NCLB Is A BAD LAW: Don't "fully fund it"! Repeal!

[Moses]

Rethinking a Bad Law


My thesis is simple: The No Child Left Behind Act is a bad law, and a bad law is not made better by fully funding it. Let’s see if I can make a convincing argument to support that thesis.

1. School people all over the country are involved in (or have authorized) studies to figure out what this federal law will cost. In some cases, the cost is thought to be so high that it would be better to reject federal funds than to accept them. This point, however, will not clinch my argument, because all laws require funds for implementation, interpretation, and revision. The question remains whether the likely results are worth the cost.

2. The law employs a view of motivation that many of us in education find objectionable. As educators, we would not use threats, punishments, and pernicious comparisons to “motivate” our students. But that is how the No Child Left Behind law treats the school establishment. This powerful objection is still not enough to carry my argument, because there are people—perhaps even a substantial number of educators—who accept the carrot-and-stick theory of motivation. How else, they ask, can you get the kids to master long division and the dates of all our wars? But I hereby register a complaint in the name of those educators who have successfully used more humane methods.

As educators, we would not use threats, punishments, and pernicious comparisons to ‘motivate’ our students. But that is how this law treats the school establishment.

3. The high-stakes testing associated with the law seems to be demoralizing teachers, students, and administrators. We need more documentation on this but, in talking with people all over the country, I hear stories of sick and frightened children, dispirited teachers, and administrators disgusted with the strategies they must use to meet (or evade) AYP, the adequate-yearly-progress requirement. A good law does not demoralize good people.

4. The curriculum seems to be suffering. We need more evidence to state this as fact, but reports from many sources are suggestive. If the No Child Left Behind legislation was designed to provide better schooling, especially for poor and minority students, this result is deeply troubling. For it is the curriculum of these children that seems to have been gutted. Wealthier kids, in schools that don’t have to worry so much about test scores, may still enjoy arts, music, drama, projects, and critical conversation. But poor kids are spending far too much time bent over worksheets and test-prep materials. If this is happening on a wide scale, and if the “No Child” law is directly responsible, my argument is already solid. But there is more.

5. Our poor and minority students are hurt again by the high-stakes testing under No Child Left Behind. Disproportionately, they are the kids who are retained in grade, forced into summer school (for more test prep), beaten down by repeated failure, and deprived of a high school diploma. If we really wanted to help poor, inner-city kids, we would not try to do so by imposing a bad law on everyone. We would identify the problem and muster massive resources to solve it: provide money to renovate crumbling buildings, add clinics (especially dental and vision) to school campuses, provide day care for infants and small children, recruit the finest teachers with significantly higher pay, and even provide boarding facilities for homeless children and those caught in family emergencies. We would establish on-site research-and-development teams (in cooperation with universities) to experiment with, develop, implement, monitor, and evaluate promising practices. Understanding that schools and kids are not all alike, these would be long-term R&D projects serving particular schools—not research projects looking for “what works” universally. We could do these things if we had the will, and if we would stop wasting enormous sums on testing, compliance measures, and the host of activities associated with testing.

6. The law seems to be a corrupting influence. Again, we need more documentation. But reports suggest that cheating has increased at every level, and administrators are busily seeking loopholes, using triage techniques, moving kids around and reclassifying them, playing with data—all to meet the letter of a law whose actual requirements cannot reasonably be met. When a law makes matters worse instead of better, it is time to rethink it. We had to get rid of Prohibition, and we should probably get rid of many of our drug laws, which are obviously a corrupting influence, not a corrective one. If the No Child Left Behind Act is corrupting, we should get rid of it, too.

We should not waste more valuable resources—human and monetary—tinkering with this law. It is a bad law and should be repealed.

---

Nel Noddings is the Lee Jacks professor of education emerita at Stanford University, in Stanford, Calif., and an adjunct professor of philosophy and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City.

— Nel Noddings
Education Week
2005-02-24
tinyurl.com/4ya7d

[Moses]

Amateurs Amok--Call in the Pros

'War is too important to be left to the generals."

So said Georges Clemenceau, twice prime minister of France in the early 20th century. Generals, he thought, were likely to be short on perspective, with imaginations hemmed in by military backgrounds, training and experience.

That possibility notwithstanding, it doesn't take too much digging into history or current events to know that ignoring professional military expertise isn't usually a good idea.

What Clemenceau should have said, then, is "War is too important to be left entirely to generals." Amateurs will sometimes be able to see a problem freshly, but when there's a battle to win, a heart to transplant, a bridge to build, an airliner to fly, deciding whether to go with an amateur or a professional is easy. When a job is difficult and important, we call on professionals.

Except in education. After the publication of A Nation At Risk in 1983, business leaders decided that education was too important to be left to professional educators. So they used their political clout not to help professional educators, but to shove them aside and take over.

The public went along. And goes along. Thoughtful people who'd consider it crazy if politicians told surgeons how to operate, engineers how to build bridges, or airline pilots how to fly, see nothing wrong with educational amateurs in Washington and state capitols running the education show. The nation's governors recently wrapped up this year's education-policy conference, issuing for the umpteenth time their standard education-reform formula: "Raise the bar, especially in math and science."

America is now deep into an amateur-engineered, single-strategy educational experiment. TEST! PASS! FAIL!

Many amateurs think this is a wonderful, long-overdue policy. Indeed, it seems to make so much sense that teachers who question it are likely to be viewed with suspicion. Good teachers, many believe (those deserving to be called professionals) constantly "raise the bar." Good teachers welcome being held accountable. Good teachers aren't overly concerned with students' self-concepts. Good teachers raise test scores.

Professionals know it isn't that simple. To cite a minor example of educational complexity: Professionals know that the areas of the brain that control mathematical thinking usually kick in earlier in boys than in girls -- sometimes as much as four years earlier. Girls eventually catch up, and after about age 12 there's no measurable difference in innate ability, but, in the meantime, there's that third- or fourth-grade standardized test the amateurs have put in place.

So what often happens? Little girls take the test. Then they (and their parents) jump to false conclusions about a lack of mathematical ability, conclusions that may follow them through school and life, forever affecting performance and school and career choices.

An amateur-mandated, high-stakes, standardized test -- a test that ignores male-female differences -- turns what the professional knows is a non-problem into a potentially serious problem.

That kind of thing happens all the time. Amateurs think there's a "standard" level of reading for 9-year-olds. Professionals know better. Amateurs think that kids who can't read "at grade level" can't learn anything else. Professionals know better. Amateurs think test-makers know how to write culture-neutral tests that precisely measure skills and abilities. Professionals know better. Amateurs think hanging negative labels on kids and schools doesn't seriously affect performance. Professionals know better.

Why do the amateur educators in the Business Roundtable and Congress enjoy more respect and influence than professional educators? There's a slew of possible sociological explanations, but a simple one is important. As in everything else, the less known about something, the simpler it seems to be. What separates amateurs and professionals is ignorance of complexity, and when it comes to complexities, every kid in every classroom is a walking bundle of them.

Take the matter of grade retention. Professionals know that "grade level" is an invented, arbitrary idea left over from the school-as-factory era, know that academic gains from grade retention are almost always temporary, know that kids mature at different rates, know that individual differences are America's greatest intellectual asset, know grade repeaters rarely graduate, know we've created no alternative career paths for "non-standard" kids, know that helping helps a lot more when kids don't think they're stupid. And they know this just begins the list of complex issues being ignored by grade-retention legislation.

If the fog of political rhetoric ever lifts and the true state of education in America becomes clear, don't blame the professionals for the chaos. Their opinions have been ignored for years.

---

Marion Brady, a longtime educator, lives in Cocoa. He can be reached at [e-mail]. He wrote this commentary for the Orlando Sentinel.

— Marion Brady
Orlando Sentinel
2005-03-27
tinyurl.com/3lofo

[Moses]

Study Finds Shortcoming in New Law on Education


The academic growth that students experience in a given school year has apparently slowed since the passage of No Child Left Behind, the education law that was intended to achieve just the opposite, a new study has found.

In both reading and math, the study determined, test scores have gone up somewhat, as each class of students outdoes its predecessors. But within grades, students have made less academic progress during the school year than they did before No Child Left Behind went into effect in 2002, the researchers said.

That finding casts doubt on whether schools can meet the law's mandate that all students be academically proficient by 2014. In fact, to realize the goal of universal proficiency, the study said, students will have to make as much as three times the progress they are currently making.

The study was conducted by the Northwest Evaluation Association, which develops tests for about 1,500 school districts in 43 states. To complete it, the group drew upon its test data for more than 320,000 students in 23 states, a sample that it calls "broad but not nationally representative," in part because the biggest cities, not being Northwest clients, were not included.

One of the more ominous findings, the researchers said, is that the achievement gap between white and nonwhite students could soon widen. Closing the gap is one of the driving principles of the law, and so far states say they have made strides toward shrinking it.

But minority students with the same test scores as their white counterparts at the beginning of the school year ended up falling behind by the end of it, the study found. Both groups made academic progress, but the minority students did not make as much, it concluded, an outcome suggesting that the gaps in achievement will worsen.

"Right now it's kind of a hidden effect that we would expect to see expressed in the next couple of years," said Gage Kingsbury, Northwest's director of research. "At that point, I think people will be disappointed with what N.C.L.B. has done."

The findings diverge from those of other recent studies, including a survey last month by the Center on Education Policy, a research group.[not a "research group"-- a political group funded by Bush's political patronage] It found that a significant majority of state education officials reported widespread academic progress and a narrowing of the achievement gap.

"This new study should give everybody pause before they run off and say, 'We're marching to victory,' " said Jack Jennings, the center's president. "Maybe we're not."

Kerri Briggs, a senior policy analyst at the Education Department, said the Northwest study had both encouraging and worrisome aspects, but added that she would have to examine it more closely before passing judgment.

Some critics speculated that because the study lacked data from big cities, which have large populations of minority students and have posted significant gains on test scores in recent years, it might have overstated or mischaracterized what was happening with the achievement gap.

"It's hard to know how much you can extrapolate from this study," said Ross Wiener, policy director for the Education Trust, [another front org] which released its own report in January showing mixed results on student performance and achievement gaps. "I don't think you want to make generalizations about what's going on nationwide."

Still, the Northwest study tracked student performance at a level that others did not, a factor that may help explain why some of its findings appear unorthodox. Rather than relying on test scores at just one point in the year, the Northwest study looked at how students fared in the fall and then again in the spring, in an effort to see how much they had learned during the year.

With this approach, Northwest found that test scores on its exams did, in fact, go up from one year to the next under No Child Left Behind, typically by less than a point. The reason successive classes appear to do a little better than those before them may stem from the fact that younger students have grown up during a time of more regular testing than their immediate predecessors, the researchers said, and are therefore higher achievers. [the entire curriculum being geared to doing well on these tests]

But rising test scores tend to mask how much progress individual students make as they travel through school, the researchers found. Since No Child Left Behind, that individual growth has slowed, possibly because teachers feel compelled to spend the bulk of their time making sure students who are near proficiency make it over the hurdle.

The practice may leave teachers with less time to focus on students who are either far below or far above the proficiency mark, the researchers said, making it less likely for the whole class to move forward as rapidly as before No Child Left Behind set the agenda.

---

— Greg Winter
New York Times
2005-04-13
query.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&tntget=2005/04/13/national/13child.html&tntemail0

[Moses]

Editorial- Iowa

Tough week ahead? Not as tough as a Davenport fourth-grader. These nine- and 10-year-olds carry the weight of Davenport on their small shoulders. No Child Left Behind standardized testing begins Monday. Two Davenport elementaries were labeled failing schools because last year's fourth graders at Buchanan and Hayes schools fell short on math and reading tests. Two others, Jefferson-Edison and Fillmore remain on the list because of poor scores two years ago. That left the district wrongly smeared as one of the worst in the state under the No Child measurements.
This year's fourth-graders have seen their curriculum significantly revamped in order to meet a measurement that means little to them personally. They won't personally pass or fail based on the results of this week's tests. The No Child requirements don't even begin to evaluate science, history, social studies, foreign language or physical education abilities. It won't provide parents with a good evaluation of their children's problem-solving skills, abilities to work with others, innovation capabilities or all the things that go into building life-long learners.

Instead, this week's No Child Left Behind tests will tell bureaucrats and lawmakers in Des Moines and Washington how well these kids do on two hours and 40 minutes of math and reading tests. If the kids do poorly, the entire school and curriculum can be thrown into the hands of state and federal bureaucrats. What will they do? Even they don't know yet. It will cost more, that's for sure. And no one can say today or tomorrow if it will be better or worse overall for these kids. Whatever the bureaucrats come up with, it will be designed solely to beat these tests.
.
Test talks
.
Buchanan Elementary first-year principal Diane Simmons restructured the whole school day to comply with No Child federal requirements. Every classroom had daily focus lessons to drill test-like questions, a couple of which we've shared with you on this page. Mrs. Simmons met individually for "test talks" with each of her 60 fourth-graders to review testing progress and coach them on how to whip this test.
.
Before school began in August, Buchanan's fourth grade teachers identified a dozen kids who scored right below or just above minimum standards as third graders. The teachers talked to parents about making sure these 12 are most prepared. Buchanan's three fourth-grade teachers spent all year giving the kids test-like questions. Since the beginning of December, they've drilled the kids on using No. 2 pencils to fill in dots.
.
Beat the test
.
It's been an eye-opener to new teachers Sarah Mullins and Stephanie Graap. Graap says nothing in her $42,000 St. Ambrose University bachelor's of education program prepared her for this intense, beat-the-test focus. St. Ambrose emphasized hands-on learning and Graap would love to incorporate cooking into her classroom to teach fractions, measurements, science, geography and project planning. That's what she learned to do in teaching school.
.
No time for that with No Child.
.
Mullins, in her second year of teaching, recalls her University of Northern Iowa program that taught her ways to assess and tailor instruction to each student's individual abilities. "We were taught to create individual portfolios for each individual student's achievement," she sayd. "This is not individual achievement."
.
The two work with veteran fourth-grade teacher Bekky Anderson to implement the test-driven curriculum they believe will get Buchanan off the No Child failure list. All have faith in their principal Simmons and her plan to beat the No Child tests this year.
.
Good enough for Washington
.
These fourth-graders' performance matters to every Davenport student, parent and teacher. But the outcome also matters to any homeowner, business owner, or taxpayer. These fourth graders will determine if you live in a town with good schools or failing schools. That single designation can define a town and affect property values as much as any marketing campaign.
.
The teachers are confident their kids know the material. What they can't know is if one student might have a cold and be distracted by sniffles. Perhaps another bursts with anticipation of a birthday party. Or another's hamster just died. Adolescent life can be a rollercoaster of emotion, and that's one reason why contemporary education theory emphasizes using more sophisticated, accurate assessments that can't be swayed by one bad day.
.
Not No Child. The bureaucrats and congressmen who pushed No Child on our nation don't understand all the complex stuff that Graap and Mullins learned in Iowa's best teaching programs.
.
From Washington, a one-size-fits-none assessment at one grade level is good enough.

---

— Editorial
Quad-City Times
2005-04-16
www.qctimes.com/internal.php?story_id=1049390&t=Opinion&c=22,1049390