No Child Left Behind Debated

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.

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“It will be reauthorized, and there will be changes made,” Ravitch said. “It’s not going away.”
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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.
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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.
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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

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 ...
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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.
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anti nclb

'No Child Left Behind' should be left behind

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

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.

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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.

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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

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!
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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.
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There's lots of negative talk and further down in the Washinton Post article they finally state:
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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.

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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

From O'hanian and friends, a book you might want multiple copies of, to pass out and spread the word...
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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.
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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
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anti nclb

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

From Fairfax Virginia comes a story that is happening all over the country right now including in my home town...
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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."
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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

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.

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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.

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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

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

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

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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.

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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.

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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

From Jim Horn over at Schools Matter:

20 Reasons to Eliminate NCLB

1. An education policy built on impossible performance demands that assure the failure of the majority of American public schools should be eliminated, not reformed.
2. An education policy that has the same impossible demands for most English-language learners and special education students should be eliminated, not reformed.
3. An education policy that traumatizes children, destroys the desire to learn, and corrupts the purposes for learning should be eliminated, not reformed.
4. An education policy that uses fear, intimidation, and retribution as motivation should be eliminated, not reformed.
5. An education policy that uses a single assessment once a year to make life-altering decisions should be eliminated, not reformed.
6. An education policy that ignores poverty as a chief determinant in academic performance should be eliminated, not reformed.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. An education policy that shrinks the American school curriculum to two or three subjects that are tested should be eliminated, not reformed.
11. An education policy that discourages diversity and encourages homogeneity in schools should be eliminated, not reformed.
12. An education policy that supports the use of tax dollars to fund private schools rather than public school improvement should be eliminated, not reformed.
13. An education policy that advocates the use of public money to pay private contractors to run public schools should be eliminated, not reformed.
14. An education policy that is built on unfunded and under-funded mandates should be eliminated, not reformed.
15. An education policy that reduces or eliminates local and state decision making by citizens should be eliminated, not reformed.
16. An education policy that mandates that military recruiters have access to student information should be eliminated, not reformed.
17. 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.
18. An education policy that is used to reward tax dollars to insiders and cronies for their political support should be eliminated, not reformed.
19. An education policy that uses paid propaganda to advance its agenda should be eliminated, not reformed.
20. 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

1. Hold a public forum in your community to explore and explain these points.
2. Organize community and neighborhood potluck dinners with teachers and parents to talk together about how NCLB is affecting children and school.
3. Persuade your organizations to pass resolutions calling for the repeal of NCLB based on these points.
4. 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.
5. Write letters-to-the-editor and op-ed pieces for your local and regional newspapers, making these points.
6. Get your local school board to pass a resolution or hold a community forum about eliminating NCLB.
7. 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).
8. Contact your state legislators to enlist them in the effort to eliminate NCLB; get state legislatures to pass resolutions.
9. Parents: Join the NCLB-mandated Parents Advisory Board at your child’s school. Bring the 20 Reasons to Eliminate NCLB to begin a dialogue.
10. Organize a public protest or march on test days or days given over to test preparation. (anti nclb)

Band-Aids or Bulldozers

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

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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.

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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.

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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

This college sophomore has it. If only there was a way to reach Washington...
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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.
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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

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.

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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."

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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.

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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

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?

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.
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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

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

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

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.
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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

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