraction of that in OUR children, the future of this great country. This is the real problem people, we are largest debtor nation in the world now due to the disgusting, gluttonous spending that has occurred over the last 20 years.

It's funny how the administration that advocated NCLB failed to fund it! The Bush administration sang the praises of NCLB, but when the budget came where did the funds go? This program was doomed from the begining, it was not meant to succeed. Shame on all US citizens for allowing the government to spend $10 billion dollars a MONTH on war but not invest a fraction of that in OUR children, the future of this great country. This is the real problem people, we are largest debtor nation in the world now due to the disgusting, gluttonous spending that has occurred over the last 20 years.

This is hilarious, the article notes:

"the standards are jumping dramatically — increasing 11 percent each year until 2014 — and many local administrators say the new benchmarks are impossible for every subgroup at every school to meet."

But if we did not increase the school ((budget** by 11% a year, the school administrators would yell bloody murder.

I teach Math at Egan Jr High in Los Altos. Personally I've got no problem with standards or No Child Left Behind. Math has always been a "standard based" form of learning and NCLB is an attempt to bring our schools in line with those of other countries.

But . . . . . those countries (China and India come to mind) are basing their test results on the top 20 percent of their students -- not the 100 percent that the United States reports on. If we tested only the top 20 percent of our students our results would skyrocket.

If the politicians would look at their source data, NCLB would have been properly written and implemented.

Who could forget the hippie teacher that would take off her shoes in class stink up the classroom, was always late to class cuz she was at 7-11 getting coffee. These kids would be waiting outside for her 15 minutes after class should have started . MVWSD needs a wake up call.

Reader: NCLB doesn't try to increase standards for graduating from high school. It tells schools that have been failing generations of students to improve on a yearly basis. Since in many instances they are doing the complete opposite, it may very well seem like ever-increasing standards ae being created. As Ned suggests, what is really happening is an ever-increasing achievement gap is being created. My only guess for what the system really needs is radical change, a complete paradigm shift, something that these dinosaur administrators would never be able to handle.

Enough- where did I mention High School? The achievement gap has a lot more to do with our English Language Learners and the difficulties they face in testing and far less to do with poor teaching. What we don't need is to have these accountability standards control so much that we stop giving our students Science, Social Studies, Art, Music and Physical Education. The State needs to be given more local control over this unique population. One size does not fit all, nor do we want it to.

Again, our decision to place our children at St. Joseph's Mountain View when Slater was closed is validated. Not only does St. Joseph's meet or beat all standards, we do it with consistantly tighter budgets. St. Joseph's is a K-8 school, so our girls have been able to benefit from an earlier experience with Jr. High resources such as a full science lab, and they have also been able to transition to Jr. High without the trauma of entering a new school environment.

And no, we are not wealthy nor are many of the families there. But we make choices, and have chosen to place our kids' futures ahead of non-essentials. It can be done!