NO NCLB.org

2010-08-28T07:55:00.005-08:00

Sorry I have not updated this in a long time. Right now my school is finally being hit hard by this test, test, test mentality. So I am busy with that. You can visit my classroom website here: Mr. F's Class https://sites.google.com/site/mrfsclass/home

Exit Strategies: Finding the way out of Iraq and NCLB

2007-06-07T14:33:00.000-08:00

School is out. I am done with my one credit art class and I am hoping to do a lot more posting from here on out. Thanks to all of you who have been visiting and reading, even though my posting has been sporadic this last year.

The above article appears in this month Rethinking Schools. I believe it is one of the most important articles I have run across in a long time. Read it! A quick excerpt from a very long article:

...speaking to an audience of teachers in New Hampshire last March, Clinton passionately bashed NCLB. "While the children are getting good at filling in all those little bubbles, what exactly are they really learning?" she asked. "How much creativity are we losing? How much of our children's passion is being killed?" She also denounced NCLB's supplemental tutoring sanctions which funnel federal funds to largely unregulated private providers, declaring, "This is Halliburton all over again ...We have these contracts going to these cronies who are chosen largely on a political basis, and we have nothing to show for it."

Tough words. But Clinton voted for the law in 2001. In fact she helped lay the groundwork for it by supporting two decades of summits and business roundtables that enshrined top-down standards and tests as the keys to school improvement. Clinton has blamed all NCLB's failures on mismanagement and underfunding from the Bush Administration, but when not on the stump, she admits she'll vote for reauthorizing it with vague allusion to unspecified "improvements." Maybe Clinton still thinks it "takes a village to raise a child," but so far she's mainly voted for giving them tests.

Similarly, Obama tells his audiences, "No Child Left Behind left the money behind." But he also talks about "the things that were good about No Child Left Behind," like high standards "because U.S. children will have to compete for jobs with students from countries with more rigorous schools." Obama has flirted with vouchers ("I am not close-minded on this issue.") and merit pay, declaring teachers have "got to get more pay, but there's also going to be more accountability...the accountability can't just be based on standardized test performance only, but that has to be part of the mix..."

This is not to minimize the very real differences that are certain to emerge among parties and candidates over education issues including college aid, vouchers, federal funding levels, and other matters. But the overwhelming federal education issue is NCLB and the test-and-punish regime it's imposing from Washington on every school and district in the country. The heart of any "peace proposal" to end this "war on the public schools" must be an end to the federal mandate to test every student every year in every grade from 3 to 8 and once in high school. But so far the presidential candidates don't seem to get it.

NCLB's "escalation" of testing has forced schools to give some 65 million mandated tests on top of the millions they were already giving. When the law was passed in 2002, 19 states gave annual reading and math tests in grades 3 through 8. Today, under federal mandate, all 50 do. Thanks to NCLB, a large, diverse K-8 school now has 240 ways to fail every year. (The number will rise if a proposal to count the new science tests passes.[1])

The tests themselves have become a major obstacle to improving struggling schools. They are not providing useful data for better instruction; they are providing junk data for bad policy or telling us what we already know: that public schools are swamped by the same inequality that exists all around them. Testing every kid every year and measuring the results against benchmarks that no real schools have ever met is not an "accountability" system. It's an enabling instrument for imposing privatizing sanctions and pushing more democratic and promising school improvement strategies to the sidelines. One activist compared NCLB's out-of-control testing plague to the difference between giving a patient a blood test and draining the patient's blood.

If the real goal was tracking the limited range of achievement progress that standardized tests can capture and spotlighting gaps among student groups, states could develop variations of the sampling techniques the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has used for years. (In fact Maryland did this until NCLB's testing requirements killed it.) Often called the "nation's report card," NAEP provides comparative data about schools and groups across states and grade levels without testing every student every year. And while there are limits and problems with NAEP, as there are with all standardized tests, the use of sampling and restrictions on using the data to impose high stakes penalties on individual students and schools suggest ways to avoid the suffocating nightmare that NCLB's adequate yearly progress system has become. (In contrast, there are those who would like to make NAEP a universal national test tied to national curriculum standards, part of what education reporter John Merrow calls a "surge strategy for NCLB" recommended by Republican candidate and former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson among others.)

Rolling back NCLB's testing mandates and ending the link between test scores and punitive sanctions are the minimum but mandatory exit strategies for getting out of the NCLB mess. Yet Clinton and Obama have had little specific to say about these crucial details, even though they're both on the Senate Education Committee that's handling NCLB's reauthorization. (So far neither has responded publicly to a February letter sent by ten Democratic Senators to Education Committee Chairman Ted Kennedy declaring that, "We have concluded that the testing mandates of No Child Left Behind in their current form are unsustainable and must be overhauled significantly during the reauthorization process beginning this year." (Obama signed a similar letter in 2006.)

To be sure, other strategies will be needed to tackle the very real problems of struggling schools that NCLB has ignored or made worse. (For some specifics, see the recommendations from the Forum On Educational Accountability.) But as with Iraq, the first step toward a saner policy on NCLB is for would-be leaders to listen to the growing grassroots chorus calling on them to reverse the failing policies that helped create the mess we're in.

No Child Left Behind leaves School District behind

2007-04-05T08:47:00.000-08:00

I can't believe that it has been two weeks since I last posted! It will begin to be even less now that I am losing my student teacher soon. Anyway, here is a comment from an Alaskan superintendent that appeared in the Anchorage Daily News yesterday. The man makes lots of sense! Some excerpts:

There is a significant argument in the halls of Congress whether the choice facing No Child Left Behind is either to "take immediate bold steps to accelerate progress in education" or "jeopardize the future of our nation's children and our competitiveness in the global economy by maintaining the status quo."

However, I believe these are not the only two choices. Each choice ignores what public schools are actually good at: local control, creativity, collaboration, entrepreneurship, innovation and creating global citizens.

NCLB encourages teaching to the test, teaching test-taking skills and limiting curricula to the teaching of reading, math and science at the expense of civics, history, career and technical education, music, art, physical education and health, which are essential to the success of our graduates.

As Sandra Day O'Connor recently stated, "to survive as a nation, it is vital that our schools teach, and our children understand, our system of government."

In order for this to happen, our students must be engaged in the governance of our schools and in their lives before graduation.

The national curriculum standards are limited by the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Local districts should decide on curricula to prepare American students to be productive citizens in a global economy.

One thing is clear, and that is, the federal government is an inefficient national credentialing body for the nation's teaching force. The proposed federal standards should be opposed as inappropriate, mathematically flawed and ill-advised additional unfunded mandates for the states.

...

We must move away from coercion, sanction and punishment and move toward collaboration, authenticity and trust.

We do need better quality assessments that can inform instruction as well as more comprehensive data systems. The growth model would replace arbitrary caps that ignore the IEP, or Individualized Education Plan, process, individual student needs and school and district characteristics. This will allow local school boards, teachers and principals to focus seriously on the individual needs of special education students and English language learners.

It is clear that the Title I sanctions of choice and supplemental services are failed federal schemes. We should be focused single-mindedly on improving learning for all children but especially for those with the greatest needs.

This requires more support, not sanctions. A mere 1 percent of eligible students have ever used the choice options. The supplemental Education Services program, while slightly more popular, has been plagued with lack of capacity, inappropriate recruiting, inadequate information, no clear method to track impact and lots of finger-pointing by everyone involved.

Failed experiments should be discontinued, not rewarded with additional funding and support. Title I sanctions should be dropped entirely.

I oppose increased federal involvement in high school assessments. It is inappropriate to take money from Career and Technical Education programs (Carl Perkins grants) to pay for additional high school assessments, and thus require high schools to do more bureaucratic paperwork without any indication it will actually help student learning.

Current funding for CTE is inadequate even though these programs are effective, popular and have far more ability to prepare students for a global economy than increased testing ever could.

In conclusion, Congress should amend NCLB to allow a more appropriate federal role in education with accurate and instructionally sensitive accountability focused on individual student learning.
...

In the No Child Left Behind Shuffle You Can't Tell the Players with a Program

2007-03-21T13:21:00.000-08:00

From Gerald Bracey come this view of some of the players in the NCLB drama...

n the surface, the No Child Left Behind law reflected an orgy of bi-partisanship, passing Congress 487-48. In January, 2002, President Bush eschewed the usual Rose Garden fanfare and flew to Hamilton High School, Hamilton, Ohio where he signed the bill flanked by George Miller (D-Ca.), Teddie Kennedy (D-Ma.), Judd Gregg (R-Vt.), and John Boehner (R-Oh.) (Hamilton is in Boehner's district; in addition, Boehner had tried on six separate occasions to get vouchers back into the bill).

At this ceremony, less than three months after 9/11, the applause Bush received was described as "deafening." Later in the day, Bush went with Kennedy and Gregg to related celebrations in Massachusetts and Vermont.

Fissures in the unanimity façade soon appeared. The bill was not two weeks old when Democrats attacked it as underfunded. "It's really a 'left no money behind for education budget'" groused Miller. Kennedy said Bush had betrayed him.

Now, with the law up for reauthorization, the cracks that were there all along have widened as various posses ride off in all directions, including some surprising ones. Miller, who, I am told, is a real hardass on school accountability, wants to reauthorize the bill with little or no change. Bush and Ed. Secretary Spellings have forcefully argued for reauthorization although it is not clear how strong their voices will be when push comes to shove.

Other players include the Chamber of Commerce and the Center for American Progress whose unholy alliance was discussed in my blog "The Center for American Progress: Progressively Regressive?" At the Center, education is honchoed by Cindy Brown, a steering committee member on the Chapter 1 Commission that reported out in 1992. That report essentially described NCLB without all the punitive specifics. But it was all there--adequate yearly progress, results-based accountability, choice, closing or restructuring low-performing schools, etc. It just sat there waiting for Bush adviser Sandy Kress and Spellings with the help of Education Trust head, Kati Haycock, to put the nasty touches on it (In a recent interview with Education Next, Kress thanked the Trust for being such a courageous ally). Haycock was also on the steering committee of the Chapter 1 Commission. While 9 of the 28 members filed minority dissents, Haycock and Brown were not among them.

On a path that might be either tangential, parallel or orthogonal to NCLB, is a bill by Chris Dodd and Vernon Ehlers that would establish national standards in reading, math and science and then require the National Assessment Governing Board, a gang that has never shot straight on standards in the past, to develop tests to measure the standards. These tests would replace the state-developed tests now in use. Everything would be "voluntary," of course.

On February 15, 2007, ten Democratic Senators, led by Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, wrote to Kennedy and other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee that while they support school accountability, "We have concluded that the testing mandates of No Child Left Behind in their current form are unsustainable and must be overhauled significantly during the reauthorization period beginning this year." They offered a series of changes to make the law more "sensible."

The most surprising development--certainly to Bush--is the revolt by 57 members of the House and Senate. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), a longtime opponent introduced a bill that would let states opt out of many of the testing provisions, something that on the surface would appear to render the Dodd-Ehlers bill moot. "So many people are frustrated with the shackles of NCLB," said Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C). House Minority Whip, Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who voted for the law first time around now opposes it because, he said, it shifted "control of public schools to the federal government more dramatically than he ever imagined."

No doubt with a twinkle in his eye, the Washington Post's Amit Paley wrote "In an unusual show of bipartisan cooperation, Democrats and the White House attacked the GOP critics' legislation." Paley quoted Miller, "Rather than work with us in a constructive way to improve this law, this group of Republican lawmakers is trying to dismantle it." California scores at or near the bottom on NAEP tests. Does Miller truly believe NCLB will do something about that?

Fordham Foundation's Mike Petrilli, at the Department of Education when the law was first enacted said "Republicans voted for NCLB holding their noses. But now with the president so politically weak, conservatives can vote their conscience." (How Bush must envy Putin these days; in their race to see who will be the 21st century's tsar, it's no contest).

Hoekstra's bill sent Washington Post editors howling: "The proposal would let the states choose whether to meet federal testing mandates--and, incredibly, allow them to tap into millions of dollars of federal education money without ever having to show any results" (hey, just like the Supplemental Educational Services providers do now). That the New York Times didn't emit a similar squeal can only mean that Brent Staples is on vacation.

Fasten your seat belts.

Joint Organizational Statement on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act

2007-03-20T13:37:00.000-08:00

This is a little old but it is important, especially since both the NEA and AFT have signed up for it. Personally I would still just like to get rid of it or as the some republicans said the other day, just allow states to opt out, (but without the choice provisions...

The undersigned education, civil rights, children's, disability, and citizens' organizations are committed to the No Child Left Behind Act's objectives of strong academic achievement for all children and closing the achievement gap. We believe that the federal government has a critical role to play in attaining these goals. We endorse the use of an accountability system that helps ensure all children, including children of color, from low-income families, with disabilities, and of limited English proficiency, are prepared to be successful, participating members of our democracy.

While we all have different positions on various aspects of the law, based on concerns raised during the implementation of NCLB, we believe the following significant, constructive corrections are among those necessary to make the Act fair and effective. Among these concerns are: over-emphasizing standardized testing, narrowing curriculum and instruction to focus on test preparation rather than richer academic learning; over-identifying schools in need of improvement; using sanctions that do not help improve schools; inappropriately excluding low-scoring children in order to boost test results; and inadequate funding. Overall, the law's emphasis needs to shift from applying sanctions for failing to raise test scores to holding states and localities accountable for making the systemic changes that improve student achievement.

Recommended Changes in NCLB

Progress Measurement

1. Replace the law's arbitrary proficiency targets with ambitious achievement targets based on rates of success actually achieved by the most effective public schools.

2. Allow states to measure progress by using students' growth in achievement as well as their performance in relation to pre-determined levels of academic proficiency.

3. Ensure that states and school districts regularly report to the government and the public their progress in implementing systemic changes to enhance educator, family, and community capacity to improve student learning.

4. Provide a comprehensive picture of students' and schools' performance by moving from an overwhelming reliance on standardized tests to using multiple indicators of student achievement in addition to these tests.

5. Fund research and development of more effective accountability systems that better meet the goal of high academic achievement for all children.

Assessments

6. Help states develop assessment systems that include district and school-based measures in order to provide better, more timely information about student learning.

7. Strengthen enforcement of NCLB provisions requiring that assessments must:

Be aligned with state content and achievement standards;
Be used for purposes for which they are valid and reliable;
Be consistent with nationally recognized professional and technical standards;
Be of adequate technical quality for each purpose required under the Act;
Provide multiple, up-to-date measures of student performance including measures that assess higher order thinking skills and understanding; and
Provide useful diagnostic information to improve teaching and learning.

8. Decrease the testing burden on states, schools and districts by allowing states to assess students annually in selected grades in elementary, middle schools, and high schools.

Building Capacity

9. Ensure changes in teacher and administrator preparation and continuing professional development that research evidence and experience indicate improve educational quality and student achievement.

10. Enhance state and local capacity to effectively implement the comprehensive changes required to increase the knowledge and skills of administrators, teachers, families, and communities to support high student achievement.

Sanctions

11. Ensure that improvement plans are allowed sufficient time to take hold before applying sanctions; sanctions should not be applied if they undermine existing effective reform efforts.

12. Replace sanctions that do not have a consistent record of success with interventions that enable schools to make changes that result in improved student achievement.

Funding

13. Raise authorized levels of NCLB funding to cover a substantial percentage of the costs that states and districts will incur to carry out these recommendations, and fully fund the law at those levels without reducing expenditures for other education programs.

14. Fully fund Title I to ensure that 100 percent of eligible children are served.

We, the undersigned, will work for the adoption of these recommendations as central structural changes needed to NCLB at the same time that we advance our individual organization's proposals.

Advancement Project
American Association of School Administrators
American Association of School Librarians (AASL), a division of the American Library Association (ALA)
American Association of University Women
American Baptist Women's Ministries
American Counseling Association
American Dance Therapy Association
American Federation of School Administrators (AFSA)
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)
American Humanist Association
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
Americans for the Arts
Annenberg Institute for School Reform
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
ASPIRA
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)
Association of Education Publishers
Association of School Business Officials International (ASBO)
Big Picture Company
Center for Community Change
Center for Expansion of Language and Thinking
Center for Parent Leadership
Children's Aid Society
Children's Defense Fund
Church Women United
Coalition for Community Schools
Citizens for Effective Schools
Council of Administrators of Special Education, Inc.
Coalition of Essential Schools
Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism
Communities for Quality Education
Council for Children with Behavioral Disorders
Council for Exceptional Children
Council for Hispanic Ministries of the United Church of Christ
Council for Learning Disabilities
Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform
Disciples Home Missions of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Disciples Justice Action Network (Disciples of Christ)
Division for Learning Disabilities of the Council for Exceptional Children (DLD/CEC)
Education Action!
Episcopal Church
Every Child Matters
FairTest: The National Center for Fair & Open Testing
Forum for Education and Democracy
Hmong National Development
Institute for Language and Education Policy
International Reading Association
International Technology Education Association
Japanese American Citizens League
Learning Disabilities Association of America
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)
Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic justice of the United Church or Christ
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF)
National Alliance of Black School Educators
National Association for Asian and Pacific American Education (NAAPAE)
National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE)
National Association for the Education and Advancement of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese Americans (NAFEA)
National Association for the Education of African American Children with Learning Disabilities (NAEAACLD)
National Association of Pupil Service Administrators
National Association of School Psychologists
National Association of Social Workers
National Baptist Convention, USA (NBCUSA)
National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development
National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education (NCPIE)
National Conference of Black Mayors
National Council for Community and Education Partnerships (NCCEP)
National Council for the Social Studies
National Council of Churches
National Council of Jewish Women
National Council of Teachers of English
National Education Association
National Federation of Filipino American Associations
National Indian Education Association
National Indian School Board Association
National Korean American Service & Education Consortium (NAKASEC)
National Mental Health Association
National Ministries, American Baptist Churches USA
National Parent Teacher Association (PTA)
National Reading Conference
National Rural Education Association
National School Boards Association
National School Supply and Equipment Association
National Superintendents Roundtable
National Urban League
Native Hawaiian Education Association
Network of Spiritual Progressives
People for the American Way
Presbyterian Church (USA)
Progressive National Baptist Convention
Protestants for the Common Good
Rural School and Community Trust
Service Employees International Union
School Social Work Association of America
Social Action Committee of the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations
Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC)
Stand for Children
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)
United Black Christians of the United Church of Christ
United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries
United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society
USAction
Women's Division of the General Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church
Women of Reform Judaism

The Center May Not Hold for NCLB

2007-03-19T11:56:00.000-08:00

From US New and World report comes this is good news, at least I think it's good news...

Five years ago, after then House Majority Whip Tom DeLay entered his first vote for President Bush's No Child Left Behind bill, he went on Rush Limbaugh's radio program and apologized.

"I'm ashamed to say it was just blatant politics," he said. "I can't even remember another time I've actually voted against my principles." (He eventually voted against the final bill.)

Today, Bush's signature education law is up for renewal, but Republican loyalty like DeLay's will be harder to come by. Rep. Roy Blunt, the new No. 2 Republican in the House, yesterday joined a group of 57 GOP lawmakers in a revolt. Sens. Mel Martinez and Jon Kyl, the chairs of the Republican National Committee and the Senate Republican Conference, also signed on. Like DeLay, both Blunt and Kyl had supported the law in 2001.

What's changed?

"Bush had a lot of political capital then," says Joel Packer, a lobbyist for the National Education Association. "Now, I think [these Republicans] are all feeling–I'd use the word liberated."

...

But the mutiny is against more than Bush. It is also against the law itself. In just five years, the law has transformed public education, giving the federal government more say over what and how children learn than perhaps ever before. To maintain federal funding, all levels have had to change practice: States have had to develop detailed math and reading standards for third through eighth grade, teachers have had to devote weeks of their school year to testing those standards, and schools have had to live by the tests' consequences, facing sticks like forced restructuring or mandatory after-school tutoring if their students don't perform.
...

Worse yet for Bush, Democrats, the new majority party on Capitol Hill, are also skeptical.

Sending a letter pleading for more flexibility to his Democratic colleagues, Sen. Russ Feingold cited his state of Wisconsin.

"There is growing frustration around the country about NCLB," he said. "It is our responsibility to ensure that those voices are heard."

...

Yesterday's concessions have become today's stubborn demands for reform. Some Republicans, like Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, want to hand control of education back to the states and add in private-school vouchers, opportunities to send kids in low-performing public schools to private school on the federal government's dime. Should Congress continue with NCLB, Hoekstra said yesterday in introducing new legislation, "we will soon have federal government schools."

Democrats, meanwhile, have focused their complaints once again on funding and testing. Sen. Christopher Dodd, with the strong support of the National Education Association, is now working on a bill that would inject significant flexibility into the law, probably at the cost of the strict accountability definitions the Bush administration and the Senate's Democratic leadership support. Nine Democratic senators joined Feingold in his letter last month, outlining concerns about insufficient funding and excessive mandates...

One can only continue to hope.

Oversight Is Set for Beleaguered U.S. Reading Program

2007-03-15T10:57:00.000-08:00

In the, we can only hope that something good will come from this department, come this from the NYT...

WASHINGTON, March 14 — Under attack for improprieties uncovered in its showcase literacy program for low-income children, the Department of Education will convene an outside advisory committee to oversee the program, known as Reading First, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said Wednesday...

One can only wonder what that will look like...
...

After Ms. Spellings left the hearing, Robert Slavin of Johns Hopkins University, whose Success for All reading program was shut out of many states under Reading First, said he did not think the secretary’s promises went far enough. “I haven’t seen the slightest glimmer of even intention to change,” Dr. Slavin said.

Because schools had already chosen their readng curriculums, promises to clean up Reading First now meant little, he said. He compared them to finding eight innings into a baseball game with a score of 23 to 0 that the opposing team had been playing with cork bats.

“Then they say, ‘From now on, we’re using honest bats.’ ” Dr. Slavin said. “I’m sorry, it’s 23 to nothing. You can’t just say, ‘From now on.’ ”

...

With only two Education Department employees in charge of the vast program, the administration relied largely on private contractors to advise states on their applications for grants, screen products for scientific validity and weigh applications. The inspector general found that several of these contractors wrote reading programs and testing instruments that were competing for money, and that they gave preference to products to which they had ties.

Ms. Spellings has maintained, and said again under questioning Wednesday, that the problems with Reading First occurred before she became education secretary.

She denied accusations from a former political appointee at the department, Michael Petrilli, who said she had essentially run Reading First from her post as domestic policy adviser at the White House...

We will wait and see...

Dozens in GOP Turn Against Bush's Prized 'No Child' Act

2007-03-15T10:42:00.000-08:00

From WaPo

More than 50 GOP members of the House and Senate -- including the House's second-ranking Republican -- will introduce legislation today that could severely undercut President Bush's signature domestic achievement, the No Child Left Behind Act, by allowing states to opt out of its testing mandates...

But read further to find the real motivation...
...

Under Hoekstra's bill, any state could essentially opt out of No Child Left Behind after one of two actions. A state could hold a referendum, or two of three elected entities -- the governor, the legislature and the state's highest elected education official -- could decide that the state would no longer abide by the strict rules on testing and the curriculum.

The Senate bill is slightly less permissive, but it would allow a state to negotiate a "charter" with the federal government to get away from the law's mandates.

In both cases, the states that opt out would still be eligible for federal funding, but strictures...

Did you catch that, they would opt out and under the senate bill they could "negotiate a 'charter,'" sounds like a sneaky way to privitization? And what exactly does, "those states could exempt any education program but special education from No Child Left Behind" mean? But there is more...

...

"So many people are frustrated with the shackles of No Child Left Behind," DeMint said. "I don't think anyone argues with measuring what we're doing, but the fact is, even the education community . . . sees us just testing, testing, testing, and reshaping the curriculum so we look good."

We certainly agree with that!

...

Republican lawmakers involved in crafting the new legislation say Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and other administration officials have moved in recent days to tamp down dissent within the GOP. Since January, Spellings has met or spoken with about 40 Republican lawmakers on the issue, said Katherine McLane, the Education Department's press secretary.

"We've made a lot of progress in the past five years in serving the children who have traditionally been underserved in our education system," McLane said. "Now is not the time to roll back the clock on those children."

But so far, the administration's efforts have borne little fruit, Republican critics said.

"Republicans voted for No Child Left Behind holding their noses," said Michael J. Petrilli, an Education Department official during Bush's first term who is now a critic of the law. "But now with the president so politically weak, conservatives can vote their conscience."

It all gets curiouser and curiouser.

Guatemalan Teachers: No Privatization

2007-03-15T09:11:00.000-08:00

What will happen in the US when this happens here? I wonder...

Guatemala, Mar 14 (Prensa Latina) Teachers took to the streets of Guatemala City on Wednesday to demand socioeconomic improvements and protest government plans to privatize education.

At least 10,000 teachers took part in the largest demonstration of the year, staged from the Ministry of Education to the Congress of the Republic.

Union leader Hugo Efrain Bareda described a government-promoted Education Reform bill currently under discussion in Congress as a violation of the Constitution.

Romualdo Maldonado, from the teachers union in western Quetzaltenango, said the education reform is part of neoliberal measures to curb the State s role.

Guatemala has about 90,000 state teachers in the 17,000 public schools countrywide.

State teachers have declared themselves in permanent assembly and threatened new steps if the government fails to back down from its neoliberal, privatizing program.

'No Child' target is called out of reach

2007-03-14T15:11:00.000-08:00

From MSNBC:

"There is a zero percent chance that we will ever reach a 100 percent target," said Robert L. Linn, co-director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA. "But because the title of the law is so rhetorically brilliant, politicians are afraid to change this completely unrealistic standard. They don't want to be accused of leaving some children behind."
...
...critics face an uphill challenge because of the rhetorical power of the argument for a universal proficiency target and a deadline. Anything less, advocates say, will hurt children, especially society's most vulnerable: poor and minority students.

...

President Bush is pushing this year for reauthorization of one of his top domestic programs. In a joint House-Senate hearing yesterday, senior Democrats and Republicans said they would work toward renewal of the law. But in interviews in the days before the hearing, some key lawmakers said that universal proficiency is all but impossible to meet.

"The idea of 100 percent is, in any legislation, not achievable," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate education committee. "There isn't a member of Congress or a parent or a student that doesn't understand that."

Kennedy added that the law's universal proficiency standard served to inspire students and teachers. But "it's too early in the process to predict whether we'll consider changes" to the 2014 deadline, he said.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a former U.S. education secretary and supporter of the law, said Americans don't want politicians to lower standards.

"Are we going to rewrite the Declaration of Independence and say only 85 percent of men are created equal?" Alexander asked. "Most of our politics in America is about the disappointment of not meeting the high goals we set for ourselves."

...

...testing experts say there are vast academic differences among children of the same racial or socioeconomic background. Countries with far less racial diversity than the United States still find wide variations in student performance. Even in relatively homogenous Singapore, for example, a world leader in science and math tests, a quarter of the students tested are not proficient in math, and 49 percent fall short in science.

"Most people are afraid that once you acknowledge this variation, then you have to tolerate major inequities between black and white students," said Daniel Koretz, a Harvard University education professor. "That's not necessarily true, but that's why the political world does not really address the issue."

Although no major school system is known to have reached 100 percent proficiency, Education Department officials pointed to individual schools across the country that have reached the standard as evidence that it is possible. In Virginia, schools have achieved universal proficiency on reading and math tests 45 times since 2002, officials said.

The only school they cited in the Washington region as having met that mark was the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, a regional school with selective admissions. Principal Evan M. Glazer said his school, which has an elite reputation, was hardly a representative example. On whether the nation can replicate that success, Glazer said: "I don't think it's very realistic."

Fairfax County School Superintendent Jack D. Dale said it was "absurd" to expect total proficiency, especially when federal officials require immigrant children who have been in U.S. schools for little more than a year to meet the standard. His 164,000-student system, the largest in the Washington region, is sparring with the Education Department over the immigrant testing rule.

Education at Risk

2007-03-13T10:12:00.000-08:00

This is a long and important article from Edutopia. Please read the whole thing but here are my excerpts...

Nearly a quarter century ago, "A Nation at Risk" hit our schools like a brick dropped from a penthouse window. One problem: The landmark document that still shapes our national debate on education was misquoted, misinterpreted, and often dead wrong...
...

In short, it's never really a choice between supporting or rejecting school reform. It is, or should be, a choice between this reform and that reform. Yet today, a movement that stretches back several decades has narrowed us down to a single set of take- 'em-or-leave-'em initiatives. How did this happen?

Well, it didn't "just happen." What we now call school reform isn't the product of a gradual consensus emerging among educators about how kids learn; it's a political movement that grew out of one seed planted in 1983. I became aware of this fact some years ago, when I started writing about education issues and found that every reform initiative I read about -- standards, testing, whatever -- referred me back to a seminal text entitled "A Nation at Risk."

Naturally, I assumed this bible of school reform was a scientific research study full of charts and data that proved something. Yet when I finally looked it up, I found a thirtypage political document issued by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, a group convened by Ronald Reagan's secretary of education, Terrell Bell.

...

In this anxious context, Bell put together an eighteenmember commission to report on the quality of education in America. Through the U.S. Department of Education's

National Commission on Excellence in Education, he hoped to link the country's economic woes to the state of our schools. Bell got all he wanted and more.

When the report was released in April 1983, it claimed that American students were plummeting academically, that schools suffered from uneven standards, and that teachers were not prepared. The report noted that our economy and national security would crumble if something weren't done. But the sobering report received immediate publicity for an almost comically accidental reason. As commission member Gerald Holton recalls, Reagan thanked the commissioners at a White House ceremony for endorsing school prayer, vouchers, and the elimination of the Department of Education. In fact, the newly printed blue-cover report never mentioned these pet passions of the president. "The one important reader of the report had apparently not read it after all," Holton said. Reagan had pulled a fast one, for political gain.

Reporters fell on the report like a pack of hungry dogs. The next day, "A Nation at Risk" made the front pages.
...

In truth, "A Nation at Risk" could have been read as almost any sort of document. Basically, it just called for "More!" -- more science, more math, more art, more humanities, more social studies, more school days, more hours, more homework, more basics, more higher-order thinking, more lower-order thinking, more creativity, more everything.

The document had, however, been commissioned by the Reagan White House, so conservative Republicans controlled its interpretation and uses. What they zeroed in on was the notion of failing schools as a national-security crisis. Republican ideas for school reform became a charge against a shadowy enemy, a kind of war on mediocrity.

...

From the start, however, some doubts must have risen about the crisis rhetoric, because in 1990, Admiral James Watkins, the secretary of energy (yes, energy), commissioned the Sandia Laboratories in New Mexico to document the decline with some actual data.

Systems scientists there produced a study consisting almost entirely of charts, tables, and graphs, plus brief analyses of what the numbers signified, which amounted to a major "Oops!" As their puzzled preface put it, "To our surprise, on nearly every measure, we found steady or slightly improving trends."

One section, for example, analyzed SAT scores between the late 1970s and 1990, a period when those scores slipped markedly. ("A Nation at Risk" spotlighted the decline of scores from 1963 to 1980 as dead-bang evidence of failing schools.) The Sandia report, however, broke the scores down by various subgroups, and something astonishing emerged. Nearly every subgroup -- ethnic minorities, rich kids, poor kids, middle class kids, top students, average students, low-ranked students -- held steady or improved during those years. Yet overall scores dropped. How could that be?

Simple -- statisticians call it Simpson's paradox: The average can change in one direction while all the subgroups change in the opposite direction if proportions among the subgroups are changing. Early in the period studied, only top students took the test. But during those twenty years, the pool of test takers expanded to include many lower-ranked students. Because the proportion of top students to all students was shrinking, the scores inevitably dropped. That decline signified not failure but rather progress toward what had been a national goal: extending educational opportunities to a broader range of the population.

...

Which approach will actually improve education? Here, I think, language can lead us astray. In everyday life, we use reform and improve as synonyms (think: "reformed sinner"), so when we hear "school reform," we think "school improvement." Actually, reform means nothing more than "alter the form of." Whether a particular alteration is an improvement depends on what is altered and who's doing the judging. Different people will have different opinions. Every proposed change, therefore, calls for discussion.

The necessary discussion cannot be held unless the real alternatives are on the table. Today, essentially three currents of education reform compete with each other. One sees inspiration and motivation as the keys to better education. Reform in this direction starts by asking, "What will draw the best minds of our generation into teaching? What will spark great teachers to go beyond the minimum? What will motivate kids to learn and keep coming back to school?

In this direction lie proposals for building schools around learners, gearing instruction to individual goals and learning styles, pointing education toward developing an ever-broader range of human capacities, and phasing in assessment tools that get at ever-subtler nuances of achievement. Overall, this approach promotes creative diversity as a social good.

A second current, the dominant one, sees discipline and structure as the keys to school improvement. Reform in this direction starts by asking, "What does the country need, what must all kids know to serve those needs, and how can we enforce the necessary learning?" In this direction, the curriculum comes first, schools are built around the curriculum, and students are required to fit themselves into a given structure, controlled from above. As a social good, it promotes national unity and strength. This is the road we're on now with NCLB.

A third possible direction goes back to diversity and individualism -- through privatization, including such mechanisms as tuition tax credits, vouchers (enabling students to opt out of the public school system), and home schooling. Proponents include well-funded private groups such as the Cato Institute that frankly promote a freeenterprise model for schooling: Anyone who wants education should pay for it and should have the right to buy whatever educational product he or she desires.

What's Next?

Don't be shocked if NCLB ends up channeling American education into that third current, even though it seems like part of the mainstream get-tough approach. Educational researcher Gerald Bracey, author of Reading Educational Research: How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered, writes in Stanford magazine that "NCLB aims to shrink the public sector, transfer large sums of public money to the private sector, weaken or destroy two Democratic power bases -- the teachers' unions -- and provide vouchers to let students attend private schools at public expense."

Why? Because NCLB is set up to label most American public schools as failures in the next six or seven years. Once a school flunks, this legislation sets parents free to send their children to a school deemed successful. But herds of students moving from failed schools to (fewer) successful ones are likely to sink the latter. And then what? Then, says NCLB, the state takes over.

And there's the rub. Can "the state" -- that is, bureaucrats -- run schools better than professional educators? What if they fail, too? What's plan C?

NCLB does not specify plan C. Apparently, that decision will be made when the time comes. But with some $500 billion per year -- the sum total of all our K-12 education spending in this country -- at stake, and with politicians' hands on all the levers, you can be pretty certain the decision will not be made by those whose field of expertise is learning. It will be made by those whose field of expertise is power.

There's Always Money For War

2007-03-13T09:51:00.000-08:00

Jared Bernstein makes nothing but sense...

Okay, this is going to sound really naïve. It’s the kind of question you’d expect from an earnest, if not slightly annoying, 12-year-old, not from a hard-boiled wonk like yours truly. But why is it that our representatives can easily raise endless amounts of money for war, but can’t adequately fund human needs?

Exhibit #1: The Washington Post recently ran an important article documenting the loss of child-care subsidies to low-income, working parents. One of the lessons from welfare reform is that such work supports are a critical component of a pro-work, anti-poverty agenda. But because the program is terribly underfunded—fewer than a fifth of eligible people receive help—there’s a huge waiting list, and families are left to give up on work or patch together less-than-desirable child-care situations.

Exhibit #2 : If the president gets his way on budget requests over the next few years, and he always has, the Congressional Budget Office tells us that spending on the Iraq war will soon top $500 billion—$746 billion if you throw in Afghanistan. According to OMBWatch, the Congress will soon begin evaluating the largest supplemental funding bill ever requested by an administration: just shy of $100 billion, mostly for the war on terror and its sundry components.

Exhibit #3 : We currently spend about $5 billion a year at the federal level on the block grant that funds child care. Last year, we added a $1 billion increase over five years. A bill to dedicate $6 billion more died in the Senate. Because these values are not adjusted for either inflation or population growth, the demand for child-care slots is outpacing capacity. According to the Bush administration’s own budget, if we fail to devote more resources to child care, by 2010, the families of 300,000 fewer children will get the help they need.

Exhibit #4 : I recently testified before the Senate Finance Committee on the question of whether there needed to be $8 billion worth of tax cuts to businesses to offset the impact of the federal minimum wage increase. I argued that the cuts were unnecessary, but in this context, consider this point: Because tax cuts must now be paid for, the committee was able to come up with $8 billion of offsets to pay for these cuts.

In other words, when they want to, Congress can allocate or raise money. The problem, as put by my colleague Lawrence Mishel, is “... the direct consequence of maintaining other priorities. Some [policy makers] are wedded to maintaining the recent tax cuts. Many more believe we have to spend whatever it takes for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ... [o]thers believe that moving toward a balanced budget is essential. Whatever one thinks of these positions it is clear that the result is that human capital investments get the leftover fiscal scraps.”

For those of us unhappy with this state of affairs, who believe that these are the wrong priorities, the big—giant, really—question is what has to change?

The answer, I think, comes from a meeting of top-down and bottom-up. Today’s priorities are the result of politicians’ perceptions that their constituents, at least the ones they care about, want government to wage war and cut taxes, not to provide child and health care. Thus, the first step in turning this around is to tap and nurture demand among the electorate for the best solutions to the problems we face. I’ve stressed child care for low-income workers because it’s so important to their ability to escape poverty, but think of national health care in this light, along with retirement security and the inequalities associated with globalization.

Progressive policy advocates need to shape and promote an agenda that reaches people on these issues and is at the scale of the challenges they face. If such an agenda is articulated by a 2008 candidate, it may well start to resonate and reverberate in precisely the way that’s needed to reshape the priorities of those who hold the purse strings. Then I can go back to being a hard-boiled wonk instead of a naïve ingénue who wants to trade guns for butter.

Tell Me This Isn't How NCLB Plays Out

2007-03-13T08:52:00.000-08:00

God, I hope Tom Hoffman is not right on this ...

now - 2008: no change.
2008: Democrats take the presidency and increase their majorities in the House and Senate.
2009: Democrats pass NCLB reform which increases funding but also vastly increases complexity and cost. Republicans vote against it for "watering down" parts of the law that were completely impossible and/or nonsensical from the beginning.
2010: Republicans hang the increasingly unpopular NCLB around the Democrats neck and run against it and teachers unions and in favor of Federalism and re-establishing local control (and charter schools & vouchers).

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND HAS FLUNKED

2007-03-12T16:33:00.000-08:00

From the Chicago Defender comes this reasoned commentary...

The Commission on No Child Left Behind does not tell America what it really needs to know: Is the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) working? If it isn't working, will it succeed by the 2014 deadline? The answers to both of these questions, unfortunately, are no...

...Many people who care about improving American education want to save NCLB. It is rare for an administration to do more than merely talk about improving education, and never before has the country focused on the real problem of the "soft bigotry of low expectations." Many people probably believe that it would be a shame to loose this unique opportunity for national educational reform. But what is the point of saving legislation that is not working and that is fundamentally flawed?

The problem with NCLB is that out of the smorgasbord of educational reforms, the Bush Administration selected the ones which suit its conservative ideology best, not the ones that educational researchers have shown to be most likely to succeed and produce the biggest achievement gains.

NCLB's heart is an accountability-based reform, but this type of reform has a weak track record. A review of accountability reforms published in the American Journal of Education last year concluded that NCLB's chances were "neutral at best." Why is such a monumental educational initiative centered on one of the least promising policies?

An effective national educational reform program should begin by expanding pre-kindergarten programs like the successful one now operating in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This program has produced significant gains for Hispanic and black children. There is a large body of research showing the benefits of quality early childhood education.

The commissioners agree and state that "half of the white-African American achievement gap in 12th grade can be explained by the gaps in achievement in 1st grade." NCLB, however, does little in the area of early childhood education. Because the commissioners are trapped within the NCLB framework, they too marginalize the issue of early childhood education and relegate their discussion of it to one-third of the last chapter of their report.

Given that perhaps 50 percent of racial achievement gaps are due to differences in early childhood education, how can an educational reform dedicated to eliminating racial achievement gaps not make early childhood education one of its major components? A real assessment of NCLB would point out that the Act has ignored highly effective reforms like early childhood education, reducing class sizes, small schools and school integration in favor of something that is "neutral at best."

While there are some good recommendations in Beyond NCLB, the authors are mainly trapped by the flawed assumptions and biases of the Act. If we really want to leave no child behind, we have to get beyond NCLB and the Commission's report also.

Special to the Defender from BlackNews.com

The Missing Variable: What Bill Gates Didn't Tell The Senate

2007-03-12T11:05:00.000-08:00

Gary Stanger knows that Bill Gate's main motivation is to create a large educated workforce that will compete for jobs, and therefore be payed less...

No one should ever question Bill Gates’ generosity or commitment to improving American schools. His analysis however, should be subject to debate...He used his invitation to testify as an opportunity to delineate the failings of American high schools. His testimony also implied a correlation between test scores and Microsoft’s inability to fill 3,000 positions for high-skill workers.

Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to Mr. Gates or the Senators questioning him that Microsoft has become an undesirable place to work.

Don’t believe me? Business Week is but one publication chronicling the difficulties Microsoft has attracting and retaining talent. It’s articles, Troubling Exits at Microsoft & Revenge of the Nerds - Again offer a primer on how not to sustain organizational innovation.

"There was a lot of buzz around the Google [employment recruiting] table and not a lot around the Microsoft table," says Bob Richard, associate director of employer relations at MIT. (source)

One web site claims that Microsoft is doing little to attract recent graduates.

What is really disturbing about the Microsoft connection with the H-1B issue is that they are not even making a show of trying to hire US high-tech workers. Microsoft did not attempt to recruit at any of the 22 California State University campuses, where many of the high-tech US computer workers graduate. Microsoft is also not participating at this year's Engineering Job Fair at CSUS. (source)

Gates also fails to acknowledge a trend regarding the career aspirations of young people. The USA Today article, Gen Y Makes a Mark and Their Imprint is Entrepreneurship, describes how young Americans are less attracted to jobs in large corporations.

"People are realizing they don't have to go to work in suits and ties and don't have to talk about budgets every day," says Ben Kaufman, 20, founder of a company that makes iPod accessories. "They can have a job they like. They can create a job for themselves." (source)

Other analyses of employment conditions at Microsoft may be found here & here. Like most large American companies, Microsoft has also outsourced thousands of jobs to other countries.

Microsoft might be better served by creating more attractive working conditions and responding to the market than by beating up on high schools.

Article challenges 'No Child' law

2007-03-09T12:53:00.000-09:00

This from New Hampshire. I will never understand why there has not been more of this throughout the country these last five years.

One of the proposed warrant articles on the Shaker Regional School District agenda has drawn attention from Washington.

The article, a non-binding resolution, recognizes the goals of the No Child Left Behind mandates to raise academic achievement, but says the law itself has some serious flaws and that include unfunded mandates and "costly testing of students with misleading results."

"Now therefore, be it resolved that the Shaker Regional School District is committed to either correcting and responsibly funding or repealing the (No Child Left Behind) act," the article reads....

NOT WORTHY OF A PASSING GRADE: The No Child Left Behind Act

2007-03-08T11:36:00.000-09:00

From EURweb comes this assessment of NCLB. The author sees early childhood education as the key to success. That's OK but I did not think we were looking for expensive solutions, or ones that might have a chance of actually working...

...NCLB's heart is an accountability-based reform, but this type of reform has a weak track record. A review of accountability reforms published in the American Journal of Education last year concluded that NCLB's chances were "neutral at best." Why is such a monumental educational initiative centered on one of the least promising policies?

Don't Take This to the Bank, But...

2007-03-08T09:58:00.000-09:00

This from NCLBlog

March 8, 2007 08:45 AM

This bit of speculation may not be worth the paper it's written on, but...there's some talk that we can rule out 2008 as the year when NCLB will be reauthorized. The idea is that election-year politics will prevent Congress from passing the bill during 2008, which leaves 2007 and 2009 still in the running...

...

The Senate Education Committee is moving faster than the House in the NCLB reauthorization process, meaning that they held their second hearing today, while the House has not begun their hearings. For bettors on the NCLB reauthorization date, I think this slows things down considerably.

The result: 2009 emerges as the favorite. But I'd sooner bet on the Washington Nationals
(ranked 30th out of 30 teams in this analysis) winning the World Series than lay down money on the NCLB timeline.

Why do we prolong what this horrible bill is doing to children? Because it's not about kids, it's about politics. (See Below)

Republican Congressman to Introduce No Child Left Behind Alternative

2007-03-08T08:52:00.001-09:00

From the Cybercast News Service. There are moments, and issues, where I do, actually agree with right wing republicans and this is one..

By Monisha Bansal
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
March 08, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - With the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) scheduled for reauthorization this year, some in Washington are judging the effects of the federal education policy.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), now a member of the House minority, plans to create his own education proposal, because he is unhappy about the bureaucratic elements that have arisen over the last several years.

"You have a bunch of unintended consequences out of No Child Left Behind that destroy our public education system," Hoekstra said at a discussion at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.

"With No Child Left Behind we shifted down the road toward federal government education," he said. "We are now on the road to a national curriculum, national accountability, national testing ... and then we will also have a process of federally mandated corrections standards for those who don't meet the standards."

Hoekstra added, "Every school in the country will begin to look exactly the same. Say goodbye to local control, and say hello to federal government schools."

Under his proposal to be introduced next week, the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success Act of 2007, states would no longer be required to follow regulations tied to federal funding, and it would allow them to "assume full responsibility for the educational needs of its students."

But Andrew Rotherham, co-director of the education think tank Education Sector and a member of the Virginia State Board of Education, said, "The reason we're in the jam we're in is in no small part because of the states."

Rotherham said the federal government has had to intervene to improve equity in America's school systems as well as the quality of education.

"It just doesn't work," Susan Neuman, former assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education at the Department of Education, said of the NCLB. "We've stopped improvement with greater accountability."

Under the NCLB, students take 14 standardized tests between grades three and 11 on math and reading. Hoekstra noted that this number is likely to grow with the reauthorization to 84 or more standardized tests as more subjects are added.

Bush has mandated that children be proficient in math and reading by 2014. "This notion that by 2014 all children will be proficient is a fantasy, and it's rhetoric and it's unfortunate, and it's turning people against and afraid of our schools," Neuman said.

Neal McCluskey, a political analyst with the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, told Cybercast News Service that Hoekstra's proposal "probably won't be enacted given the political circumstances."

Hoekstra was cast into the House minority when Democrats swept control of the chamber in November.

"I think a lot of this depends on how badly President Bush wants to have a reauthorization of his education law as part of his legacy," McCluskey said. "If he wants it badly enough, I think he will be willing to compromise [with congressional Democrats].

"I think we will definitely see it happen before he leaves office," he said.

"Virtually all behavior in Washington over the last several years has been covered by political considerations," said former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas). "Politics is a curious form of juvenile delinquency."

Armey said the NCLB is not about effective policy, but about politics.

"No Child Left Behind has always been a major political initiative of the Bush administration, and it has scarcely been anything other than that," he said. "There will be very little about this education bill that will be intellectual, and a whole heck of a lot that will be political and emotive."

"Federal education programs live or die by whether or not they work politically, not academically," said McCluskey.

But Andrew Coulson, director of the Cato Institute Center for Educational Freedom, defended the intent of the NCLB, even though he is a strong critic of the program.

"The NCLB's goals of raising academic achievement and diminishing the gaps between socio-economic groups are admirable and universally popular," Coulson said.

"But the regulatory means by which the law tries to achieve those goals is ineffective, harmful, contrary to policies that actually do work, and unconstitutional," he said, noting that the U.S. Constitution does not address education.

Coulson said students would be better served by allowing school choice or vouchers.

"A vast body of empirical research points to competitive education markets as significantly better than bureaucratically-run school systems in achieving all of the NCLB's goals," he said.

"Parents will become meaningful consumers," McCluskey added, as they will choose the schools that serve their children best.

But Neuman disagreed. "Some of you believe choice alone will make a difference. It will not," she said. "We know that from the existing provisions in No Child Left Behind."

I applaud the reporter. This is a piece that offers different views of NCLB. There's plenty her to agree and disagree with. And I never thought that I would agree with what Dick Armey has to say, "NCLB is not about effective policy, but about politics."

NCLB needs to be replaced

2007-03-07T16:13:00.000-09:00

A great letter from the Petuluma (CA) Argus-Courier

How long will it finally take until we realize that pouring more money into enforcement of this law, and that tweaking its most egregious problems, will get our public education system nowhere? NCLB needs to be replaced with a genuine national commitment to the education of our children, a commitment that’s designed to provide a public school environment for our children that promotes creativity and critical thinking. I can’t believe that any administrator or legislator actually buys the notion that turning our children into minimally- to high-scoring standardized test-takers will keep America safe from its enemies and our citizens competitive in the global economy, and will maintain our fragile position as the leader of the free world.

Some administrators will continue to defend this law, its testing mandates, and its punitive stance. Some will continue to blame its problems on lack of funding. Until, that is, enough of us with children in this system let it be known that we don’t want our education resources wasted in this way, and that we want real change in both the way we educate our public school students, and in how we measure their improvement.

Here! Here!

Critics Say No Child Left Behind Report Misses Real Problems

2007-03-07T15:21:00.000-09:00

This from Livia Gershon of The New Standard

An ‘elite’ commission that has reviewed President Bush’s keystone education policy avoided difficult issues and has recommended an expansion of standardized testing.

Mar. 6 – This year, Jevon Cochran’s English class has been "postponed." Instead of the usual mix of reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary lessons and discussion, Cochran, a junior at Lewis Cass Technical High School in Detroit, said he and his classmates are now drilling for the ACT exam. They must take the national scholastic test as part of Michigan’s effort to evaluate students and schools under federal standards passed in 2001. That, he said, has meant a change in the classroom atmosphere.

In past years, Cochran said, "while we would be reading these novels and stories and whatnot, the teachers would try to get us to become better critical thinkers by getting us to write essays and getting us to talk about what we read in class and how it pertains to things in life that we go through today. Now we’re learning just a bunch of crap that’s going to be on the ACT."...

...Later this year, Congress will consider reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). When it does, the chairs of the House and Senate education committees have said that their evaluation of the program will be guided by a report released last month by the Commission on No Child Left Behind, an independent group that evaluated the law’s effects over the past year.

But critics say that in creating its report, "Beyond NCLB: Fulfilling the Promise to Our Nation’s Children," the Commission ignored the perspectives of students like Cochran as well as parents and educators who see problems with the law...

...The Commission, chaired by former US Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson and former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes, essentially concluded that No Child Left Behind is moving schools in the right direction, but needs to be applied more forcefully. The report recommends creating a more-uniform national standard for the tests required by law, adding a new 12th-grade test, and evaluating individual teachers and principals in part based on their students’ performance on the tests.

"If anything, their recommendations would intensify the role of testing," said Robert Schaeffer, the public-education director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), a nonprofit group that promotes changes in the use of standardized testing. "It’s more of the same bad thing."

The Commission, which is housed at the Aspen Institute, was launched with financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and six other private foundations. Its thirteen members are mostly academics and education officials, though about half of them worked as classroom teachers at some point in their careers. In the course of its study of the law, the Commission held a series of hearings across the country, where they heard almost exclusively from high-level education, government, union and business leaders.

Schaeffer argues that the Commission’s conclusions are not surprising, given the way the body was formed.

"It was a very elitist operation in which they spent very little time talking to actual practitioners, the people on the ground dealing with the effects of No Child Left Behind every day," he said...

...n particular, the report does not question the value of standardized tests, probably the most-widely criticized of NCLB’s features. The Commission’s summary of its hearing on the use of standardized tests begins with the statement, "There is broad agreement that testing plays a critical role in education reform by giving educators, administrators and the public a means to understand how schools and students are performing."

But critics like Cochran say emphasizing standardized tests encourages teachers to focus on skills that are ultimately not very useful to students.

"The tests are supposed to measure how good you would do in college, and I don’t see how," said Cochran, who is a member of By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), a civil rights coalition that works to defend affirmative action and immigrant rights. "For instance... [in a lesson] on the English section of the test, there was this whole section on where you have to place semicolons in sentences. I don’t see how learning about where you place semicolons is going to help you better prepare yourself for college."

Cochran said he would like to see his classes focus more on developing critical thinking skills and helping individual students figure out what learning techniques work best for them.

Another BAMN member, Christopher Sutton, a senior at Murray Wright High School in Detroit, said he notices teachers becoming dispirited and showing less creativity in their teaching when they are preparing students for a standardized test: "It’s like, ‘Okay, you all know what this is, you already know what we’re preparing for, it’s boring, I know, I’m sorry, but I have to go over this information because it’s mandated by the district.’"

Another flaw some critics see in the report is that its discussion of funding is almost completely limited to making recommendations on how to spend money that is already allocated for education.

Caprice Taylor-Mendez, the director of the Boston Parents Organizing Network (BPON), an advocacy group for parents of Boston public-school students, said that even if test-based evaluations could determine which schools are having trouble, what is really needed is more funding to address the problems. "What does assessment do but flag problem areas?" she said. "Then where is the support?"...

...The report does recommend a minor increase in federal education funding, but it is for education research and state data systems, not individual schools’ budgets.

It's good to see some reporting that tells it like it is.

The Kids Are OK, But Journalists and U.S. Department of Education Bureaucrats...

2007-03-01T14:47:00.000-09:00

...

It is quite possible that reading scores are down because the kids are taking more math and science courses. Sure there are other more familiar villains to charge: television, video games, the strange spelling and syntax of text messaging, even multitasking. But the number of courses the average high school student takes in mathematics, science, and computer science enroute to a diploma have all increased since 1990 (English classes have not). The time for these courses has to come from somewhere. Reading about quarks or taking derivatives jeopardize Jane Austen.

Mostly, though, I think the kids just don't give a damn about NAEP and I bet they give less of a damn now than they did 15 years ago. Nor should they care. I once said to then-NAEP Executive Director, Archie Lapointe, that NAEP systematically underestimates achievement because kids don't take it seriously. Yes, he laughed, the major challenge for NAEP was keeping the kids awake during the test.

Over the last 15 years, much of schooling has been reduced to testing. SATs, ACT's, APs, high school exit examinations, formative assessments (in reality, just little tests). Plus test-obsessed NCLB. These tests all have consequences (although some, like the SAT, have many fewer than commonly believed). And now, in the second semester of the senior year comes NAEP (did the Senior Slump exist in 1992? I don't recall having heard that phrase back then).

Dude, you seriously want me to take this test seriously? It won't tell me or my parents anything. It won't tell the teachers or administrators or district anything (NAEP does not report below the state level). It means doodley squat, nothing, nada, nil for my future and you want me to give it my all? It wouldn't surprise me if teachers and administrators, saturated by tests and test-related anxieties communicate through body language that kids can blow off NAEP with no consequences. In fact, NAEP is having trouble these days getting schools to agree to test.

Motivation bears tremendously on test outcomes. When I directed Virginia's testing programs, my staff developed a computer program to detect what the state superintendent called "inappropriate administrative procedures"--cheating to the rest of us. One year a heretofore middling rural district popped way up. We visited the local superintendent to determine how he'd done it.

He had done it by transferring testing from the academic realm to the sporting world. You should bust your gut, not to show how smart you are or how well your teachers taught you but so that we can beat the adjacent archrival county like we try to in football, basketball and baseball.

If you walked around the school and asked kids "What are you going to do on the SRA's?" The answer was, "Beat Orange County!" The week of testing, teachers dressed as cheerleaders and the schools held pep rallies in the auditorium. Students in grades not tested cheered on those who were under the gun. It worked.

Find me something that makes seniors take NAEP seriously and then maybe I'll take 12th grade NAEP results seriously.

Frameshop: Bush to Tout "No Child Left Behind" in New Orleans

2007-03-01T13:10:00.000-09:00

I try not to link to other blogs. I really am trying to dig up news or commentary that you might have missed. This from a blog that is new to me, Jeffery Feldman's Frameshop.

In a cynical photo-op in New Orleans, today, President Bush will use the backdrop of a local charter school to promote his "No Child Left Behind" policy.

If anything, the disaster of hurricane Katrina represents the willingness of the Bush administration not only to leave children behind -- literally, leave them behind in rising flood waters -- but to then blame those children's predicament on their lack of education.

The announcement for a local protest planned today frames the situation best. Even before Bush failed in the face of Katrina, his policies were already ripping the roof of the public school system.

From Humid City:

JOIN THE KATRINA SURVIVORS’ REBUKE OF PRESIDENT BUSH
2:00 PM THURSDAY MARCH 1
SAMUEL GREEN SCHOOL
2319 VALENCE ST. (Near Freret and Napoleon)
NEW ORLEANS

New Orleans Needs Federal Aid, Not Presidential Photo-Ops.

Mr. President: Katrina Survivors Do Not Welcome You, We Rebuke You!

We live in a devastated city and you are a big part of the reason why it sill sits in ruins. Your administration has abandoned our children by savaging their public schools. Your administration has tortured our working class people by refusing to reopen the city’s public housing developments. And your administration is fully complicit in placing our uninsured in harms way by ruthlessly pursuing the privatization of local public healthcare in the aftermath of Katrina. And, finally your administration is guilty of sending our sons and daughters to war for oil and empire just when we need them most to help us rebuild our community.

Mr. President, we, Katrina Survivors all, do not welcome you to our city, we rebuke you!

Sponsored by Survivors Village, United Front For Affordable Housing.

(504) 587-0080

Keep in mind that one of the major frames that Bush and the authoritarian right cling to about Katrina is that the disaster was a "failure of citizenship."

As Newt Gingrich put it his 2006 speech at Johns Hopkins:

The last great domestic challenge I think is the fact that we have large structured government institutions that simply don't work. You saw some of this with what happened in New Orleans and Katrina. The fact is, in Katrina, government failed. The federal government failed. The state of Louisiana failed. The city of New Orleans failed. And for 22,000 citizens in the lower 9th ward, citizenship failed. They literally did not have the education, the training, the habits of responsibility, or the capacity to get out of the way of a hurricane. And so you have got to look at that experience and say how much do you have to change each of those four layers, so that if it happened again you didn’t have the same failure?

In Gingrich's logic -- which has largely become GOP logic -- the really real cause of the humanitarian disaster in New Orleans was not the failure of the federal government to mobilize its resources on behalf of citizens in need, but the failure of citizenship to work on behalf of citizens.

It is an odd rhetorical construction, but we see where he is heading. Government should change, he is telling us, but it should change by accelerating the destruction of government programs and public schools -- moving faster to set up an authoritarian vision of a country where all government action is displaced by a vague notion of responsibility.

By touting "No Child Left Behind," today in New Orleans, Bush is really saying that the disaster in Katrina happened because his Utopian vision of free-market America was hampered -- ergo, the people of New Orleans became victims instead of what they were supposed to be prepared citizens.

All of this, of course, glosses over the continuing cry of voices on the ground in Katrina -- people who spend every waking moment of their lives rebuilding a city from scratch, only to be rewarded by a college flunky President who claims education is the key to getting ahead.

Education is important, no doubt. But it was not so much children who were left behind by the authoritarian conservative movement in this country in the decade before Katrina. What was left behind -- or rather thrown from the moving train -- was the American principle that the purpose of government is to help individuals in situations where they cannot help themselves.

Flood waters crashing through a levee system left in disrepair was precisely one of those moments where individuals needed the collective strength and ability of their government to help them.

President Bush should be ashamed of himself for promoting such a cynical ideology of personal responsibility in a city still reeling from the failures of his worldview and actions.

Governors Uniting for NCLB Changes

2007-02-27T11:31:00.000-09:00

Another from Ed Week this time about a National Governors meeting. It seems they disagree about the changes NCLB needs but do agree about..

They all agree, for instance, that more funding is needed, and that some of the accountability provisions need to be made more flexible, especially regarding the testing of English-language learners and special education students.

That's all rather vague isn't it? Also...

Gov. Gregoire said the governors will work closely with their chief state school officers and designate one person from each state to form a coalition that will develop more specific policy goals as the debate over reauthorization continues. She said the NGA is considering convening an NCLB summit to talk about what changes should be made to the law.

I'm waiting with baited breath.

How Are These NCLB Reports Like All The Other Reports? Lotsa Ways.

2007-02-27T08:58:00.000-09:00

From the Ed Week column This Week in Education...

Written by former Senate education staffer and journalist Alexander Russo, This Week in Education covers education news, policymakers, and trends with a distinctly political edge...

Back in the day, there used to be a thing called a "side by side" that would compare the key provisions of different versions of legislation category by category or even sometimes provision by provision. Maybe it's still done.

In the meantime, David DeSchryver from Brustein & Manasevit has done somewhat the same thing based on seven NCLB reauthorization reports (USDE, Commission, Chiefs, NEA, AFT, NASBE, NCSL.

Common if not unanimous areas of interest and direction include: a focus on standards and cross-state comparisons, calls for more flexibility in accountability models, improved assessment quality, a better menu of sanctions and corrective action, addressing the special education system, incentives for teachers in high need schools and districts, more exemptions for ELLs, and increased funding. However, the devil is in the details...

Interestingly, he says it's the Aspen Institute Commission Report that is the real outlier in terms of size and scope (I had thought it was the USDE proposal).

This is a pretty thorough review of what people are thinking, and as the man says the devil is in the details...

Study says students are learning less

2007-02-26T10:35:00.000-09:00

Another from O'Hanian's site. You have read this. It is all over. Everywhere. But this post come with comments from a CA teacher. He asks questions we should all be asking...

California Teacher Comment: This article has made me so angry I'm finding it hard to concentrate on anything else.

Why do they think that one test would be more valid than all of the courses and all of the assignments completed by these kids?

Why are they accepting that a standardized test is a more accurate measure of students' ability than coursework?

Why does no one trust teachers anymore?

Why do they automatically assume that there is grade inflation and course inflation and not that the test is unreliable and invalid?

Why don't they take other variables into consideration, like the fact that there was a 57.4 (% increase) in foreign population in the U.S. from 1990 to 2000?

Or that maybe the seniors didn't take the test seriously whereas they took their courses seriously.

Arrgh!

Arrgh! Indeed!

NCLB 'drills and kills' the spirit of education

2007-02-26T10:23:00.000-09:00

This is a great comment from a retired teacher fro the Lehigh Valley PA, with 40 years experience. The clincher is at the end...

NCLB needs serious revision. Legislators must listen to educators who are in the schools day in and day out. Assessment must begin to chart individual student academic growth over time. We cannot continue to compare the same grade levels year after year. We must begin to acknowledge that students who live in poverty, who have special needs, or who are English language learners present unique educational challenges. Funds must go directly to the schools to hire more teachers and establish effective instructional programs, particularly in reading. Schools must strengthen their ties with parents because all parents must realize the importance of academic success for their children. Congress must fund social programs for low-income children. Outreach specialists must be placed in every impoverished school. The schools alone cannot do it.

Teachers regulate the heartbeat of their school. They know what is needed and what to do. They know that some kids need extra help; some need a favorite class; yet others can succeed alone. The primary focus of the new NCLB must focus on the realities of education. Like a good teacher, the revised NCLB legislation must have a positive philosophy where multiple types of assessments are used to improve education.

If only someone was listening.

No child left behind - including smaller schools

2007-02-21T16:43:00.000-09:00

From Forida comes this commentary:

...

Federal policies should recognize the unique needs of small rural school districts.

A third of our nation's schools are classified as rural, and their characteristics are far different from schools in large urban centers.

Rural schools are often in isolated communities with limited resources. In rural and small communities, there is often just one high school. They struggle to attract and retain effective teachers, particularly in math, science, special education and other specialized subjects.

It is now time to provide all districts with the flexibility they need to truly improve instruction and equip every child with the skills needed to succeed in school and the workplace...

...

The goal of NCLB - proficiency for all - matters just as much in small towns as it does in large cities. That goal must not change. Nor should the approach the law takes toward meeting that goal - high standards, accountability, teacher quality and options for students.

But applying those approaches means different tactics in different parts of the country. A size-6 suit will not fit everyone, yet everyone can wear a suit. Tailoring suits to meet everyone's needs will only make everyone look and perform better.

Unless you want everyone to stop wearing suits.

There's no cheap, easy way to help children

2007-02-21T12:52:00.000-09:00

This is a powerful commentary:
...

We spout slogans such as "No child left behind" while refusing to fund the programs that would, in fact, help us to leave no child behind. We cut school funding, we cut funding for social support systems, we cut finding for youth intervention programs, we cut programs for parental education and support, we cut programs for family planning and sex education - we save a few dollars, and we willingly sacrifice young people to do it. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

And the rest of us, those of us who "know better," are guilty too. Too often we just shake our heads, wring our hands and wear our sackcloth in silent dismay. We, too, should be ashamed - ashamed not of our dismay, but of our silence...

...

It's both tough and expensive to support programs for intense early intervention for children in abusive and neglectful families; it's easier and cheaper to minimize the level of intervention and, quite literally, hope things get better for those kids and those families.

But face it: Cheaper and easier is not the answer. Today's neglected, abused, uneducated and disenfranchised child becomes tomorrow's neglectful, abusing, uneducated, disenfranchised, disaffected, and nonfunctioning adult and parent. Today's "savings" have a huge cost, both in dollars and misery, for future generations.

We piously state that "children are our most precious resource," then we knowingly watch as that resource is squandered. We need to feel a sense of shame, replace that shame with a sense of hope, and then parlay that hope into action for the sake of all of our children.

It's not too late. But with each day, it is getting later and later for those kids I'm talking about.

Gary Crum of Junction City is a former teacher and counselor.

Americans cheated of quality education

2007-02-21T12:48:00.000-09:00

..Many empirical studies show standardized tests disproportionately have a negative impact on lowerclass and minority students because statistically, they do far worse as a whole than their white, upperclass counterparts.

Many teachers and schools have been known to teach for the test.

...Because of this, students are being cheated out of learning many important subjects such as music, art, history and so on.

This new legislation negatively affects girls because the subjects on the tests are considered “male” subjects because they are encouraged to study them. “Female” tracked subjects do not appear and therefore have lost much of their place in the classroom.

Although No Child Left Behind was enacted to help disadvantaged and minority students, it continues to perpetuate the cycle that it is trying to eliminate.

Girls, minority, low-income and special education students still fall behind, and without the appropriate funding, which is the No. 1 criticism of the legislation, these programs will only continue to fail and cheat our children out of the education they deserve.

There is good thinking in Oklahoma.

Why “No Child Left Behind” Is Nuts

2007-02-21T12:40:00.000-09:00

A reader who teaches math in a public high school in northern Orange County, California recounted the following dialogue with one of his students:

Student: "My mom is 28 years old."

Teacher: "How old are you?"

Student: "Fifteen."

Teacher: "So, your mother had you when she was thirteen?"

Student: "Wow! You can do that in your head that fast?"

Teacher: "Uh, well, uh, don't worry about it. That's why I'm a math teacher!"

And his student went away happy, self-esteem reassured by knowing that only nerdy math teachers can quickly subtract 15 from 28.

Meanwhile, America's Great and Good carry on making plans for America's schools based on assumptions that wouldn't survive an hour in an average classroom. (Not that they would ever send their kids to a typical school.)

The Aspen Institute's bipartisan Commission on No Child Left Behind, co-chaired by former governors Tommy Thompson and Roy E. Barnes and paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (among others), has just issued 75 recommendations for improving the NCLB legislation when it comes up for renewal by Congress this year.

Despite the many small reforms advocated in the Commission's report "Beyond NCLB: Fulfilling the Promise to Our Nation’s Children" (222 page PDF), not one word of criticism is uttered against the original legislation's most important and implausible requirement: "that all children should reach a proficient level of academic achievement by 2014" in math and reading.

The report declares this goal of 100 percent proficiency by 2014 to be "audacious … morally right … and attainable."

What they don't mention about this demand: It's nuts...

...

In other words, the Commission is so clueless that it didn't realize that the fraud built into the NCLB wasn't a problem, it was a solution. Bald-faced swindling on a colossal scale is the only imaginable way of reaching the NCLB's goal of making every kid in the country into a B student by 2014. Requiring states to achieve an impossible level of performance, but not providing any system for disinterested outsiders to measure the states' performance, was a massive hint that the states were supposed to cheat.

You can see just how much bamboozling is necessary by looking at the NAEP results. On the federal government's 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress exam for 8th graders, reading scores were distributed like this:

	Advanced (A):	3 percent
	Proficient (B):	28 percent
	Basic (C):	42 percent
	Below & Far Below Basic (D & F):	27 percent

So 69 percent of American 8th graders are under the 2014 legally mandated requirement of proficiency....

...

A report prepared for the Campaign for Educational Equity by Richard Rothstein, Rebecca Jacobsen, and Tamara Wilder sums up the absurdity of NCLB in its title: "'Proficiency for All' – An Oxymoron." They point out:

"In its administration of NCLB, the U.S. Department of Education barely acknowledges this human variability. … Under NCLB, children with I.Q.s as low as 65 must achieve a standard of proficiency in math which is higher than that achieved by 60 percent of students in Taiwan, the highest scoring country in the world (in math), and a standard of proficiency in reading which is higher than that achieved by 65 percent of students in Sweden, the highest scoring country in the world (in reading)."

Here's the really fascinating thing about the broad support for NCLB.

In private, virtually every single person in America understands that human beings are highly diverse in mental capabilities.

They just won’t acknowledge it in public...

[Steve Sailer [email him] is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and movie critic for The American Conservative. His website www.iSteve.com features his daily blog.]

There's lots more. Read it!

Senator Feingold Part of Senate Coalition Calling for Improvements to NCLB Testing Mandates

2007-02-21T12:35:00.000-09:00

February 15, 2007, Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Russ Feingold and nine of his Senate colleagues are calling for substantial overhaul of the testing mandates contained in the 2001-02 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as “No Child Left Behind (NCLB).” In their letter to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, the Senators also identify key issues in NCLB they would like the Committee to examine during the ESEA reauthorization process that begins this year. Many teachers, administrators, and parents in Wisconsin and throughout the nation have raised serious concerns about the law and its effect on students and teachers since it was enacted five years ago...
...n their letter, the Senators cite concerns they have with NCLB's one-size-fits-all approach to testing and measuring student achievement. Based on feedback from students, parents, teachers, school counselors, and administrators, it has become clear that this accountability structure is not taking into account the specific needs of individual states and school districts. Additionally, national reports have also called into question the effectiveness of NCLB's statutory provisions and the effect of these provisions on students and teachers. The Senators asked that the upcoming Committee hearings on NCLB focus on the following topics: adequate funding and financial burdens facing school districts; sensible accountability models; differences in school districts’ size and composition; effect on teachers, students, and curriculum; and supportive interventions for struggling schools.

"There is growing frustration around the country about NCLB, and it is our responsibility to ensure that those voices are heard in the coming reauthorization debate in the Senate," said Feingold.

For the past three years, Feingold has called on the HELP Committee to hold hearings on NCLB implementation issues and is pleased the Committee began a series of roundtable discussions and hearings last week.

A copy of the letter is available upon request.

Source: Office of Senator Russ Feingold

We can only Hope.

Tommy and Roy: Domestic Shock and Awe on the Education Front

2007-02-21T10:45:00.000-09:00

Gerald Bracey Strikes again!:

If the Constitution is silent on something, that something devolves to the individual states. The Constitution is silent on education. Therefore, No Child Left Behind and the proposals in Tommy and Roy's spanking new 800 pound cousin, Beyond NCLB are unconstitutional? Not quite. The game is Let's Make a Deal.

It's sort of a reverse shakedown. We, the feds, have this pile of money. You want some? Here's the deal. If you take the money, you play by our rules. Hence, there has been no serious constitutional challenge to NCLB (there could have been, but states are up against a regime that rules by intimidation and retribution--ask Joe Wilson. To be constitutional, agreements between the states and the federal government must be voluntary and clear. That is, the states cannot be coerced and they have to know what they are getting into. There is substantial question about the coercive nature of NCLB and clearly states were in the dark. No one with the possible exception of Sandy Kress knew what they were getting into with the 1100 page law).

I wrote my first anti-NCLB article under commission from New York's Newsday in January, 2001. At the time, it was only a plan, not yet even a bill. I saw it as another cynically Orwellian-named program to do the opposite of what its name implied--Clear Skies, Clean Waters, Healthy Forests and, now, NCLB....

It would transfer huge sums of taxpayer money to the private sector. Private schools (especially the student-hemorrhaging Catholic schools) would benefit greatly when the voucher provisions kicked in. Private companies stood poised to clean up as they took over public schools. The president of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich actually said "This looks a lot like our business plan." Shifting so much of education to control by private firms would weaken or--hope of hopes!--destroy two large Democratic power bases, the teachers unions.

Bush compromised on vouchers in order to get bi-partisan support...

...One interesting tidbit: The Commission recommends the development of national standards and national tests in reading, mathematics and science. The states would then have the option to adopt the national tests, build their own tests around the national standards, or keep their existing tests. This unexpected flexibility is clearly designed to keep ETS and CTB-McGraw Hill and the other testing companies--the largest unregulated industry in the country--from unleashing their lobbyists to kill any legislation that would produce a single national test...

Yep.

No Child Left Behind as an Anti-Poverty Measure

2007-02-02T12:57:00.000-09:00

Tell it like it is!

This article argues that, although No Child Left Behind is not presented as a jobs policy (Bush’s slip during a Presidential Debate being the only place it is given such a moniker), the Act does function as a substitute for the creation of decently paying jobs for those who need them. Aimed particularly at the minority poor like its 1965 predecessor, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, NCLB acts as an anti-poverty program because it is based on an implicit assumption that increased educational achievement is the route out of poverty for low-income families and individuals. NCLB stands in the place of policies like job creation and significant raises in the minimum wage which—although considerably more expensive than standardized testing—would significantly decrease poverty in the United States...

...For more education to lead to better jobs, there have to be jobs available.
However, there are not now, nor have there been for more than two decades, nearly
enough jobs for those who need them. Labor economist Gordon Lafer demonstrated
that over the period 1984 to 1996—at the height of an alleged labor shortage—the
number of people in need of work exceeded the total number of job openings by
an average of five to one. In 1996, for example, the country would have needed 14.4
million jobs in order for all low-income people to work their way out of poverty.
However, there were at most 2.4 million job openings available to meet this need;
of these, only one million were in full-time, non-managerial positions (2002).

Furthermore, the jobs the U.S. economy now produces are primarily poverty wage
jobs—and only a relative few highly paid ones—making it increasingly less
certain that education will assure that work pays well (Anyon, 2005). Seventy-seven
percent of new and projected jobs in the next decade will be low-paying. Only a
quarter of these are expected to pay over $26,000 a year (in 2002 dollars). A mere
12.6% will require a college degree, while most will require on-the-job training
only. Of the 20 occupations expected to grow the fastest, only six require college
degrees—these are in computer systems and computer information technology
fields, and there are relatively few of these jobs overall (Department of Labor, 2002)...

...NCLB is part of this process of socializing the costs of poverty. When the Act
assumes—even implicitly—that poverty is a result of low scores on standardized
tests, rather than on the fact that there are not enough decently paying jobs, it lets
the business community off the hook. It saddles the poor with unrealistic expectations
and the rest of us with unwitting support of corporate irresponsibility...

I'm speechless.

Statement: AASA on State of the Union Address

2007-02-02T12:53:00.000-09:00

Read this from the Association of School Administrators.

“We are disappointed in President Bush’s plans for education, which he mentioned in his State of the Union message last night. The President reiterated his plans to ‘stay the course’ with his badly flawed program created by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation. He claims the program has been successful, when teachers, parents and children know that its main success has been in diverting attention and energy away from real learning and a comprehensive curriculum. While the President acknowledged that changes needed to be made to the law and flexibility would be required, his overall approach failed to consider the destructive elements of his policy and how they might be addressed differently in the future.

“The President holds fast to the idea that ‘accountability’ must be pursued by a coercive process of federal oversight built upon a few rewards and a great deal of punishment, and his unbending belief that student achievement is the equivalent of a single test given to every child every year. It should be noted that other countries that are economic competitors have found ways of shaping accountability to be a process of continuous improvement carried out in a collaborative manner...

Read the whole thing. We need more organizations to come out like this.

Wasta: Goals of NCLB the issue

2007-02-02T12:38:00.000-09:00

I can't believe that the last time I posted was before Christmas! Things seem to be heating up in the NCLB news department. Here is a great story from Bristol Connecticut. A few quotes:

Bristol school Superintendent Michael Wasta is quoted as saying:

"According to No Child Left Behind, by 2014 100 percent of all students will be proficient or higher in reading, writing and mathematics. Is that a worthy mission statement? Absolutely. But as an actual goal for people to meet, with their livelihoods on the line? Ludicrous."

"The special-ed requirements are the ones I feel most strongly about. Membership in that group is defined as being not academically proficient. If you become proficient, you're moved out of that group. So by definition, there's no way the special-ed group can become proficient, and then if they're not proficient the school is penalized."
Some students in special education programs are physically incapable of achieving academic proficiency; for example, a microcephalic child born without a cerebellum can no more learn to read than a child born without legs can become a professional marathon runner.
Does NCLB recognize the existence of such students?
"Yes," said Wasta. "Two percent. It used to be 1 percent, but now the rule is 2 percent. You can identify two percent of your students as belonging to that group ... even if 40 percent of your students were born without a brain, you can only exclude 2 percent. It's ludicrous."

"If you go to the average man on the street and ask him, 'do you think special-ed students should be held to the same standards as regular students,' he'll say 'Of course not. That's stupid.' Anybody can see how unrealistic these NCLB laws are."

"By 2014 the law will be abandoned," said Wasta. "That's my opinion, anyway...

I want to believe he is right.

No Child Left Behind failing our children

2006-12-13T12:29:00.000-09:00

From the Contra Costa Times (California) comes this wonderfil, right-on letter:

It's really ridiculous the way our educational system has become under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Testing, testing, testing and still we have the problem of increasing high school dropouts, fewer highly qualified/veteran teachers, more failing schools and fewer people entering a beat-down profession.

It's time for the politicians to stop playing with our educational system and begin listening to the people who have been working directly with the students and schools' staffs. It's time for President Bush and the politicians to show all of America that our schools are just as important as the war in Iraq.

Invest in the building of highly supplied and efficiently run schools. Invest in educational settings that are technologically current and aesthetically pleasing. Value the teachers by paying them living wages and sound benefits. Encourage youths by having community support centers that have homework help, as well as social and philanthropic activities for our young people.

And, by all means, let's ensure everyone has the same opportunities, whether or not they have passed some God-forsaken test.

Cheryl Powell

Richmond

Sign the petition
Tag: anti nclb

Democrats outline education agenda priorities

2006-12-12T10:42:00.000-09:00

This from CNN today. What caught my eye...

...Besides money, a point of contention between some of the law's critics and its supporters is an unprecedented requirement that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2013-14, a goal critics say is unrealistic. Spellings says the date should not be moved...

Moved! Moved! How can this be taken seriously! 100% is unattainable! How can they not understand that that we need a new paradigm for measuring success with kids?

Sign the petition.
Tag: anti nclb

Leave this law behind - Federal education mandates should be more flexible

2006-12-05T10:08:00.000-09:00

From the Anchorage Daily News comes a comment that makes sense to me, except I would just let it lapse.

Published: November 25, 2006

There's a reason the federal No Child Left Behind Act is sometimes called the "No Public School Left" Act. The law takes an admirable aspiration -- ensuring all students learn to a basic level of competency that enables them to function in society -- and turns it into an inflexible demand, with harsh consequences for the schools that most need extra help to measure up.

Schools must get a passing grade in each of 33 categories. Low-income schools that don't pass all 33 categories for two or more years face financial and other sanctions. Other schools that fail to measure up are stuck with a stigma that can scare some families into choosing private schools.

The federal law ignores the reality that some students are easier to educate than others. Some schools serve students who show up for class ready to learn, coming from stable households that value and support their children's education. Other schools serve communities afflicted by poverty, crime or other social upheaval, such as mass immigration.

Schools are held accountable for the performance of students who may not even show up enough -- or stick around long enough -- to benefit from the education the school offers. A school may do a great job helping disadvantaged students catch up, but as long as student scores still fall short, the school's good work doesn't count in the federal evaluation.

Alaska is among the states that have tried to gain some flexibility in evaluating schools. State education leaders want the rating based not just on the absolute level of student test scores, but also on the growth in student performance over time.

For the first few years of No Child Left Behind, the Bush administration steadfastly rejected requests for that kind of flexibility. Lately, a few states have won federal OK for considering growth in student scores, but Alaska's bid was recently rejected.

Alaska faces an even bigger challenge meeting another mandate in the federal education law. All teachers are supposed to be "highly qualified" in the subjects they teach.

Again, that's an admirable aspiration.

But Alaska has scores of tiny rural schools, accessible only by air or boat, with only a handful of teachers. Expecting each of those teachers to be "highly qualified" in multiple subjects is flatly unrealistic. Remote Alaska districts have enough trouble as it is recruiting teachers. Ironclad enforcement of this federal mandate will make it even harder to recruit teachers in the Bush.

No Child Left Behind will expire unless renewed by the new Congress that starts in January. With Democrats in control, there's new hope that an updated version of the law can include more realistic mandates.

"Next year, there's really an opportunity to make changes to No Child Left Behind," says Kevin Sweeney, press aide to U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski. "The (Bush) administration was always dead set against changes." Mr. Sweeney identified two key areas for improving the law: the "growth" approach to evaluating students and the "highly qualified" teacher requirements.

He's right on both counts.

No Child Left Behind turns admirable aspirations into punitive mandates. With a modest amount of flexibility, a revised federal law can apply enough pressure to spur improvement without setting standards that are impossible to achieve.

BOTTOM LINE: Alaska needs Congress to lighten up a bit on the No Child Left Behind Act.
Tag: anti nclb

Privatized Schools Don't Make the Grade

2006-11-28T12:47:00.000-09:00

Don't let the fact that this is from a Marxist publication get in your way. This is a good review of attempt to privatize education in this country, and more specifically about Chris Whittle and Edison schools.

Reach Lawrence Albright at pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net

...In a study that followed North Carolina students for several years, professors Robert Bifulco and Helen Ladd found that students in charter schools actually made considerably smaller achievement gains in charter schools than they would have in traditional public schools, according to the National Education Association.

In the last analysis, whether Chris Whittle succeeds or fails with the Edison Schools initiatives is of little consequence, since the ultra-right sees him and his efforts as simply one wedge to break apart public education. There are other private contractors waiting in the wings. And the battle that must be waged to protect public education is not against Chris Whittle personally, but against the ultra-right.

At the height of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, student leader Mario Savio spoke of the university as representing autocracy and viewing students as raw material to be used by corporations, which he opposed.

Today, the ultra-right seeks to privatize education and return education to the days when inequality was the norm. This is very much a political issue that reflects both their class interests and class stand. And if we're going to point the fickle finger of blame for any deficits in public education, then let's point it at a socioeconomic system that forces parents to make choices to spend more time with their children or have money to pay the bills. Let's blame a system that makes it possible for an employer not to provide health care insurance or in which the costs of living are increasing while real income is decreasing, and where a family sometimes chooses between poor nutrition or no nutrition at all. Let's point to the system where we put both our youth and our seniors at risk.

The ultra-right will continue to hammer against public education in the absence of a concerted struggle against them. Private education is to them the ultimate provider of knowledge. After all, our current president benefited from private schools. It was the best C average money could buy.
Tag: anti nclb

A Petition Calling For the Dismantling of the No Child Left Behind Act

2006-11-27T11:28:00.000-09:00

Sign this and telL your friends! Tell everyone you know. Let's do this now!
TAG: anti nclb

Alaska denied No Child Left Behind flexibility

2006-11-13T16:57:00.000-09:00

This is no big surprise there are not enough "punishments" in the AK's proposal.

The Associated Press

Published: November 10, 2006
Last Modified: November 10, 2006 at 08:42 AM

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) - A federal agency has denied Alaska's application to have more flexibility in judging whether schools are making adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind law.

Alaska was one of 16 states vying for 10 spots in a pilot program to allow states to judge a school's progress based on the percentage improvement in its students' test scores rather than on whether the scores have hit specific targets.

Five states - Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, North Carolina and Tennessee - have already been accepted into the pilot program, leaving only five open slots. The federal Department of Education rejected Alaska's application...

Les Morse, the director of assessments and accountability with the state Department of Education, said the problem is that the current system doesn't give credit to schools if their students are not proficient but improving.

Under Alaska's proposal, Morse said, schools wouldn't be penalized as long as the students were making improvements toward becoming proficient in four years...

Tag:anti nclb

I Have Not Gone Away for Good

2006-11-07T11:15:00.001-09:00

This year I am in the first grade year of my K/1 loop. First grade is a lot more work! I also think I got a little burned out on blogging. I really hoped my blog would make a difference in the fight against NCLB. At times it just seems so futile. Anyway, this is the important year and this election should be extremely important. Please be sure to vote today, and hopefully I will be back to write very soon.
Tag: anti nclb

I Have Not Gone Away for Good

2006-11-07T11:15:00.000-09:00

Congressman Young Introduces the No Child Left Behind Improvements Act of 2006

2006-08-28T12:36:00.000-08:00

Whew! I guess I took a much needed break from thinking about all this. Now I'm back at school on the first grade end of my loop and really busy but I am going to try to keep this current, especially since this is an important year for the reauthorization of NCLB.

With that in mind, I just discovered this. I am amazed! Many of us up here in Alaska consider our only congressman to be somewhat of a neanderthal. However he id come down on the right side of the patriot act and now this. With a quick look, I will say it looks OK. I will report more when I have read the whole thing.
Tag: anti nclb

Test-driven teaching isn't character-driven

2006-06-10T07:29:00.000-08:00

This commentary from Philly.com is all I have to say for today...

No Child Left Untested is politicians' answer to better education. What about better people?

By Colman McCarthy

No group is enjoying a greater high right now than the nation's testocrats, as students across the land finish up another year of test-driven education. These children, frightened by the fear of failure, are using their minds not to think but to perform.

For whom? Aside from the profit-hungry testing industry, it's mainly for politicians whose notion of No Child Left Untested is their answer to the latest report that all those well-drilled Japanese and Chinese kids are years ahead of America's slackers. Perform well on the tests, goes the meritocratic message, and all rungs on the ladder to success will be easily climbed.

Having taught in high schools for 25 years, I have seen no evidence that mastering tests helps students become kinder, more loving, or more adventuresome. Often, it's the opposite. Preparing for Advance Placement or International Baccalaureate tests, they become idea- and fact-memorizers, not idea- and fact-analyzers. Fearful of not doing well, students give in to anxiety. Cowed, they obsess over grades - and ignore Walker Percy's irrefutable truth that you can make all A's in school and go flunk life.

High school students who instinctively protest tests become spiritual dropouts, showing up for school physically but thinking their own thoughts, while test-giving teachers prattle on about what to study for the next Big One.

Having taught courses on nonviolence to more than 7,000 high school, college and law school students since 1982, as well as lecturing at hundreds of schools from the nation's wealthiest to its poorest, I have seen enough to know that, too often, test-happy schools are merely processing the young like slabs of cheese going to Velveeta Elementary on the way to Cheddar High and Mozzarella U.

Carol Rinzler describes it in Your Adolescent: An Owner's Manual:

Little Kimberly asks her high-achieving parents: "If they tell you in nursery school that you have to work hard so that you'll do well in kindergarten, and if they tell you in kindergarten that you have to work hard so you'll do well in high school, and if they tell you in high school that you'll have to work hard so you'll get into a good college, and assuming they tell you in college that you have to work hard so you get into a good graduate school, what do they tell you in graduate school that you have to work hard for?"

Mom and Dad tell Kimberly: "To get a good job so you can make enough money to send your children to a good nursery school."

Tests represent fear-based learning, not desire-based learning. As a pacifist, I see tests as forms of academic violence. I have never insulted my high school students by giving them exams.

Instead, I give my students plenty of quizzes, starting with character-driven questions. When did you last thank the school's janitors for keeping the toilets clean? How often do you express appreciation to the cafeteria workers for cooking the food every day? How often do you tell someone that you love them? And show them with deeds? Have you done a favor recently for someone who didn't even know you did it? Are you a talker or a doer? Are you a person who is self-centered or other-centered? What are you doing to make your parents' lives a bit easier? Are you living simply so others may simply live?

I'd rather have a class full of students who are mindful of what matters, rather than a class of students with minds full of what least matters: how to get ahead by acing tests. America has enough brainy people ready to serve the interests of the ruling elite, but not enough caring people to challenge its materialism and militarism.

When I asked some of my students recently whether they were better people for having taken their AP and IB tests in other classes, none answered yes. Most said they were frazzled. Some believed they had been conned into thinking the tests mattered. A few, indeed, were glad they took the tests. For them, it's now on to Mozzarella U. to strive for 4.0s, and seek out Kimberly as a best study pal.
Tag: anti nclb

House Panel Cuts Health Research Budget (and NCLB Funding)

2006-06-08T07:30:00.000-08:00

This from WaPo:

By ANDREW TAYLOR
The Associated Press
Wednesday, June 7, 2006; 6:27 PM

WASHINGTON -- Health research, school aid and social services for the poor would bear budget cuts under a bill approved by a House panel Wednesday.

But despite the cuts in a bill providing $141.9 billion for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, lawmakers found $1 billion more than last year for back-home projects unrequested by President Bush. Those include grants to local hospitals and clinics and research funding for universities and colleges in lawmakers' districts.

The House Appropriations Labor-HHS Subcommittee approved the bill by a 9-7 party-line vote Wednesday after Democrats such as Rep. David Obey savaged the bill for its cuts to the National Institutes of Health, programs funded by the 2002 No Child Left Behind education bill and for reducing the federal share for special education programs.

...

"This bill defines our priorities," Obey said. He said the cuts to programs such as the elimination of $272 million in school technology grants were the inevitable result of a deficit squeeze brought on by several recent rounds of GOP tax cuts.

The bill also cuts grants to help schools recruit, hire and train teachers to meet No Child Left Behind mandates by $300 million, or 10 percent. The measure also cuts safe and drug free school grants by 10 percent.

Republicans countered that they had produced as fair a bill as possible in tight budget times. They highlighted a $100 increase in the maximum Pell Grant to $4,150 and a double-digit percentage increase for community health centers.

Tight buget time caused by their tax cuts and starting a war they can't end!

...

Meanwhile, the House gave only cursory debate to a $3 billion measure funding its own budget. That represents a 4 percent increase. Floor action moved so swiftly that a half-dozen members who hoped to offer amendments such as a plan to block smoking areas in House office buildings lost their chance.

....

It is time to clean house. It is time for us all to work this fall for people to help to stop the idiocy going on in Washington right now!
Tag: anti nclb

Dayton says No Child sets schools up to fail

2006-06-07T07:10:00.000-08:00

Has it really been that long since my last post? School is out, my classroom is shut down and now comes all those chores I have been saving up all year to do. Luckily I am still waking up early and can find some time to read news on the internet early in the morning, but finding time to post is another matter. Anyway...

I found this one on Sunday, and even though the panelists and I appear to be at opposite ends of the political spectrum, there is a lot here to agree with...

NEW ORLEANS -- Rep. Margaret Dayton's warpath against the federal No Child Left Behind law took her to New Orleans on Friday, where she told education writers that the law performs functions better left to state and local officials.

Tag:

Speaking as a panelist at the annual meeting of the Education Writers Association, Dayton, R-Orem, outlined her opposition to the law that she says has "set up schools for failure."

...

The federal education law creates a culture of dependency, Dayton said.

"It really presupposes that central planning is going to be more effective than local control -- that public brains are going to be more effective than private brains," she said.

Petrilli argued that national standards are needed to increase achievement but conceded that NCLB is failing.

"In some ways it's creating a race to the bottom," he said. States are obliging schools' and parents' requests to make the tests easy enough to achieve "socially acceptable" pass rates, he said.

Dayton said she objected to the idea that achievement is the key. Giving all students the opportunity to learn should be the focus, she said.

"I think to say the achievement gap, it is not a worthy goal to address because it is very dampening to the entrepreneurial spirit and damaging to achieving students, especially those who learn at different times and in different ways," she said.

Dayton has been a critic of No Child Left Behind since it became law in 2002. In 2004, she led an effort to opt out of NCLB, and in 2005 sponsored a Utah law that prioritizes the state's education goals over federal requirements. The Department of Education has denied Utah's efforts to use a "growth model," which gives greater weight to growth in student achievement.

Dayton also questioned the federal Department of Education's annual $70 billion budget, and said the offices "metastasize" each time she visits. The department could be scaled back and relegated only to sharing best practices among states, Dayton said, with a budget of just $15 billion. Then each state could receive more than $1 billion for education, she said.

Now, the money paid in from each state is returned "with strings attached," she said.

Jason Kamras, 2005 National Teacher of the Year from Washington, D.C., public schools, also participated in the panel and said "human capital" is the key to reforming schools.

"All this is going to come down to having the very best people our country can offer serving as teachers, school leaders, counselors, district personnel and superintendent in our public education system, period," Kamras said. "Unless we have quality people, you can pass all the standards you want and adopt all the curricula and all the neat textbooks and products of the day, and nothing's going to change."

The comments are interesting as well:

an anyone say Duh? Of course the no child left program is a failure.OF course it is designed to create more dependency. The government wants everyone to be more dependant on them. The more people that are dependant on government for their every need, the easier they are control. And that is what the government wants more of, control over the people. They don't want an independent people, they want slaves who can't think for themselves. An independent people can and will rise p against their masters after so much abuse and wrongdoing by the government. If we are dependant on the government for everything, we are more likely to accept our slavery conditions.

and...

NCLB is about but one thing: Federal vs. local control of our schools - and children.

Utah would be better served if they told the feds to take NCLB and shove it. It would likely cost a bit more that 100 million to the state (of OUR money) but we would then be able to do with OUR schools what we wanted.

The VERY first issue that we could deal with is the vast number of foreigners that we are educating - as a federal mandate. Our state taxpayers are paying for the education of these foreigners, and we should have NO obligation to do so. It should, after all, NOT be the responsibility of our state taxpayers to pay for the cost of educating children of foreigner's.

If we ended NCLB, that would cost the $100 million, but the savings of doing so would offset that cost by many times.

We just might be able to afford to pay for the schooling of OUR children!

Now, if you you have read this blog at all you have have probably figured out I am a card carrying progressive (never really did like that liberal term) and I imagine these Utahin's and I would have much to argue about, but on federal control of education I believe we agree. NCLB is such a bad idea that it brings all kinds of people together to fight aagainst it. At least that is my hope for 2007 when it comes up again in congress.
Tag: anti nclb

Once Again - Schools Matter

2006-05-25T08:37:00.000-08:00

I feel I must once again, turn your attention to the blogging of Judy Rabin, Peter Campbell, and Jim Horn over at Schools Matter. As I have said before, I consider this an everyday must read, but lately several posts have really caught my attention...

Today's post has Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch coming together to oppose NCLB, the tests, and the dumbed down curricula that they cause.

Also from today, NSTA Cites Poor Working Conditions & NCLB as Reasons for Drop in Science Scores this from NYT:

Michael J. Padilla, a professor at the University of Georgia who is president of the National Science Teachers Association, said that the problem was not that universities were failing to train sufficient numbers of science majors or that too few were opting for classroom careers, but that about a third of those who accepted teaching jobs abandoned the profession within five years.

"What happens is that the system tends to beat them down," Mr. Padilla said. "Working conditions are poor, it's a difficult job, and the pay isn't that great."

Some teachers cited the decreasing amount of time devoted to science in schools, which they attributed in part to the annual tests in reading and math required by the No Child Left Behind law. That has led many elementary schools to cancel some science classes. On average, the time devoted to science instruction among elementary teachers across the nation declined from a weekly average of 2.6 hours in 2000 to 2.3 hours in 2004, Department of Education statistics show.
---------------------------------------------------------------
The media blitz over NAEP science scores has everyone scrambling just in time for the big push to start science testing in 2007-2008. If NCLB is not scrapped there won't be a need for talented, dedicated science teachers who love the subject because the teachers can just follow the script. That should help America's global competitiveness.
...

From Monday came this wonderful piece of satire that nails it...

Dear Mr. President,

I wanted to write to thank you for what you've done for our country. While I quibble with many of your ideas -- your belief that threats and punishments are the way to improve schools, that invading, destroying, and occupying a sovereign nation is the way to help it achieve peace and democracy, that increasing air pollutants constitutes clear skies, and that logging 300-year-old trees is the way to achieve healthy forests -- there is one thing that you and I are completely aligned on: the need for less critical thinking in our nation's classrooms.

The National Reading Panel --- your hand-selected group of literacy experts -- makes the need for less critical thinking abundantly clear. As you know, the National Reading Panel had the nerve to use "research" and "analysis" to come to the conclusion that "phonics instruction appears to contribute only weakly, if at all, in helping poor readers apply [decoding skills] to read text and to spell words." (quoted in Garan, Elaine. 2002. Resisting Reading Mandates: How to Triumph with the Truth. Heinemann. Portsmouth, NH., p. 47; taken from the NRP Report of the Subgroups, Chapter 2, p. 116) But, thanks to those wonderful public relations people from Widemeyer Communications, the Washington PR firm hired by McGraw-Hill to promote Open Court in Texas and to write the Summary Booklet and produce the promotional video that explains the NRP's "research," phonics has become (once again!) The Next Big Thing.

See? People don't have time to read a 500 page report. That would require us to think. And to read! That's why it's so much better to have our reading and thinking done for us. After all, if you can't believe what a Washington-based PR firm hired by the biggest educational company in the world to promote its products tells you, then who can you believe? Like you, Mr. President, I read the front page. Let all those other lazy folks with too much time on their hands read the rest of the paper. You and I have much more important things to do!

But I know you, you sly old fox, you. You're just waiting for us to raise our hands in the back of the classroom and say, like Arnold Horshack from Welcome Back, Kotter, "Ooo! Ooo! Mr. President! Mr. President! There appears to be a discrepancy between what the NRP actually wrote and what right-wing pundits say the NRP wrote!" And you, the Firm Believer in Truth, would acknowledge us with a Cookie for Justice.

So, please forgive us for not raising our hands. Please understand that your teaching methods are so advanced that many of us have mistaken you for a dangerous ideological zealot.
...
But, thanks to you, 71 percent of the nation's 15,000 school districts have reduced the amount of instruction in history, social studies, and other non-tested subjects. Mercifully, our already over-burdened children won't have to think about issues like Truth vs. truth vs. evidence vs. belief. They have too many other important things to think about, like who is going to win American Idol and whether or not Tom Cruise is gay.

I heard some commie liberal quip recently, "Facts, like history, belong to the conquerors." I'm not sure what he meant, but it sounded a lot like the usual liberal whining we are so tired of.

Thank you for your service to our country.

Best wishes,
Peter Campbell
Tag: anti nclb

Heard the One About the 600,000 Chinese Engineers?

2006-05-24T14:36:00.000-08:00

It is the end of the year! I am extremely busy. Hope to be able to blog more and do more research in a couple of weeks. For now there is this from Gerald Bracey in the WaPo...

People and organizations create statistics for a purpose -- to call attention to a problem, or to argue for a policy change. Americans consume vast quantities of statistics every day. Most zip in and out of our brains, but others somehow take root in the gray matter, then move about the culture as something that everyone just "knows."Among such recent attention-getting statistics are 600,000, 350,000 and 70,000. These are, allegedly, the number of engineers produced in 2004 in China, India and the United States, respectively. The numbers first drew major notice when they appeared in a Fortune magazine story on July 25, 2005.
...

Carl Bialik, who writes the "Numbers Guy" column in the Wall Street Journal, was suspicious. He had previously examined the Fortune (maazine) numbers and concluded that they were inflated, so he sought to find their source. The most likely origin for the 600,000 Chinese engineers was a 2002 speech by Ray Bingham, then-chief executive of a semiconductor company. Bialik couldn't find any obvious birthplace for the Indian figures, but National Science Foundation analysts told him the number was unlikely to be anywhere near 350,000. As for the academies' report, Deborah Stine, who led the study, told Bialik that the committee had "assumed Fortune did fact-checking on their numbers" and so used them. Meanwhile, a McKinsey Global Institute report had cast doubt on the quality of the Chinese engineering graduates, so Bialik reasoned that removing unqualified candidates would obviously reduce the total.

The 2004 China Statistical Yearbook, issued by the Chinese government, reports 644,000 engineering graduates that year. But the yearbook merely assembled the numbers sent by provincial governments. The accuracy of these provincial reports is unknown, and it is unclear whether the provinces shared common definitions -- the word "engineer" does not translate easily into many Chinese dialects.

In fact, about half of what China calls "engineers" would be called "technicians" at best in the United States, with the equivalent of a vocational certificate or an associate degree. In addition, the McKinsey study of nine occupations, including engineering, concluded that "fewer than 10 percent of Chinese job candidates, on average, would be suitable for work [in a multinational company] in the nine occupations we studied."

After an exhaustive study, researchers at Duke University also pummeled the numbers. In a December 2005 analysis, "Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate," they reported that the United States annually produces 137,437 engineers with at least a bachelor's degree while India produces 112,000 and China 351,537. That's more U.S. degrees per million residents than in either other nation.

Among major media outlets, thus far only the Christian Science Monitor has joined the Wall Street Journal in examining the competing statistics. (A few others have referenced the Duke study). In a December 2005 article, the Monitor quoted Rochester Institute of Technology professor Ron Hira as saying: "Business groups have been very smart about trying to change the subject from outsourcing and offshoring to the supposed shortfall of U.S. engineers. There's really no serious shortage of engineers."
...

Statistics that end up as conventional wisdom even when they're wrong usually become popular by being presented as fact in a highly visible and respected source -- such as a cover story in Fortune or a National Academies report.

Once a statistic has attained the status of something we all "know," it takes on a charmed life. It is hardly surprising that the National Academies report gave rise to many citations. Yet even after the Duke report and other demurrals, these spurious throngs of Chinese and Indian engineers remain alive and well, appearing, for example, in a Newsweek opinion piece last winter by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez repeated the numbers in March to a meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers, and Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) cited them in April during an appearance at a Fredericksburg science expo for middle-school students.

We probably will not be done with the 600,000, 350,000 and 70,000 false comparison for a long time. If ever.

...

And what you will read about NCLB in the next year or so will be no different. Take the time to look beyond what you read in mainstream media and pass it around.
Tag: anti nclb

Watching One Child Get Left Behind

2006-05-22T08:49:00.000-08:00

Your guess is as good as mine as to why this story of a fifth grade girl from Brooklyn NY appears in the Arizona reporter, but this is Indeed a story about what happens when instead of real education reform we get NCLB and the test mania that comes with it:

The author (right) contends that the federal No Child Left Behind Act failed the student she tutored. The fifth grader, unable to pass demanding new standardized tests, was left back. The author (right) contends that the federal No Child Left Behind Act failed the student she tutored. The fifth grader, unable to pass demanding new standardized tests, was left back. Photo Courtesy of Stephanie Wash

A tutor discovers that big dreams aren't always enough
By Stephanie Wash
Balloons were scattered. The children's shirts were adorned with fresh orchids. Hundreds of families were packed into the elementary school auditorium last June for fifth grade graduation, a milestone the children anticipated all year. Yet I felt a large void as I took my seat. Not all the fifth graders I had tutored and had grown to love had made it.

One was Kimberly, a tall, shy, brown-eyed 12-year-old who lives with her mother, stepfather and older sister in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. It was hard celebrating the other children's fortune when I felt so deeply Kimberly's misfortune.

"It made really sad that I couldn't graduate with my class," Kimberly told me. She is now nearly done with her second bid at fifth grade. I wonder if she'll graduate this spring. And if she doesn't, what then?

Her story is the story of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, legislation signed by President Bush in 2002 that was supposed to promote academic growth, largely through standardized testing.

Kimberly had never grasped basic mathematical concepts. She went from grade to grade, falling further behind, missing fundamental concepts in mathematics and language studies. She couldn't progress, because she never had a foundation.

I invested two years in her education, as a tutor in Ms. Shaw-Murphy's class, with New York University's America Reads program. But it's hard to teach kids when the average elementary class size is 34, as it is in Kimberly's district. What I've seen in my work with Kimberly and her classmates is that students left back - five percent of New York City fifth graders last year -- don't get the attention they need to catch up. In the name of leaving no child behind, many children are being not just left behind, but written off.

I was privileged to receive a top-notch public school education in my hometown, Braintree, Massachusetts. My elementary and middle school offered me enrichment programs, advanced classes, and a rigorous curriculum. Later, I attended an all-girls Catholic high school. I was always pushed by my teachers to excel. If I didn't understand a lesson, they worked with me until I did. If I couldn't do something, they stood by until I succeeded. Straight A's were almost expected of me, and my father encouraged me to challenge myself by taking advanced classes. I never felt alone; my teachers and parents showed genuine concern and interest in my academics. My education afforded me the opportunity to attend New York University.

My connection with Kimberly is much deeper than a tutor-student relationship. I see myself in her. As I was, she is willing to learn. She has big dreams, as I did. The only difference is that she lacks the guidance, support, and motivation I received as a young girl.

Kimberly is part of a large achievement gap in public education. Materials are scarce in the overcrowded, aged building where she studies. Photocopies are a luxury, and pens and pencils are missing from the classrooms. The teachers scramble for paper towels and hoard them in cupboards. The libraries are filled with a mixture of antique books that were collecting dust in old book rooms and new, glossy books that the teachers buy themselves.

No matter how much I help Kimberly, it will not make up for the past seven years of education that has failed her.

There was so much that could have been done for her. And now I look back with anger on the past two years. Even an outsider can see that change is necessary. Is it that nobody else cares?

I asked Kimberly about summer school.

"It was a waste of time," she said. "We didn't really do any work. The teacher just gave us worksheets every day but she never corrected us or told us what we got wrong."

What about the free tutoring that theoretically exists for students in need, before and after school? Kimberly thought she was eligible, but it wasn't available.

"What extra help did I get? Nothing - I didn't get any. They just sent me to summer school," she said.

Instead, her family tried to hire a private tutor. "Last year I had a tutor who came five days a week for a couple of hours, but it was costing my mother $30 an hour," she said. "Then the tutor wanted $50 an hour and that was way too expensive." Now her sister Kiara, a seventh grader, tutors her daily.

After her setbacks, I've seen a loss of hope in her face, and heard in her voice fear that she won't be able to catch up. I've seen other children who have fallen behind have their motivation destroyed and slip even further. Meanwhile, Kimberly says, the students who excel academically get more attention and enrichment and pull even further ahead.

As Kimberly tells me this in the hot, dimly lit classroom, I find myself willing her to succeed, so that this June, I will be able to pin a fresh orchid on her graduation dress.

This is just one story of one girl. NCLB does not reduce this girl's class sizes or even provide the materials for a proper education. What it does offer is privatization, vouchers and charter schools. There are people that believe that these things will more properly educate these kids. Every day I get a feed from Google containing headlines that contain the words "charter school," and everyday on that page I read about abuses of the system, convictions for fraud, schools closed because of misuse of funds, etc. Privatization is not a better use of public education dollars. Helping the parents to organize, and change things themselves is a way that has been shown to work. Schools with dedicated staff and good leadership with adequate funding have been shown to work. Vouchers and charter schools are not working. Privatization will not work. Let's get rid of NCLB and get on with the task of giving communities the resources to make schools that work for their kids.

NCLB Must Be Stopped in 2007

2006-05-17T11:06:00.000-08:00

From Jim Horn comes a warning we all must heed:

A growing number of people have come to realize that NCLB is the greatest threat to public education in America today. With its built-in schedule of guaranteed failure that culminates in 2014, an erosion of support for public schools will accompany that death march. Reauthorization next year will bring an end the dream of a publicly-funded non-sectarian school system for all children that celebrates all the differences that make America great, while inculcating a deep civic and political solidarity under a just Constitution that makes all those differences possible. This is the dream that is at risk and the hope that is being sacrificed in the name of a phony accountability system that uses the failure of poor children to wage a war against them and their schools.

Unless NCLB is dismantled next year, the erosion of public support will creep from the urban centers into the suburbs, where failure awaits those who are too blind to see it coming. Unless reauthorization is blocked next year, the public school system will gradually and inevitably burn out on the death march to 2014, ending this part of our civilized democratic ideal, to paraphrase Eliot, with a whimper instead of a bang.
...
Tag: anti nclb

Secretary Spellings Announces National Mathematics Advisory Panel Members

2006-05-16T17:02:00.000-08:00

Looks like they are doing to math what they did to reading. It is my bet that some of the people on this panel stand to make a lot of money from this report. It worked once didn't it? Why not again? Remember these names:

The National Mathematics Advisory Panel will be chaired by Dr. Larry Faulkner, president of the Houston Endowment and President Emeritus of the University of Texas at Austin.

Other panelists:

Dr. Deborah Ball, Dean, School of Education and Collegiate Professor, University of Michigan
Dr. Camilla Benbow, Dean of Education and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, Peabody College
Dr. A. Wade Boykin, Professor and Director of the Developmental Psychology Graduate Program in the Department of Psychology, Howard University
Dr. Francis "Skip" Fennell, Professor of Education, McDaniel College (Md.); President, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
Dr. David Geary, Curators' Professor, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri at Columbia
Dr. Russell Gersten, Executive Director, Instructional Research Group; Professor Emeritus, College for Education, University of Oregon
Nancy Ichinaga, former Principal, Bennett-Kew Elementary School, Inglewood, Calif.
Dr. Tom Loveless, Director, Brown Center on Education Policy and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution
Dr. Liping Ma, Senior Scholar for the Advancement of Teaching, Carnegie Foundation
Dr. Valerie Reyna, Professor of Human Development and Professor of Psychology, Cornell University
Dr. Wilfried Schmid, Professor of Mathematics, Harvard University
Dr. Robert Siegler, Teresa Heinz Professor of Cognitive Psychology, Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Jim Simons, President of Renaissance Technologies Corporation; former Chairman of the Mathematics Department, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Dr. Sandra Stotsky, Independent researcher and consultant in education; former Senior Associate Commissioner, Massachusetts Department of Education
Vern Williams, Math Teacher, Longfellow Middle School, Fairfax, Va.
Dr. Hung-Hsi Wu, Professor of Mathematics, University of California at Berkeley

Ex-officio members:

Dan Berch, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health
Diane Jones, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Tom Luce, Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Education
Kathie Olsen, Deputy Director, National Science Foundation
Raymond Simon, Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Education
Grover (Russ) Whitehurst, Director, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education

This time we are watching. Not that it will make a difference, necessarily. (Also check Jim Horn's Schools Matter for more info on the make up og this panel.)
Tag: anti nclb

Leaving Good Teachers Behind

2006-05-12T11:16:00.000-08:00

Here, from a commentary from the Lompoc Record, is another side of the story of the disaster known as NCLB. Para educators need to be 'highly qualified." These are people often with minimal skills and/or education, but with dedication and a real interest in kids. These are also the bottom of the wage stricture in most school systems. These people are necessary and do an important job. As with any job good people are always hard to find, so why make it harder? To help destroy public education, why else?

They call it No Child Left Behind. What they should call it is, Teacher's Aides Left Behind.

The No Child Left Behind program was supposedly designed to ensure that kids get a good education and that a high school diploma actually means something. No problem with that.

What I do have a problem with is the fact that somebody, somewhere had the bright idea to require teacher's aides to take a version of the test in order to keep their jobs. This in spite of the fact that some, but certainly not all, of these aides don't need to have a working knowledge of much of anything academic in nature in order to do their job. Let me give you an example.

My family has a close friend who has had various odd jobs working for the school district for some 20 years. Most of the jobs she has had were blue-collar in nature. Over time, she and the kids she worked with discovered she had a gift with disabled children. She has had a couple of different jobs working with these kids, none of which require her to teach anything that would for instance, require the use of math.

Having been out of high school for some 30 years, like most of us, she has forgotten how to find the area of a circle or multiply fractions. She never did take algebra.

But the important thing is, she has all the love and patience in the world to spend all day with kids who need her to help them with some fairly rudimentary skills. The kids, their parents and the school district she works for are lucky to have her.

But she could lose her job if she can't pass the standardized test that is being required by mandate of the federal government. Adding to this problem is the fact that the local school district could not have done a worse job in helping the aides prepare for the test.

The school district, for some reason, only gave my friend and her fellow teacher's aides a grand total of a week's notice that they were going to have to take this test!

I believe that aides working in an academic position should have a basic knowledge of the subject at hand. But it was terribly unfair for the district to in effect give a pop quiz to some employees that were never noticed before they were hired that they would need to have certain skill sets that were outside of their scope of job responsibilities. Neither did the district offer any training or practice sessions to help the aides brush up on stuff they haven't been using for decades and probably won't ever have to use again.

Can you imagine being threatened with losing your job because you didn't know how to do something that is irrelevant to your job?
...
Tag: anti nclb

Exam Proves What Teachers Know

2006-05-11T09:27:00.000-08:00

Affluent Districts, Ready Kindergartners
Sunday, May 07, 2006

Scott Stephens

Plain Dealer Reporter

Teachers have said for years that while all children can learn, the skills they begin school with vary widely.

Now, they have the numbers to back up that claim.

The just-released results of Ohio's new kindergarten readiness exam show that children just beginning school posted scores closely tied to the wealth of the community they lived in.

Kindergartners entering school in affluent suburban communities, for example, posted substantially higher scores than children living in high-poverty urban and rural areas.

Those results are hardly a revelation to educators.

Still, the test is being closely watched in education circles for several reasons. First, it represents Ohio's first attempt to quantify the challenges that schools face in trying to educate poor children.

Also, the data undercut arguments for states offering merit pay for teachers because they don't operate on a level playing field.

"It really shows what we've been trying to get people to see all along - kids from lower socioeconomic conditions need more help, and it really takes more work to bring them to speed," said Debbie Tully, professional issues director for the Ohio Federation of Teachers.

Generally, the kindergarten scores reflect trends that continue through high school.

Girls score higher than boys, white students score higher than black and Latino students, and students entering excelling districts score higher than students entering struggling districts.

...
Sen. C.J. Prentiss of Cleveland pushed fellow lawmakers to commission a study to gauge poverty's impact on student performance and determine how much money was needed to enable all students to reach the state's new academic standards. Prentiss never got the study, but lawmakers did agree to the readiness exam.

"My hope was really to get a truer picture of what districts had to deal with when kids entered kindergarten not ready," said Prentiss, now the Senate minority leader. "I wanted to know what it meant in terms of allocation of resources. You hear some of my colleagues say that it's not about money, but bringing kids the resources they need does cost money."

Parents such as Michele Krampitz appreciate knowing where their children stand. Krampitz, whose son took the test before beginning kindergarten last fall in the Rocky River schools, said the test is especially beneficial to children who skipped preschool.

"Preschool is where some problems would first have been identified," she said. "For children who have not been to preschool, this test might be the first time they hear about it."

But some worry that testing tots so early might result in labeling - at times inaccurately - children as successes or failures before their academic careers even begin.

"Part of this is the fixation on testing as a cure for every imaginable education ill," said Robert Schaeffer of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing in Cambridge, Mass. "Good teachers don't need to test like that to identify a kid who needs help."
...

'Nuff said!

Tag: anti nclb

People Speak Out About the Patricia Polacco Outrage

2006-05-09T11:07:00.000-08:00

We wrote about this earlier. Here is a powerful letter from O'Hanian's website:

excerpted from Patricia Polacco's statement:You can imagine my astonishment when I finally called this firm and learned that this was not the reason. They requested my written outline because their 'client' wanted to make sure that I would not discuss my deep concern about NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND MANDATE...as well as my concern that there is a link between this mandate and the SRA/McGraw Hill Company who manufactures, prints, and profits from the sale of these tests to school systems all over our country.
============================================================================

Virginia Parent: When I got to this part, I let out a loud audible GASP.

I have a story about Patricia Polacco. Like millions of children around the country, my daughter was mesmerized by all her stories. Especially The Keeping Quilt And Mrs. Katz and Tusch. (Forgive me, we love her, but my daughter is fourteen and it's been years since I've read these books and the hour is late and my memory weak, but I'm still sure I got those titles right since we read them over and over and over). We loved those books especially because of their Jewish content. There was another about the Oakland fires that really resonated with my five year old. Patricia Polacco was one of our favorites.

Therefore, when we discovered she was speaking at the Corcoran in Washington, imagine our delight! We jumped at the chance. Sarah was already in sixth grade but we went anyway. We are passionate about books in this household, they are everywhere so that it is dangerous to attempt a middle-of-the-night bathroom run for fear of tripping all over then. We have always loved this author because she helped instill that passion in our child. The day at the Corcoran was actually a book illustrators event, but Polacco was featured (perhaps because she illustrates her own books?)

Early in her talk, she began decrying No Child Left Behind. She talked of how this was sapping children's creativity, destroying their love of reading but most importantly how art and music were being scrapped in favor of more test prep. She was unrelenting, unforgiving, she minced no words. I was so overcome, I had tears in my eyes. When she finished, I started applauding. Immediately my eleven-year-old daughter and husband joined me. The rest of the audience sat there in silence. But then they picked up the pace. The clapping became louder and more insistent. All that lacked was that we didn't stand up and give Ms. Polacco a standing ovation.

My daughter learned a valuable lesson that day. You stand up for what you believe in, you fight for what is right, even when you are swimming against the tide.

Judith Fogel
Fairfax, Virginia
Tag: anti nclb

Teacher Watch--Formative Assessment Agenda

2006-05-09T09:05:00.000-08:00

Here is a scary post from the Horse Sense and Nonsense blog. I 'll say it one more time, it's time to organize and fight this!

Recent public outrage over scoring errors in the SAT and California High School Exit Exam (HSEE) has again inflamed national, if temporary, questions about high-stakes benchmark testing--and the unregulated corporations which create and adminster such programs, at the state and national level. Part of the concern is that many test corporations subsist on continuous public funding for each trial, error and profit.

But as eggregious as these momentary scandals may seem to parents, students and teachers, it's important to keep in mind that corporations such as Harcourt and the Educational Testing Service (ETS) have long shifted their eyes to something much more lucrative, long-term and mostly unquestioned: formative assessments.

Roughly, as teachers already know, "formative assessments" are seen as practice tools to prepare students to succeed on high-stakes, benchmark tests that occur perhaps once or twice a year. High-stakes benchmarks at the state level, such as the CAT-6 in California, are used to determine rankings of Adequate Yearly Progress under the No Child Left Behind Act. Such results can affect funding for schools, not to mention the real-estate rates in your neighborhood. National high-stakes benchmark tests include the PSAT and new SAT test, which affect student entry into colleges and universities, and can also affect individual student options for scholarships and other funding.

By comparison, "formative" test sounds kinder and gentler--it's just like studying, right?

As articulated by CEOs at the 2005 Association of Test Publishers "Innovations in Testing" Conference, what test publishers mean by "formative assessment" is literally constant assessment. Via tools such as remote control, internet question banks and automated, instant online grading software programs, the formative assessment agenda seeks to break down barriers between "testing" and "curriculum" so that they literally mean the same thing. The buzzphrase for this is "integrated" testing.

The argument, of course, is that teachers are always preparing students for tests anyway, so more automated and standardized formative practice would simply make the whole process user-friendly for everyone.

Two months ago, ETS acquired the assets of Assessment Training Institute (ATI), a Portland Oregon company which specializes in integrating assessment with day-to-day instruction. In an official press release dated March 8 2006, John Oswald, ETS Senior Vice President of Elementary and Secondary Education, says, "ATI's people and products will broaden ETS's educational solutions, including minute-to-minute assessment for learning in the classroom, periodic benchmark testing to validate and adjust instruction, and high-stakes summative state assessments."

Richard (no relation to Henry) Higgins, CEO of ATI, calls the approach "assessment FOR learning." You can read the entire press release here.

The key is that big-money testers know how to diversify their portfolio. Corporations such as ETS are already planning creative recovery from possible fallout over inevitable, isolated squabbles over a few high-stakes tests.

If George Orwell were still alive, he'd repeat that the domestic counterpart to a state of chronic war with an enemy somewhere else is a state of chronic surveillance at home. In the next generation, unless we resist, compulsory schools will be the primary (and invisible) front for this battle.

Jo Scott-Coe
writescottcoe@earthlink.net

"HorseSense and Nonsense"
www.andyhilbert.blogspot.com

Tag: anti nclb

Patricia Polacco: Regarding the cancellation of my appearance at the IRA in Chicago for May 2 and 3, 2006

2006-05-05T11:17:00.000-08:00

Read this. Famed chirdren's author/artist Patricia Polacco has been censured by McGraw Hill. They hired her to speak at the Interbational Reading Associatio (IRA) conference and then tried to control her speakking out about NCLB.
...
This "firm" insisted that my speech be "upbeat, non-controversial, and non-political"...I countered with the fact that the plight of the American teacher is far from "upbeat" and they are caught in the vice grip of the most controversial and political LIE that has ever been perpetrated on the American teacher.

I was also quite mystified as to why SRA/McGraw Hill would even select ME and invite me to be a part of their program knowing how strongly I feel about this entire situation.
...

Finally, after receiving numerous emails from this 'firm' that got more and more 'insistences'...I finally sent them a written refusal to alter my speeches in any way, Certainly I can moderate their length, but I refused to alter the content. I made them aware if they truly had a problem with this, then they could "un-invite" me to be part of their event.

Needless to sat, SRA/McGraw Hill cancelled my programs within the hour!

Also check out this:

New Reading Program is First in Nation to Combine No Child Left Behind Requirements, Research, 'New Literacies' and Other Approaches into Curriculum...
...

Reading Street includes fiction, expository articles, biographies,
poems, and online reading, all focused on driving students toward No Child
Left Behind's mandated Adequate Yearly Progress.
...

Kind of like driving cattle?
anti nclb

No Child Left Behind

2006-05-05T08:18:00.000-08:00

"I believe the real purpose of the Act is to destroy public schools."

This is from a high school freshman, and he gets it! Come on America. Wake up!

Listen to this Commentary!

By Paul Katzman

No child left behind. Pretty bold words, if they were true that is. However, the No Child Left Behind Act was enacted for the wrong reasons and is implemented in the wrong way.

In theory it sounds wonderful- more flexibility for the states and school districts in the use of federal money, increased accountability for the schools, and a stronger emphasis on reading with the goal of having children able to read by the 3rd grade. But where are the additional resources to help accomplish this daunting task?

The Act introduces a system that ranks schools based solely on test scores. If a parent is not satisfied with the local school's continued weak performance, they are allowed to move their child to another school.

But testing is not the cure for poor grades. Tests are only a barometer to monitor progress; they don't fix the problem, they help to diagnose it. For example, in 6th grade, we began to be tested much more frequently, but it did absolutely nothing for me.

I believe the real purpose of the Act is to destroy public schools. The creators of the Act were frustrated because a voucher system could not be put in place, so they created a system that will force more charter schools, state takeover of local school districts, and home schooling. But no matter what happens, children will continue to be educated one way or another.

-Paul Katzman is a freshman at Grady High school.
Youth Radio Atlanta is produced in cooperation with WABE and funded in part by The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.

anti nclb

Students, Parents & Community Leaders Speak Out on No Child Left Behind Act

2006-05-03T09:37:00.000-08:00

Public Hearings Across the Country Reveal Confusion, Concern, and Anger OverImplementation of NCLB

Implementation of NCLB WASHINGTON, May 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Public concern over implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is rising, according to a new report issued today by Public Education Network. Open to the Public: The Public Speaks out on No Child Left Behind, identifies specific concerns voiced by more than 1500 parents, students, taxpayers, and community leaders at open public hearings from September to January of this year. The hearings were designed to gain grassroots and civic input on the law from groups often left out of the policy debate, yet profoundly impacted by its implementation.

Throughout the hearings, the public rejected a single test as an accurate measure of school improvement. Parents and community leaders indicated that discrepancies between state and federal measures of school progress have created a deep mistrust of high-stakes tests and other NCLB indicators as accurate assessments of school performance. And, they believe that accountability must be expanded to include additional measures of school and student progress, developed with the input of local educators, parents, and the community.

Americans are also angered by the labeling of schools as "in need of improvement" because they say that this label erodes public support for these schools. Rather than increasing the public's sense of responsibility for demanding additional support and resources, 'in need of improvement' labels are perceived as punitive and can result in student, teacher, and community abandonment of the very schools most in need of support.
...

Feedback from students revealed that they experience enormous pressure passed along from teachers and administrators worried about school performance. NCLB testing places excessive stress on students, particularly English language learners and special education students, causing some to drop out. Students were concerned they did not have the support and resources they needed to meet the requirements of the law.
...

The public also recommended the following changes to the law and its implementation including:

* Accountability that truly supports measurable student achievement
and gives credit for significant progress made.

* Improved academic resources for students, including increased quality
 and availability of supplemental educational services.

* An expanded definition of "highly qualified teachers" to include
 training on parent and community involvement as well as on cultural
 competency.

* Enforced parent involvement provisions so parents can participate in
 meaningful ways and administration officials can more effectively engage
 parents.
...

It's out there. I wonder if anyone is listening?
Tag: anti nclb

No Child Left Behind fails its mission

2006-05-01T08:38:00.000-08:00

An opinion from the Pasadena Star News is a voice of reason, from a teacher of course...

It's a bold name for a piece of legislation. You'd be hard pressed to find a dentist that claimed, "No tooth shall ever have a cavity ... ever." There is no emergency room with a sign on the doors that reads, "No one will ever die here again ... and this time we mean it." It's absurd, of course.

Some people don't brush their teeth. Some bullet wounds are bigger than others.

There's only so much any one doctor or dentist can control. The notion is almost as crazy as "No Child Left Behind." Many of our kids come in not knowing their alphabet. At other schools, all the kids arrive knowing the alphabet, with many already beginning to read. Still, at other schools, no children come in without any letter recognition at all, not even the ones in their names. There's only so much any one teacher can control. Some needs are just bigger than others.
...

So, why were we invited to apply to be a distinguished school, while this other school is allegedly failing? The answer is poverty, mostly. Though only a few miles down the road they have a far greater number of kids receiving free lunch. Their parents are much more

likely to hold jobs, rather than build careers.

Their families are also much more transient than ours. And they have greater language issues. Have you ever tried to take a standardized test in a foreign language? Don't bother. So what will happen if this school fails to meet testing goals again this year? Money will have to be diverted from the kids and put aside for transportation. Kids from this school will get to choose a new school in our area and this school will have to flip the bill to get them there. And which kids might actually leave? The kids who are doing well. The kids whose families are on top of it enough to make the move. This takes those kids away from their school testing totals. It takes away their brightest and best. And, once they leave, who will be "left behind"? Poor kids, the disenfranchised. Now we've got poor kids at an even poorer school.

And my school? Well, by luck, we may wind up with their brightest and best. We are, after all, just a few miles down the road. If that happens, our test scores will go up.

The real answer is easy. The execution is not, but the answer is no great stretch. It's the same answer for most of society's ills. Fight poverty. Don't seek to make people poorer. You want children to perform better in school? Fight poverty. Their poverty. Lower crime rates interest you? Fight poverty.

Teen pregnancy your issue? Less poverty, less teenage pregnancy. Want to wage a real war against terror? Fight global poverty. Is it any wonder that breeding grounds for terror are some of the poorest places on earth?

Putting legislation in place that will eventually punish the poor for simply being poor is never the answer, for anything. Fight poverty. Always fight poverty, and leave no poor child left behind. At home or abroad.
...

And I will go even farther than that. It is about out-reach. It is about the schools going to the families. It is about organizations helping to educate the families from the day the child is born. These are people that do not come from literate traditions, in many cases. We as a society must help them to learn what we do to help our kids succeed in school. Of course if your goal is a large uneducated, low skilled, low paid work force, and education only for the elite few that can afford to pay for it, you would not want to do any of these things.
Tag: anti nclb

No Child Left Behind? Are you sure?

2006-04-28T10:33:00.000-08:00

No Child Left Behind is doing the opposite of what the name promises. And the Bush administration should be held accountable for its failure.

Now there's a sentence that I can whole heartedly agree with but not for these bogus reasons. Look here and here as to why I disagree. This article just simply won't go away!
Tag: anti nclb

Milwaukee school study shows how neocons try to control info

2006-04-27T12:04:00.000-08:00

This opinion piece by Ed Garvey in the Milwaukee's Capital Times shows how it is being done in Wisconsin. The sad fact is it is happening in many states, and with NCLB and Reading First at a national level as well. We need more and more articles like this exposing how it is done...

The "scientific study" will conclude in a year surprise, surprise that public schools are inferior to private voucher schools. Evidence will be scarce but they assume you will only read the headline. Their prescription will, predictably, be more vouchers. If the stakes weren't so high, it would almost be enjoyable to watch how the neocons manipulate our institutions and media as they advance their anti-government agenda. They believe in controlling the flow of information on matters of public policy and they are darned good at it.

Readers of The Capital Times and FightingBob.com understand the impact on national policy of archconservative foundations such as American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute and the granddaddy of them all the Heritage Foundation. And there is no need to explain Fox News with its much-heralded "fair and balanced" coverage. (Balance rests somewhere between Jerry Falwell and Dick Cheney.)

What has been missing is an examination of the impressive efforts of the shadowy neocons to shape policy in Wisconsin. I haven't read or heard in-depth coverage of their ability to frame issues and thereby win debates.

Last week the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a story that high school graduation rates in Milwaukee, particularly among minorities, were among the worst in the nation. Was this a DPI or Department of Education study? No, it was a news release from the Manhattan Institute. One might assume the Manhattan Institute would be more interested in New York, but they have reason to focus their gaze on Milwaukee.

The reason is the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation funds them. And Bradley loves vouchers. The Manhattan Institute says it will "study" the Milwaukee school system and, being the kind folks that they are, they will keep us informed about failing public schools while also making sure we get the truth about voucher school performance.

(Placing the Manhattan Institute in charge of an analysis of public schools, when they are on record supporting vouchers, would be like asking Wisconsin Right to Life to run Planned Parenthood.)

How will we learn the results? Ah, the Bradley Foundation has taken care of that. The Bradley-funded Wisconsin Policy Research Institute will publish the results, the Journal Sentinel and other papers will have stories based on WPRI's release, and editorials will flow. One can almost write them now: "Yes, we believe in public education but are public schools equipped to train the work force of tomorrow? Should Milwaukee admit failure and ask the Bradley Foundation to put a corporate team together to save our schools and our children?"

But it won't stop there. The WPRI will have radio opportunities provided by Journal Communications. You see, Bradley supported Charles Sykes, who has a morning talk show on the most powerful radio station in Wisconsin, WTMJ, owned by Journal Communications. Every workday for 3.5 hours, Sykes has an opportunity to tell listeners about the "prestigious" Manhattan Institute study, push vouchers and condemn the teachers and their union for opposing privatization of public schools.

WISN talk show host Mark Belling will be singing in the chorus as well.

In the meantime, the neocons will be engaging in what they call "legal advocacy" in support of vouchers. The legal team will be headed by the Landmark Legal Foundation. Where does Landmark get its money? Ah, you are ahead of me. Yes, siree. The Bradley Foundation funds this "antidote to ACLU on the right." Landmark handled the Wisconsin Supreme Court case when Tommy's voucher system was under legal challenge by those who have a quaint notion that church-run schools should not receive tax dollars.

You should check out Landmark. They say they are, and I'm not making this up, "the literary home of 'Bell Curve' author Charles Murray." I suppose you are wondering who funded Murray when he wrote "The Bell Curve." Well, guess no more. It was the Bradley Foundation.

Journal Sentinel columnists Spivak & Bice report Landmark is about to sue the Wisconsin Education Association Council for engaging in advocacy. Whoa, Nelly! Advocacy for public schools, no less. What's next? Denying creationism in our schools? That the rapture is in doubt?

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation has more than $400 million in assets and it spends up to $30 million per year. Bradley-supported groups are determined to shrink government, roll back our safety net, and privatize everything from schools to airports.

You have to tip your hat to Bradley, Sykes, Landmark, the Manhattan Institute, and WPRI. They frame the issues, pick the fights, lay out their agenda, and we follow along like lambs to slaughter. Public schools and libraries? Who needs them?

And when they finish up in Milwaukee, it will be time to privatize UW-Madison. Or will Bradley purchase UW-Milwaukee?

How do we deal with this assault on our cherished educational system? Buy a flashlight and shine it on these front groups.
...

For more information on the Bradley Foundation and vouchers, check out these links courtesy Susan O'hanian:

Bush Funds Black Voucher Front Group

The Real Legacy of Michael Joyce

Group holds forum on No Child Left Behind

Voucher Vultures Support Corporate Culture

Vouchers: The Right's Final Answer to Brown
Tag:anti nclb

Kenneth Goodman on DIBELS: important paper (may be shared)

2006-04-26T16:18:00.000-08:00

More on DIBELS. From Stephen Krashen's Mailing List 
Krashen at sdkrashen.com Tue Jan. 3, 2006 comes this great post from
Ken Goodman. It is long. If you do not know much about DIBELS
by all means read the whole thing and learn all about this great and
wonderful scam that has been foisted on American public education...
...
There are many things wrong with DIBELS.

It turns reading into a set of abstract decontextualized tasks that
canbe measured in one minute. It makes little children race with a
stop watch.It values speed over thoughtful responses. It takes over
the curriculum leaving no time forscience, social studies, writing,
not to mention art music and play.It ignores and even penalizes
children for theknowledge and reading bility they  may have already
achieved.

Reading is ultimately the ability to make sense of
print and no part of DIBELS tests that in any way. In DIBELS the
whole is clearly the sum ofthe parts and comprehension will somehow
emerge fromthe fragments being tested.
...
In summary DIBELS, The Perfect Literacy Test, is a mixed bag of 
silly  little tests. If it weren’t causing so much grief to children
and teachers it would be laughable. It’s hard to believe
that it could have passed the review of professional committees state
laws require for adoption of texts and tests . And in fact it has not
passed such reviews. There is strong evidence of coercion from those
with the powerto approve funding of state NCLB proposals and blatant
conflicts of interest for those who profit from the test and also have
the  power to force its use. A congressional investigation is now
underway intothese conflicts of interest.

In training sessions for DIBELS,  teachers are not permitted to raise
questions and are made to feel that there is a scientific base to the
test they lack the competence to understand. It is,after all, The
Perfect Literacy Test.
anti nclb

Join an Organization Like Mothers Against WASL

2006-04-26T08:44:00.000-08:00

There are groups fighting against the absurd test mania that has a strangle hold on school systems all over the country. Find one and join it or start one of your own. We do not have to stand up for what they are doing to our schools. You can also join list serves like this one for WASL. Action is what we need. And thanks to Berta of WASL for the comment on my previous post and for the good work!
anti nclb

Since Dibels life has never been the same!

2006-04-25T14:48:00.000-08:00

This from (NOT the Official) DIBELS Clearinghouse. DIBELS is not part of NCLB it is instead part of the Reading First grant brought to you by the same folks that gave us NCLB. (DIBELS is quite controversial, read more about that here.) DIBELS is a series of "assessments" that are prescriptive and are supposed to help teachers teach kids to read. The reality in many cases, and in this case in particular, is quite different...

My daughter first took this horrible test in September of 2005. We had been in school less than a month. When the results came back I was told my bright and talkative girl would have to repeat kindergarten because she did not score at benchmark and likely wouldn't be able to make benchmark by December. This was October!! I cannot even begin to express the HORROR I felt. School had just started and I felt that they hadn't even given my girl a chance. So, thus began the nightmare of kindergarten in public school. My daughter was a playful and confident child. (notice WAS) She began to come home and tell me how she was really smart and promised that she would learn to read. One day in November she told me that she wasn't stupid and would learn - she promised. My heart was breaking!! She had been drilled and drilled. Singled-out and made to feel dumb. I was hurt, sad and MAD as HECK!! We had been working our butts off trying to "catch-up" to the so called "benchmark" (read NORMAL) kids. We worked everyday for 45 minutes to an hour. Finally the December test came - We went from "intensive intervention" to Strategic on some portions to almost (1 point away) benchmark on others. I was estatic - we went for Ice cream!! Yay! The nightmare was over, we had done it... Right? NO! The improvement wasn't enough. We were told that it still wasn't enough and were given a letter saying we still would be held back. Any by the way we'll be taking the test again in April. So here we are awaiting the results from this last test. We probably won't make benchmark again. We don't care anymore though. Around January when the second set of results came back and there was not positive reaction about our improvement or all the hard work we had done, we decided that the public school is not for us. We will finish this year, we won't quit. But, we won't be back either. I feel like my daughter has really been left behind. I had to fight for extra help and for every inch we gain the system says we are still 2 more behind. I want to know how they think they can put every kid in a little box and label it stategic, intensive or bechmark (read NORMAL)? Don't they realize that not all kids are the same and frankly if someone had a stopwatch to me I probably would have problems too!! This test has basically ruined school for my daughter. She said that she no longer wants to go. She didn't even cry the first day of school. She said "Bye Mom. Love you!" She crys every morning now. How sad. I tell everyone I know about this test and how it is being used to label children and dictate their abilities based on some far fetched scale. I don't want anyone to ever have to go through this. I am still repairing the damaged that has been done to my daughter's confidence.

Did you catch that, "...we decided that the public school is not for us." I keep telling you that this is a big part of NCLB and Reading First. This is exacvtly what they want. They are destroying public education, the number one place local taxes go to, and replacing it with private schools so "business" can make more profits. I know when I say this it makes me sound like an extremist, but open your eyes America, this is happening right now! Speak up! Stop the destruction of public education in the USA.
anti nclb

No Child Left Behind Debated

2006-04-25T12:54:00.000-08:00

From the Washington Square Times, this debate is a start but not the answer...

The No Child Left Behind Act is flawed and must be changed, a panel of experts from the Steinhardt School of Education said at a town hall meeting in front of 250 audience members last night.

...
“It will be reauthorized, and there will be changes made,” Ravitch said. “It’s not going away.”
...
Both panelists criticized the act for creating what they feel is a loss of control of local government and the community over how schools are run.
...

The panelists also discussed the problem of how the act deals with racial inequality in schools.

“We now have schools in the United States that are more segregated than they were 20 years ago,” Ravitch said. “There’s no mention of racial segregation in NCLB.”

Noguera said the pursuit of prestige sometimes eclipses equality.

“Even in liberal cities like New York, people are more concerned about keeping their kids in gifted schools than in integrated schools,” Noguera said.

Brabeck said the discussion represented true diversity in opinion.
...

Which it wasn't. The two main debaters were not very far apart at all, but it's a start...
anti nclb

Teachers don't leave children behind half as much as policymakers do

2006-04-24T16:25:00.000-08:00

What you hear from the pro NCLB people is squawk about teachers being against NCLB because it holds them to task, but here is another perspective, a commentary from southern Illinois, one that we should all be talking more about ...
...
I've never met a teacher whose eyes light up when No Child Left Behind is discussed. It may be a safe assumption to say the people who stand in front of our children everyday and teach have some real concerns about the expectations and penalties the federal government suddenly decided to enact a few years ago. Those concerns might be worth listening to for at least a little while.

When it comes down to the daily grind, educators kick themselves harder for students' poor grades than policy-makers ever will. Accountability for schools was not born in Congress, particularly considering some cynics think spotting accountability in Congress is like spotting a unicorn. Accountability in education works best when it acts as the bond between teachers and parents.

The funny thing about the No Child Left Behind discussion is that teachers always seem to be a very distant voice in the conversation. In all likelihood, they probably don't have as much time to mull the ramifications of one idea to another as the policy-makers. It's rare that teachers get any face time at all in the public venue. The only teachers I've seen on the news lately are the ones caught having sex with their students. Otherwise, questions surrounding education policy are often fielded by policy-makers...

Policy-makers have their place in the discussion, but the thoughts and ideas of the teachers can't be ignored as the country supposedly rockets toward a lofty goal within a decade. When we were in school we always got our best information from the teachers. After all, the matter of how the U.S. truly will leave no child behind is definitely a question that will be on the test.
...
anti nclb

'No Child Left Behind' should be left behind

2006-04-24T16:17:00.000-08:00

This editorial from Middletown Connecticut gets it...

...deeply disturbing facts remain. The stakes are exceptionally high and schools that don’t measure up can lose funding, accreditation, and even have their faculty removed and application of the law is arbitrary and capricious at best. Again, according to the Harvard Civil Rights Project, NCLB is, ‘the most expansive assertion of federal power over schools in American history.’ Any attempt at such sweeping reform, especially in education, which is historically the purview of each individual state, is going to be impractical and unwieldy.

My sense is that before NCLB collapses under its own weight into a state-by-state free-for-all, the federal government ought to acknowledge the shortcomings built into the five-year-old law and convene a task force comprised of local educators and state officials. It is only in this way the law can be refocused to provide productive education for our public school students with minimal regulatory overhead, and sufficient funding to provide adequate administrative oversight.

Only a recommitment of this caliber would truly lend itself to the stated objective: no child left behind.

Hear, hear!
anti nclb

No Child isn't 'hiding' children

2006-04-21T10:54:00.000-08:00

Finally someone else calls foul on the Ap article listed below. This editorial is from the Cincinnati Enquirer:

It is unarguably unwieldy, invasive, even bossy. But flawed as it is, No Child Left Behind is not quite the devil-in-data that its critics make it out to be.

Such is the case with a widely circulated wire service story that accuses NCLB of "hiding" minority students scores and thus, in essence, leaving those students behind.

The "loophole" the story refers to is a widely known and regularly explained provision that allows schools to not publicly disseminate scores when a small number of students fall into a sub-group. That provision can be used for minority students, students with disabilities and students with limited English proficiency.

It's not that the scores aren't "reported," as the wire stories have said. They are indeed reported to the state and to the schools and, in individual student report cards, to parents as well.

But they aren't disbursed to the general public for a justifiable reason. With a small group of children, it would be easy for community members or even classmates to make assumptions about how individual students scored.

Had NCLB not had that provision, and had the above scenario actually played out, the U.S. Department of Education would be dealing with far greater outrage.

...

States have set their own limits on how few minority, disabled or limited English-speaking students a school must have to be exempt from public reporting. Those arbitrary numbers may be cause for legitimate debate.

...

The article then goes to praise NCLB, showing that even supporters of this awful law can see through the ruse that thios article is. Also be sure to check here for Jim Horn's take on this as well as some background.
anti nclb

Loophole in No Child Left Behind leaves some minorities behind

2006-04-18T10:51:00.000-08:00

This an AP story and is appearring everywhere. Just a few variations are here, here, here, here and 574 related articles here.

This story is totally bogus!
...
The AP found that states are helping public schools escape potential penalties by skirting that requirement. And minorities _ who historically haven't fared as well as whites in testing _ make up the vast majority of students whose scores are excluded.
...
There's lots of negative talk and further down in the Washinton Post article they finally state:
...

Suppose, for example, that a school has 2,000 white students and nine Hispanics. In nearly every state, the Hispanic scores wouldn't be counted because there aren't enough to provide meaningful information and because officials want to protect students' privacy.

State educators decide when a group is too small to count. And they've been asking the government for exemptions to exclude larger numbers of students in racial categories. Nearly two dozen states have successfully petitioned the government for such changes in the past two years. As a result, schools can now ignore racial breakdowns even when they have 30, 40 or even 50 students of a given race in the testing population.

...

Which indeed could be seen as defect in the law, but what is statically significant? Doesn't that depend on the size of the school versus the size of the targeted population? And they are left out of what? The count toward the school failing to make AYP? So that the school can eventually be privatized? This is the kind of propaganda that we all need to be speaking out against! Please join me. Write leters to your paper. Denounce this nasty propaganda piece.
anti nclb

Examining Dibels: What It is and What It Does

2006-04-17T16:53:00.000-08:00

From O'hanian and friends, a book you might want multiple copies of, to pass out and spread the word...
...
The Vermont Society for the Study of Education, a group small in number but very large in spirit, has launched a full frontal assault on DIBELS, the first part of an offensive against Reading First and against NCLB.
...
A slim 57 page book edited by Ken Goodman, this document challenges the federally-imposed regimen that demeans and diminishes teacher professionalism and harms children.

Examining Dibels: What It is and What It Does

Table of Contents:

Preface DIBELS: One Family's Journey, Lisa Laser

A Critical Review of DIBELS, Ken Goodman

Is DIBELS Leading Us Down the Wrong Path?, Robert J. Tierney and Elizabeth Thome

How DIBELS failed Alabama, A Research Report, Susan Seay

DIBELS: Not Justifiable, Maryann Manning, Constance Kamii, & Tsuguhiko Kato

Appendix: A brief summary of each Sub-Test in DIBELS

Companion to the book is the DIBELS Clearinghouse

In the spirit of grassroots activism and the regeneration of teacher professionalism (and with the generosity of Ken Goodman), The Vermont Society for the Study of Education (VSSE) is selling the book for the price of shipping and handling. Send $5.95 to

VSSE
P. O. Box 186
Brandon, VT 05733
...
anti nclb

Without extra funding, 122 schools may ‘fail’ under No Child Left Behind

2006-04-14T08:30:00.000-08:00

From Fairfax Virginia comes a story that is happening all over the country right now including in my home town...
...
GERRY CONNOLLY (D), chairman of the Board of Supervisors, was astonished that despite massive amounts of funding, 61 percent of the county's schools are in danger of "failing."
"To tell this board that with a $2.1 billion budget, 122 schools are still at risk? At least to this Supervisor, that is a somewhat startling message," Connolly said.
Connolly pointed out that the federal government has done a poor job of funding its sweeping education requirements, leaving local governments like Fairfax County to pick up the bill.
"We are in fact spending a lot on No Child Left Behind," he said. "And, if I recall correctly, the federal government has reimbursed us a total of $16 million."
...
WITHIN FOUR or five years, the vast majority of schools in Fairfax County and throughout Virginia will begin to "fail" under No Child Left Behind, no matter how much money is spent.
By 2010-2011, approximately 90 percent of all students will be required to pass the math and English exams. Fairfax County school officials said that simply is not possible.
"It's realistic that you get to 90 percent," said Patrick Murphy, the school system's assistant superintendent for accountability. "That stretches you, but it can be done. Statistically speaking, you can't go much further beyond that."
Under No Child Left Behind, 100 percent of all student groups must pass the math and reading exams by the 2013-2014 school year.
"I don't know anything in our society that can be 100 percent," Murphy said.
anti nclb

Leaving too many children behind

2006-04-13T08:25:00.000-08:00

Even the college press folks get it. If only more in the mainstrem media would to the same...

TOO OFTEN good intentions go awry, leading to detrimental, ineffective action. The No Child Left Behind Act has been in effect for over four years and fits this criteria. No Child Left Behind has created a testing-obsessed atmosphere with a narrow curriculum that produces high school dropouts, not high achievement.

...

The plan is filled with more holes than a standardized test scantron sheet. The plan's foundation lies with the accuracy of standardized testing, but studies on standardized testing show bias against minority groups. One such study by Gary Natriello of Columbia University and Aaron Pallas of Michigan State University examined state testing programs in Michigan, New York and Minnesota. They concluded that minority students performed worse than their peers. One such example: between 1996 and 1998, almost twice as many black and Hispanic students had not completed the Texas state test for their high school diploma versus their white peers.

Standardized testing also does not correlate to future achievement. A study by the College Board showed that SAT scores correlated with freshman year grades by less than 0.50 and that high school GPA showed stronger correlation in general. Standardized tests simply show how well a student can take that particular test, rather than measuring intelligence or achievement.

The nature of standardized testing creates a narrow curriculum. Schools have focused on reading, math, and science. According to the Year 4 Report of No Child Left Behind, 44 states have aligned "curriculum and instruction with standards of assessment." Some schools have eliminated other subjects entirely. Students do not have the same opportunity to pursue subjects not tested. These subjects often ignite student's passions or open new waves of thought.

...

Failing to meet standards causes a backwards punishment for schools: decreased funding. When schools need to improve, more, not less, funding will be required. With less and less funding, schools will continue to fail state-defined proficiency levels. If these schools close, students will be pushed to the state-defined proficient schools. These schools will become overcrowded and quality will suffer.

No Child Left Behind does not adequately consider special education students. These students are prohibited from receiving help on standardized testing. Poor performance by a small number of special education students can largely distort the rating the entire school is given. Thus, a small number of students can cause an entire school to lose funding and resources.

The federal budget for 2006-07 seems to contradict the goals of No Child Left Behind. President Bush proposed the largest cuts in education in the 26-year history of the Department of Education. The funding for NCLBA increased slightly, but still remains $15.4 billion below the authorized levels. Overall, 42 Department of Education programs will be eliminated, while four others will experience significant cuts. Instead of putting nearly $4.3 billion into the youth of America, this money will go towards the funding of tanks and howitzers.

It seems as if the members of our federal government have forgotten the diversity of their schools. No Child Left Behind de-emphasizes everything that makes schools different, such as offerings of unique classes and after-school programs. Instead, a rigid program forces science and math down children's throats, threatening diminished resources if they won't swallow. In the end, the act is more aptly named the Every Child Left Behind Act.
anti nclb

Schools a weak link in poll for Gov. Bush

2006-04-12T16:28:00.000-08:00

From the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times. All politicians should take note. I believe this is the way the country feels.

Gov. Jeb Bush's sweeping overhaul of Florida schools is out of step with the views of most Floridians, according to a new St. Petersburg Times poll.

Overall, most Floridians give the two-term Republican high marks for job performance. But on education issues, support for his policies wanes.

A majority of Floridians do not like private school vouchers, continue to support the multibillion-dollar class-size amendment and oppose use of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test to reward or penalize schools, the poll shows.

Meanwhile, parents say they like their public schools. A lot...
anti nclb

Katrina blows hole in No Child Left Behind

2006-04-11T12:35:00.000-08:00

I'm back and hopefully posting a lot more often. Check out this commentary from the Seattle P.I. by Elaine Garan.

...
No Child Left Behind provides for one-year waivers in the event of natural disasters. Section 1111(b)(3)(C)(vii) of the law states:

"The Secretary may provide the State 1 additional year if the State demonstrates that exceptional or uncontrollable circumstances, such as a natural disaster or a precipitous and unforeseen decline in the financial resources of the State, prevented full implementation of the academic assessments by that deadline and that the State will complete implementation within the additional 1-year period."

Despite this statute language, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings initially expressed unwillingness to grant waivers to schools affected by Katrina. For weeks, schools waited in limbo until she reluctantly agreed to allow automatic one-year waivers from accountability standards -- but only for those Gulf Coast schools that were destroyed or severely damaged. In effect, the secretary's compassionate flexibility amounted to this: Schools that no longer exist and have no students to teach, much less test, will not be punished failure to meet their "adequate yearly progress" targets.

In spite of the exemptions for some Gulf Coast schools, Spellings insists students who are victims of Katrina -- no matter where they are, no matter how disrupted their lives may be, and regardless of how they have suffered -- will still be forced to take standardized tests.

Moreover, those schools that have taken in student evacuees, thereby straining their fiscal resources and jeopardizing their adequate yearly progress ratings, will not receive automatic exemptions from federal punishment.

...

Consider that No Child Left Behind based on three central assumptions: Teachers and schools are responsible for 100 percent of student learning, regardless of individual differences in children's cognitive abilities or their emotional problems; the standardized tests that determine a school's passing or "needs improvement" status are 100 percent valid as indicators of student learning and of school and teacher performance; and punishing schools that underperform will close the achievement gap and improve public education.

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina assails each assumption. Before Katrina, the law did not acknowledge, much less forgive, any extenuating, outside factors such as poverty, abuse, motivation, or even the ability to speak and read English -- all factors that could compromise student performance on standardized tests. Consequently, the Bush administration cannot afford to concede that personal trauma can confound the validity of test scores for Katrina's victims, because to do so is to concede that the same factors can affect any student in any school, albeit less visibly and with a less resounding outcry from the public than we've witnessed for the evacuees.

If the federal government agreed to exempt from testing those children who lost a family member as a result of Katrina, wouldn't it also be pressured to exempt children not affected by Katrina who have suffered a similar life-altering trauma, or others who have suffered from abuse or the challenges of a physical or mental disability?

And if the administration agreed that being ripped from a familiar setting and put into a strange school is an extenuating factor for the victims of Katrina, wouldn't it also be pressured to apply the same standard to the children of migrant workers, or children who have been moved from one foster home to another, or homeless children? By logical extension, wouldn't the federal government be forced to admit that schools with large numbers of transient and homeless students cannot be held to the same standards that more affluent suburban schools with relatively stable populations are?

Katrina has put federal policy squarely between a rock and a hard place. The government cannot appear to be compassionate and yet adhere to a rigid policy of standardizing education. Compassion is personal. Standardization is not.

...

The No Child Left Behind law was in trouble and facing rebellion from angry states and districts even before Katrina. What that massive natural disaster did was sharpen our focus. It has forced us to look at the inequities schools all over the country must deal with on a daily basis, with or without a hurricane. These are inequities that the law simply ignores. Katrina has reminded us that schools are made up of students who are unique and who have very human problems -- every last one of them.

The obvious inequities in the system and the unimaginable suffering of so many have converged into the perfect storm and may well deliver the deathblow to the critically wounded policy of No Child Left Behind...

Let us hope that she is correct.
anti nclb

20 Reasons to Eliminate NCLB

2006-04-06T08:13:00.000-08:00

From Jim Horn over at Schools Matter:

20 Reasons to Eliminate NCLB

An education policy built on impossible performance demands that assure the failure of the majority of American public schools should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that has the same impossible demands for most English-language learners and special education students should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that traumatizes children, destroys the desire to learn, and corrupts the purposes for learning should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that uses fear, intimidation, and retribution as motivation should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that uses a single assessment once a year to make life-altering decisions should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that ignores poverty as a chief determinant in academic performance should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that creates two different school curriculums, one for the children of the poor and one for well-funded successes, should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that uses skewed and manipulated research from the National Reading Panel to devise a national reading strategy should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that uses the strain of test score competition to undercut public cohesion and civic commitment to democratic goals should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that shrinks the American school curriculum to two or three subjects that are tested should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that discourages diversity and encourages homogeneity in schools should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that supports the use of tax dollars to fund private schools rather than public school improvement should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that advocates the use of public money to pay private contractors to run public schools should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that is built on unfunded and under-funded mandates should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that reduces or eliminates local and state decision making by citizens should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that mandates that military recruiters have access to student information should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that inflames a teacher shortage in order to replace professional teachers with individuals who have passed a teaching test should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that is used to reward tax dollars to insiders and cronies for their political support should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that uses paid propaganda to advance its agenda should be eliminated, not reformed.
An education policy that puts test scores in the place of the intellectual, social, and emotional growth of America’s children should eliminated, not reformed.

10 Action Strategies for Eliminating NCLB

Hold a public forum in your community to explore and explain these points.
Organize community and neighborhood potluck dinners with teachers and parents to talk together about how NCLB is affecting children and school.
Persuade your organizations to pass resolutions calling for the repeal of NCLB based on these points.
Collect signatures on a Petition to Eliminate NCLB based on these 20 points. Publicize your results in the local media and send copies of resolutions and petitions to your local and federal elected officials.
Write letters-to-the-editor and op-ed pieces for your local and regional newspapers, making these points.
Get your local school board to pass a resolution or hold a community forum about eliminating NCLB.
Contact your U.S. senators and representatives about eliminating NCLB: Call them, write or email them (send these points and other information), and set up meetings with them in your district (bring a group of children).
Contact your state legislators to enlist them in the effort to eliminate NCLB; get state legislatures to pass resolutions.
Parents: Join the NCLB-mandated Parents Advisory Board at your child’s school. Bring the 20 Reasons to Eliminate NCLB to begin a dialogue.
Organize a public protest or march on test days or days given over to test preparation. (anti nclb)

Band-Aids or Bulldozers

2006-04-05T08:24:00.000-08:00

This just out from Rethinking Public Schools. Read the whole thing. It is important. Some excerpts..
...

We are now in year five of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Once hailed as a historic new federal commitment to leave no child behind, today NCLB inspires fear and loathing from coast to coast — and beyond. Puerto Rico and Hawaii hate it too.

Every one of the 50 states has introduced legislation rejecting all or part of NCLB. Several have filed lawsuits against it. More than 10,000 schools have been put on NCLB's infamous list of "schools in need of improvement" and face an escalating series of sanctions that address neither their needs nor their challenges. Thousands more will be added to the list in the next few years as increasing numbers of schools are squeezed in the tightening vise of unreachable "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) test targets and inadequate resources. This year more than a quarter of all public schools (nearly 23,000) failed to reach AYP. Missing AYP two years in a row earns a spot on the list.

Today, NCLB is almost as unpopular as the administration and Congress that created it. With the law coming up for reauthorization in 2007, debate is heating up about whether we need Band-Aids to "fix" NLCB or a bulldozer to bury it.

...

Less well known, but soon to become much more familiar, are the law's more drastic measures for schools that miss AYP for four or five years. After four years, schools are required to choose one of the following:

Replace school staff relevant to the failure.
Put in place a new curriculum.
Decrease management authority at the school.
Appoint outside experts to advise the school.
Extend the school year or the school day.
Restructure the internal organization of the school.

After five years, the choices are:

Reopen as a charter school.
Replace all or most of the staff.
Contract with an outside entity to operate the school.
Institute other significant governance and staffing changes likely to improve the school.
Turn over operation of the school to the state.

Since NCLB sanctions are cumulative, schools also must presumably continue to offer transfer and tutoring while instituting these measures.

...

But beneath the rhetoric, NCLB's policy framework is toxic, bad for the health of schools and children and driven by ideological political objectives that are arrogantly indifferent to the realities of school life. It makes no commitment to bridging the deep social inequalities reflected in academic achievement gaps, but demands that schools make them disappear (and it demands more of poorer, diverse schools than richer, homogeneous ones). When schools fall short of the impossible, they face punitive sanctions that weaken their ability to serve all students and ultimately increase educational inequality instead of reduce it.

Some advocates for children and schools, desperate for signs of hope amidst the wasteland of social and economic policies emanating from Washington, have struggled mightily to find positives in NCLB. They point to the pressure on schools to account for all students, the promise of better choices for parents in the poorest communities, the emphasis on improving teacher qualifications. But five years of inconsistent and underfinanced implementation has made good on none of these promises. Reasonable people may continue to differ on various aspects of NCLB, but the core of the law has been laid inescapably bare: tests, more tests, and punitive sanctions that create a systematic and misleading impression of failure and that hurt public education far more than they help those who have been poorly served by it.

...

The debate over reauthorizing NCLB is likely to show how much the bipartisan coalition that originally passed it has fragmented. Hopefully, it will also provide opportunities to limit the damage. But the Congressional debate, unfortunately, is much less likely to define lasting alternatives to the top-down, test-driven, underfunded policies that are crushing the life and the hope out of too many schools.

For that we'll need the voices of educators, students, and communities. One place those voices could make a difference will be the 2006 elections when the next Congress will be chosen. Many in the antiwar movement, frustrated by the failure of Congress to reflect the broad popular opposition to the war in Iraq, have pledged not to support any candidates who continue to support current U.S. policy. Similarly, opponents of NCLB might insist, at a minimum, on a pledge to end federally mandated testing, eliminate the direct ties between test scores and sanctions, and replace NCLB's privatization agenda with more funding and stronger support for improving the public system.

Sending people to Congress who are committed to ending both the war in Iraq and the war on our public schools would be a big step toward making good on the promises — empty so far — of No Child Left Behind.
anti nclb

U.S. education problems

2006-04-04T08:12:00.000-08:00

This college sophomore has it. If only there was a way to reach Washington...
...
A recent survey by the Center for Education Policy - a nonpartisan group - found that 71 percent of the nation's approximately 15,000 school districts had lessened the amount of class time given to subjects like history, music, art and others.
...
A decent, well-rounded public education should be a right afforded to those who seek it, not simply a privilege obtained by those with the highest test scores. And school districts should not have to perform well in some dog-and-pony education show in order to avoid penalty.

The tests should be used to identify strengths and weaknesses so that district knows what it needs to improve upon, not to limit its funding or the types of classes students are allowed to take.

If we as a country truly value the education of our children, then we better begin rebuilding our public school system into something that doesn't resemble a broken down merry-go-round.
anti nclb

To hear why No Child fails, just listen to its supporters

2006-03-24T16:05:00.000-09:00

By Diane Carman,Denver Post Staff Columnist

It wasn't meant to be this way. Lawrence Hernandez was supposed to be the counterpoint to Richard Rothstein, who calls No Child Left Behind and its philosophical underpinnings "fraudulent."

Instead, at a forum sponsored this week by the Bell Policy Center, Hernandez proved Rothstein's point again and again.

Rothstein insists that the data are in and the evidence is clear: Great schools alone cannot reduce the achievement gap. Expecting that is irresponsible.

...

Hernandez calls those "excuses."

The founder and principal of Cesar Chavez Academy charter school in Pueblo said he believes that schools can have a tremendous impact on a child's life. In fact, he said, "the public school system is the only system that can make a difference in a child's life."

...

While Hernandez attributes that success to high expectations, academic rigor, talented teachers and strong leadership, other factors also contributed to the students' exceptional performance.

"The parents have to buy into what we're doing," he said, and that starts when they demonstrate their commitment to education by enrolling their children in the charter school.

No student transportation is provided, so public and private money can be used to reduce class sizes, enhance teachers' salaries and provide tutors for children who fall behind. But inevitably, this creates a barrier for children whose parents are not willing or able to deliver them to school every day.

In other words, not just any kid can go to Cesar Chavez.

Rothstein said there are plenty of examples across the country where the children of disadvantaged-but-highly- motivated parents are concentrated in intense, rigorous schools and do better than the mountains of statistics predict.

"That doesn't mean the average is not meaningful," he said.

In Colorado, the averages show that since the state began mandatory testing to measure achievement, the gap between rich and poor students has widened. With rare exceptions, despite intense pressure and threats to dismantle low-performing schools, children from poor families still are not achieving proficiency at rates better than when the frenzy over educational accountability began.

This is the case across the country, Rothstein said. We're engaging in a "national orgy of hypocrisy."

"We say we want to close the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children, and we're simultaneously withdrawing support from the social and economic institutions that could enhance equality.

"Holding out the goal of closing the achievement gap through school reform alone is dangerous," Rothstein said. "Holding schools responsible for a goal they can't meet will doom public education."

For those who reject the Jeffersonian ideal of free public education for all, the destruction of the public school system is something to celebrate cynically along with the growing achievement gap.

For everybody else, Rothstein's work offers an ominous warning: If the orgy of hypocrisy continues, the global economy will leave us behind - all of us.

Diane Carman's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com

anti nclb

The WASL Dilemma

2006-03-22T08:47:00.000-09:00

The WASL is Washington State's version of the high stakes tests that are required but NCLB.

by Donald C. Orlich

The Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) is causing deleterious effects on poor, disabled and minority children by creating a permanent "underclass" with just a hint of covert institutional racism.

The WASL purports to (1) measure student achievement, (2) determine school district accountability, (3) evaluate teacher competence, (4) guide school improvement and (5) determine who graduates from high school. Any single test used to address five mutually exclusive goals is unreliable and invalid.

However, my purpose here is to focus on the unintended consequences of the WASL. Discussions about high-stakes tests (WASL, ACT, SAT) must address the issue of student poverty. It behooves all policy makers who have legalized high-stakes testing to at least ask, "What is the impact of student poverty and ethnicity on test scores as a mechanism for sorting and classifying children?"

Studies in Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Washington, Denver and Boston — along with others in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales — all show that poverty is a primary determinant of student achievement. High-stakes test scores are very highly correlated with family income. A major study of mathematics tests scores from academic high schools in the metropolitan Boston area led to the conclusion that income is strongly correlated with test scores and accounts for more than 80 percent of the variance in average scores.

School leaders and politicians in Washington state are touting WASL scores as if they were precise educational measures of student learning and overall achievement: The scores are not. Further, the WASL offers virtually no useable feedback to enhance student academic gains.

Examine the WASL 10th-grade first-time pass rates. White and Asian students have significantly higher scores than black, Hispanic, Native American, English language-learners, free/reduced lunch students and students with disabilities. The ranges for mathematics are 52 percent passing to 6 percent passing; and for reading and language arts, 71 percent to 15 percent.

Long-term test data from the WASL, ACT and SAT suggest an ethnic variable related to achievement on high-stakes tests. These data tend to indicate that poverty and ethnicity appear to be inextricably related.

One example tells it all. The WASL test score pass rates of one of Washington state's highest-family-income school districts, Mercer Island, were compared with all children from low-income homes in the state. Extraordinary achievement differences of 40 percent to 60 percent favored Mercer Island children at every grade level and for every subject tested.

On March 1, 2005, the United Nations released Child Poverty in Rich Countries: 2005. Scandinavian countries had the lowest levels of child poverty among the "developed" countries of the world, primarily due to very highly subsidized social benefits paid directly to families. The United States and Mexico had the world's worst child poverty rates. For Mexico, the percentage was 27.7; for the United States, it was 21.9.

The report writers stated that such disparity of wealth leaves many children, through no fault of their own, at a social disadvantage. The report also noted that there is a close correlation between poverty and educational underachievement.

...

Poverty is a powerful force in creating educational deficits. But you will not find advocates of the WASL discussing that social issue, including the Partnership for Learning, the Business Roundtable, the Superintendent of Public Instruction or our the state legislators. One simply has to ask, "Why the silence?" The social consequence of labeling a generation of adolescents as being flat-out failures from one questionable test needs serious psychological, psychiatric and legal evaluation.

Donald Orlich, professor emeritus at WSU, is author of the upcoming School Reform and the Great American Brain Robbery. Write dorlich@wsu.edu or call (509) 335-4844.

Publication Date: 3/15/06
anti nclb

'Teach to the Test'? What Test?

2006-03-20T10:55:00.000-09:00

By Colman McCarthy from the Washington Post, Saturday, March 18, 2006

The whole opinion piece is worth the read. Some excerpts..

From the academic sidelines, where calls to Leave No Child Untested are routinely sounded by quick-fix school reformers, Jay Mathews joins in with his Feb. 20 op-ed column, "Let's Teach to the Test." In well-crafted prose, he reports that "in 23 years of visiting classrooms I have yet to see any teacher preparing kids for exams in ways that were not careful, sensible and likely to produce more learning."

On Mathews's visit to my classroom four years ago -- at School Without Walls, where I have been volunteering since 1982 -- he must not have noticed that not only was I not preparing my 28 students for tests but that I regard tests as educational insults...
...

Tests represent fear-based learning, the opposite of learning based on desire. Frightened and fretting with pre-test jitters, students stuff their minds with information they disgorge on exam sheets and sweat out the results. I know of no meaningful evidence that acing tests has anything to do with students' character development or whether their natural instincts for idealism or altruism are nurtured.

I have large amounts of evidence that tests promote the opposite: character defects. After having two of my high school classes read Mathews's column, I asked the students: If during a test the opportunity came to cheat, with no fear of being caught, would you? A majority of hands went up. A few students dismissed the question as naive. Not cheat if you could get away with it? Get real.
...
Desire-based learning happens when teachers deal in combustibles, when fires are lit and students burn to explore ideas that have nothing to do with what testocrats require. Quality teachers who are fire-lighters often find themselves trapped in schools that have been seduced by the Advanced Placement fad. Teachers whose students can't hack the AP final are regarded as failures.
...

For 25 years of testing the waters by not testing, I've been telling my students not to worry about answering questions. Be braver and bolder: Question the answers. Which answers? To start, the ones from anyone who champions classroom get-aheadism based on test scores. Throw off your chains, students. You have nothing to lose but your backpacks.

The writer, a former Post columnist, directs the Center for Teaching Peace and teaches nonviolence at three high schools and four universities.
anti nclb

'No Child' law is flunking the test

2006-03-19T14:32:00.000-09:00

This commentary is from Cindy Richards of the Chicago Sun-Times.

There was a time when those of us who still believe in the potential of public education worried that the greatest evil spawned by our national love affair with standardized testing was that it encouraged schools to "teach to the test."

Who knew "teaching to the test" would become the good ol' days in education?

But it's happening. As the national No Child Left Behind Act has raised the stakes of test results, schools are doing something much worse than altering their curriculum to fit the subjects being tested: They're teaching about the test.

The tests have been in the news as state administrators wring their hands over the inadequate performance of Harcourt Assessment, the private company that got $45 million of our money to produce the tests Illinois third- through eighth-graders are taking this week and next.

But we ought to be wringing our hands over something much more critical to the future of our children: the question of whether this testing is harming these students.

They are losing a week of instruction to testing, which is bad enough. But the test week comes on top of two or more weeks spent teaching kids how to take the test effectively -- those now critical education skills such as how to parcel out your time and how to fill in those blasted little circles with a No. 2 pencil.

Test prep efforts have intensified this year because schools are running scared. Last year, one-third of the state's 879 districts failed to make "adequate yearly progress." And the bar continues to rise, so more schools are likely to fail this year, no matter how many practice tests the kids took.

Meanwhile, President Bush has been touring the country talking about his plan to bolster math and science education -- while my sixth-grade son was spending his math class taking practice tests, not learning new math skills.

In a meeting with newspaper editors last week, Bush said he takes umbrage at suggestions his cornerstone education reform law puts too much emphasis on testing. "My answer to those concerns is that, how do you know if you don't test?" he said.

My answer to him is: Ask the teacher. It doesn't take a standardized test for any teacher worth her paycheck to know, exactly, which of her students is making the grade. And if we want to know how the school is doing overall, then analyze the report cards the kids bring home every few months.

Stan Karp, a New Jersey high school teacher and critic of No Child Left Behind, has written extensively about the law for Rethinking Schools, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit that publishes a journal about school reform.

"This is school reform on the cheap," Karp said. It costs schools about $20 a kid to develop a test, he said, "a lot less than it costs to have everybody pass them."

Schools, in their fervor to hurdle the ever-increasing performance bar, are doing everything they can to help kids test well -- weeks of test drills, free breakfast on test days, a reorganized curriculum and lower state benchmarks that allow more kids to pass.

No Child Left Behind is up for reauthorization in 2007, which makes the November midterm election an especially critical one for public education. This law, which passed Congress with bipartisan support, needs some serious retooling.

Its goal may have been to ensure no child was left behind, but its reality is that no child is left untested while doing little to raise the level of performance of public schools.
anti nclb

No Child Left Behind has failed

2006-03-10T16:54:00.000-09:00

Conferences are over and I can think again! I'm back. Read this opinion piece from the Minnesota Daily. Mr. Peter Henry makes a great case for the repeal of NCLB, and I, of course, could not agree more.
anti nclb

Graduates Versus Oligarchs

2006-02-28T15:37:00.000-09:00

From Paul Krugman and the Times by way of O'hanian.

Is it myth that a college education will make you well off?
...
I think of... the 80-20 fallacy. It's the notion that the winners in our increasingly unequal society are a fairly large group — that the 20 percent or so of American workers who have the skills to take advantage of new technology and globalization are pulling away from the 80 percent who don't have these skills.

The truth is quite different. Highly educated workers have done better than those with less education, but a college degree has hardly been a ticket to big income gains. The 2006 Economic Report of the President tells us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5 percent between 2000 and 2004. Over the longer stretch from 1975 to 2004 the average earnings of college graduates rose, but by less than 1 percent per year.

So who are the winners from rising inequality? It's not the top 20 percent, or even the top 10 percent. The big gains have gone to a much smaller, much richer group than that.

A new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?," gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn't a ticket to big income gains.

But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint.

Just to give you a sense of who we're talking about: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that this year the 99th percentile will correspond to an income of $402,306, and the 99.9th percentile to an income of $1,672,726. The center doesn't give a number for the 99.99th percentile, but it's probably well over $6 million a year.
...
The notion that it's all about returns to education suggests that nobody is to blame for rising inequality, that it's just a case of supply and demand at work. And it also suggests that the way to mitigate inequality is to improve our educational system — and better education is a value to which just about every politician in America pays at least lip service.

The idea that we have a rising oligarchy is much more disturbing. It suggests that the growth of inequality may have as much to do with power relations as it does with market forces. Unfortunately, that's the real story.

Should we be worried about the increasingly oligarchic nature of American society? Yes, and not just because a rising economic tide has failed to lift most boats. Both history and modern experience tell us that highly unequal societies also tend to be highly corrupt. There's an arrow of causation that runs from diverging income trends to Jack Abramoff and the K Street project.

And I'm with Alan Greenspan, who — surprisingly, given his libertarian roots — has repeatedly warned that growing inequality poses a threat to "democratic society."

It may take some time before we muster the political will to counter that threat. But the first step toward doing something about inequality is to abandon the 80-20 fallacy. It's time to face up to the fact that rising inequality is driven by the giant income gains of a tiny elite, not the modest gains of college graduates.
— Paul Krugman
New York Times
2006-02-27

Is this really dangerous? Let's make the tax cut permanent and keep voting for the same old same old and find out. Or not.
anti nclb

Something Loose in the Brain

2006-02-27T16:24:00.000-09:00

Conferences are coming and I can almost guarantee that I will not be posting as often. So, with that in mind I refer you to this great recent post against NCLB by Jim Horn over at Schools matter. The bullets at the end are worth quoting:

If one has to choose, which seems to be the case with the all-or-nothing national testing policy that is intended to leave us with nothing in terms of public education as we know it, would you continue to choose the same scheme with the impossible expectations that will guarantee the failure of tens of millions of children over the next 8 years, largely represented by the handicapped, brown, and poor?
Do you really believe that the only alternative to the bigotry of low expectations is the racism of impossible demands?
Do you really believe the Big Lie that the intent here is to leave no child behind, rather than to introduce a repressive chain gang model for schools in urban America?
Will you not see the increasing number of planned failures that heedlessly and arrogantly sacrifice children on the ideological altar of school privatization?
Can we see allow ourselves to see the shame and the crime in the violence that we are perpetrating against our children, our schools, against the future of the Republic?
Can we?
Will we?
When?

anti nclb

Privatization or social control?

2006-02-24T15:54:00.000-09:00

By Dave Stratman fom New Democracy world via Susan O'hanians' website.

Mr. Stratman has a take on this whole Business Roundtable push against public education that, I believe, bares listening to:
...
In my view NCLB and various state-based reforms represent a systematic intensification of the problematic nature of the public education system itself. The public education system is designed to legitimize and reinforce the inequalities of capitalist society. NCLB and the host of corporate-led ed reform plans of the past 20 years or so are intended to intensify the stratification and competition which are at the heart of the public school system and are essential to the mission envisioned for it by policymakers.

Why intensify these already-existing traits of the system? There are three principal reasons:

1) as US society becomes more dramatically unequal and less democratic, the education system must be reshaped to sharpen its powers of social control;
2) as the economy is reshaped by automation and outsourcing to yield fewer and fewer jobs that require skilled workers, the self-confidence and potential of countless students must be crushed so that they will accept their place in society;
3) the active resistance--which takes multitudinous forms--of teachers, parents, and students to schooling as social control must be beaten back and undermined.

The question of whether there is money to be made in education reform seems to me beside the point. There may or there may not be. But entrepreneuers like Chris Whittle or corporations like Harcourt Brace would never be able to effect such a massive development in US domestic policy as NCLB represents. These are bit players compared with the Business Roundtable and the other major forces behind these developments--such as the Republican and Democratic Parties.
...
The effects of the public schools on our children and grandchildren is decidedly mixed. The mix of effects come about because of the conflict over goals at its heart. On the one side are the structures of official school policy and practices, designed to sort students out and reinforce the inequality of American society. On the other side are students, parents, and teachers, who want to see students educated to the fullest of their abilities and who work in the ways they can to succeed in this goal.

To be effective champions of public education, we cannot simply defend the schools against false or misleading information, low funding, and carping politicians. The people who are in the public schools often have very real and reasonable complaints against them. We need to be the most reliable allies of these people. As defenders of the schools, we have also to be their severest and most insightful critics.

To do this we must differentiate between the system and the people in it. The problem is not demoralized teachers or lazy students or indifferent parents. The problem is a system that is designed to undermine the hopes and self-confidence and critical thinking and abilities of the people involved in it.

This is why any serious movement for school change must be a revolutionary movement. Public schools do much that is good and irreplaceable. The damage which they do they do as instruments of social control wielded by the rulers of our society to reinforce their rule. It is that rule--which would be mortally threatened by our young people achieving their full potential--which is the source of the problem.

Dave Stratman
anti nclb

Under No Child Left Behind, States Submit Growth Model Proposals, Outside Peer Reviewers Selected

2006-02-23T09:04:00.000-09:00

Ms. Spellings is at it again. It seems that my fair state A;aska is one of the states, us being a good conservative Republican state, being considered for the "growth model." This is supposed to be a big consession but read further:

Growth models...must be based on the following seven principles of No Child Left Behind:

Ensure that all students are proficient by 2014 and set annual state goals to ensure that the achievement gap is closing for all groups of students;
Set expectations for annual achievement based upon meeting grade-level proficiency and not upon student background or school characteristics;
Hold schools accountable for student achievement in reading/language arts and mathematics;
Ensure that all students in tested grades are included in the assessment and accountability system, hold schools and districts accountable for the performance of each student subgroup, and include all schools and districts;
Include assessments, in each of grades 3 through 8 and high school, in both reading/language arts and mathematics that have been operational for more than one year and have received approval through the NCLB standards and assessment review process for the 2005-06 school year. The assessment system must also produce comparable results from grade to grade and year to year;
Track student progress as part of the state data system; and
Include student participation rates and student achievement as separate academic indicators in the state accountability system.

Nothing has changed. The system is still set up for failure. The aim is still privatization. It is beyond time for everyone to stand up to this attack on our public school system.
anti nclb