States can now apply to opt out of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), thanks to a new executive order that President Obama signed last month -- and they're lining up in droves to ditch the program.

It's no wonder almost 30 states have already said they're going to leave NCLB in their dust. In the 10 years since President Bush signed the NCLB Act -- setting rigid but underfunded national standards for public schools -- the program has drawn criticism for countless reasons. A few things come to mind when most of us think of NCLB:

- Mathreadingmathreadingmathreadingmath... - It narrowed the scope of our schools to focus almost solely on math and reading -- two immensely important skills, for sure. But it was at the expense of science, health, history, the arts, and physical education, which are constantly on the chopping block come budget time because they don't help schools meet NCLB standards. Speaking of those standards...

L. is graduating from elementary school on Thursday.

This Thursday.

Although, as I found out yesterday from L.'s resource teacher, we're not supposed to call Thursday's event a graduation, but a celebration. There's a statewide public school rule, apparently, that the term graduation should be reserved for high school events, lest parents and kids get the impression that 5th grade is an acceptable end-of-the-road stopping point, education-wise. 

Yesterday morning, when L. was dragging his feet and hanging his head low (I was kind of dragging my feet and hanging my head low, too--it was Monday, after all) about going  to school I reminded him that this would be his last Monday morning of elementary school ever. He perked up at that. I can't wait until it's over, he said. I know he'll be glad, but I also know that he's scared inside, too, about leaving the school that has been such a part of his life for all these years. It's embedded into him, like a splinter. This isn't a happy analogy, I know, but I don't have a happy analogy for what elementary school has been for L., for all of us--for what it has done to him, to all of us.

Because I know that leaving will be hard, I'm also trying to help L. say good-bye to the place, in positive ways, so that he's not leaving this school awash in relief and bitter regret.

Actually, maybe that's just what I'm feeling, relief and bitter regret. I try hard not to impose my own feelings onto L., and I don't think I ever do that, but I have to be careful because I know my feelings as a parent could be very different from L.'s feelings as the child.

A few weeks ago, when I was driving L. to school, I asked him how he felt about the end of school. He was in a relaxed, talkative mood, and it didn't take him long to answer.

Back when we were filling out school applications for L. for next year, we also decided to throw a few into the mix for T., because we like to complicte things, I suppose. We are pleased with her school experience overall, but not with this school year. Maybe it's just one year, we told ourselves, and next will be better. But we learned the hard way with L. that sometimes things just don't get better.

This is an easy activity you can do with any child old enough to answer. You can do the writing, or they can or like my 4 year old and I share the task. Grab a piece of paper or note card, pencil and start answering these easy questions that  introduce your children to resolutions.

First Review The Last Year

1.What was the best part of 2010?

2. What was the worst part?

Next Write What You Want 2011 To Have

1. What do you want to happen this year?

2. What would make 2011 even better than 2010?

This is the time of the semester when I get desperate. I pull out all the stops when it comes to begging and pleading with my students to get it all together in time for final exams, which are only three weeks away. I try and weave inspirational stories into my lesson plans; I become more of a motivational speaker/coach and I expend vast amounts of energy trying to get my students across the finish line.

Some will make it, others will not.

We had a big day on Friday: meet-the-teacher at L.'s school, and then off to mega super store for school supplies shopping. I'm usually the one who ends up shopping for school supplies, but this time T. and I headed off to a toy store to buy a birthday present for our neighbor, and I left Scott to work on the supplies.

"Does it always cost this much?" he asked me when we met up again at the checkout. L. was dancing with excitement--for years, school supplies have been the only truly good part of this back-to-school business.

Do you know how sometimes you can have pent-up nerves and worries about something and not truly know you have them until the nerves and worries vanish, popping like a balloon? Only then can you exhale and realize that they were there, wrapping themselves around your mind and heart, like some stubborn vine.

Years ago, when we lived in our old neighborhood, we visited the base school there as part of our kindergarten shopping for L. The school was nice, and clean, but large; still, we had an open mind. Part of the “plug” or gimmick, if you want to call it that (we have grown very wary of all the gimmicks so many of the magnet schools offer in our particular county—each one with a new and interesting spin on education and learning.

On my way to my car yesterday, feeling grouchy and deflated, and after a full day of two long back-to-back meetings (I love my job, but I wish the powers-that-be would understand that a week of meetings and workshops right after a long and grueling semester is just not going to sit well with most people) I fell into step with an older woman headed to her car. I'd seen her around, and didn't know her, but she started talking with me anyway. She was headed out of state for a job, and to go to night school, after quitting her current job cold turkey and doing an about-face career change.

In the walk-up line yesterday afternoon a mom and I talked about how we thought our kids had fared (they both don't test well) on the EOGs earlier that day. We were hopeful, nervous, sympathetic. The topic of the potential re-testing came up and she told me her son was most nervous about the possibility of having to take the tests over again, in a matter of days.