Rodney Frelinghuysen Letter

Congressman Frelinghuysen,

It was my pleasure a few years back as an undergraduate student to meet you while serving on a panel of students at FDU that you debated several issues with, which included No Child Left Behind. After a couple years have passed, and I have become a tenured teacher here in Morris County, I would like to offer a very basic opinion about one aspect of NCLB that I, as an educator, fear is hurtful to our students. The fact of the matter is that I do not feel our students our learning to their max potential. My reason for this thought is that many of my colleagues, due to the stringent guidelines of NCLB, are being forced to teach directly to the many state mandated assessments and are no longer having the opportunity to directly teach to the specific skills and interests of our students. I think that the reason for this is fear that teachers have that is founded in district administrations sent down from the NJ DOE and, even further, from Congress. I would strongly urge you to please vote to revise NCLB to give teachers a bit more leeway in educating so that our students can have a better chance to learn their material.