I just read four interesting and varying articles for my Foundations class. Reading these articles really makes me think about what I believe and what I have seen already in the schools I have worked in. I do believe that children should attend their neighborhood schools and I also believe they should be in the least restrictive environment . How to make this happen becomes the problem. We have to balance the needs of all the children. If a child causes problems in a school that disrupts or even endangers other children we need to consider how to meet that child's needs without hampering the needs of the other children. That is the hard part. Every child deserves the best education we can give them, but how do we best do that. The government has given us No Child Left Behind. This is suppose to help us identify which schools are making progress and which are not. From my view point all NCLB has done is; stress the teacher, steal instructional time and lower the self esteem of kids who don't pass. It does not help design good curriculum or measure the progress of individual students. What we need the government to do is help with funding. We need good curriculum that has assessments build in. We need testing that shows the students progress and measures each student against themselves. A kind of PR for reading , writing and math. When we get proper curriculum and measurements then we can start meeting the needs of each student, The RTI model helps all kids achieve. It helps us reach kids at their level. It allows us to step in and help a student progress. Then reevaluate the student decide if more help is needed or if the help can be reduced. The best part about this process is that it can be done over and over again as needed.