In 2001, Congress passed a law called No Child Left Behind. It was signed into law by President George W. Bush in January 2002. It is the worst federal education legislation ever passed. It required that 100% of children in grades 3-8 must be proficient by 2014 or their schools are failing and subject to harsh sanctions. In no nation in the world are 100% of children proficient. This is an impossible goal. Yet many schools have been closed, many educators fired, because they could not do the impossible.
Although NCLB should have been re authorized in 2007, Congress has been unable to agree on how to change it. It should have been scrapped. Accountability should be the job of the states, not the federal government.
Into the stalemate over NCLB stepped our present Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who offered waivers from the 2014 deadline to states that agreed to evaluate their teachers based on their students’ test scores. States lined up to seek waivers. Washington State, however, asked for a waiver but the Legislature refused to evaluate teachers by test scores. Many studies have shown that this a fundamentally flawed way of evaluating teachers. But Duncan stuck to his guns, oblivious to the research. He decreed that Washington State would lose its waiver. That men’s that every school in the state is a failing school and must inform parents that their child attends a failing school.
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Educators in Washington State have written a plea to Arne Duncan not to rescind the state’s waiver from what is, in fact, a ridiculous law. They have a petition and invite you to support them by signing it.
Here is their press release:
This year, most school districts across Washington state were forced by Secretary Arne Duncan’s selective enforcement of the No Child Left Behind Act to send letters to all parents that labeled our schools as failures. We are parents, teachers, students and community members who reject this label that has been placed on our schools.
We know that our schools are not failures. In fact, their accomplishments have been remarkable, especially given the deeply flawed policy imposed on them by the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). While there are certainly changes needed for our schools – many due to the legacy of racism, class inequality, and lack of equitable funding for our schools – we believe that those changes should be directed by communities that make up local school districts, not by top-down mandates. This website will share stories and testimonials about the great things that are happening in our schools that should be supported and connect our communities so that we can organize opposition to Arne Duncan’s policies and No Child Left Behind.
According to NCLB, our schools should have had 100% of students test at proficient levels in reading and math by 2014. No county, no state, and no school district has ever achieved 100% proficiency on standardized tests and, in fact, the way the tests are designed make it statistically impossible to achieve that goal. Washington, like many other states, originally had a waiver in place that would have exempted it from this absurd NCLB mandate. However, when the state legislature refused to pass bills tying teacher evaluations to test scores (following overwhelming evidence that this would not improve teaching or learning), Arne Duncan chose to punish Washington state by revoking the waiver. With the waiver gone, nearly all of Washington’s schools have been labeled failures, we may lose control of millions of dollars in federal money, and some schools will be at risk of state takeovers and mass layoffs of teachers.
This kind of political game-playing has no place in our schools. Our schools and teachers should not be labeled as failures simply because we have rejected extremely flawed education policies. In August 2014, 28 school superintendents from around the state authored a letter, where they declared that their schools’ successes are not reflected in these ratings and criticized No Child Left Behind. We agree. It’s time for the voices of parents, teachers and students to be heard and respected.
If you have a story to share about why your school is not a failure, tell us here.
Also, sign our petition to reinstate the NCLB waiver for Washington state.
Endorsed by:
Parents Across America (PAA)
Seattle Education Website
Social Equality Educators (SEE)
Wayne Au, PhD, Associate Professor of Education at the University of Washington Bothell*
Jesse Hagopian, Teacher, Garfield High School*
Kshama Sawant, Seattle City Council member*
Sue Peters, Seattle School Board Director*
Melissa Westbrook, Seattle Schools Community Forum
*For identification purposes only
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
NCLB required that 100% of children in grades 3-8 must be proficient by 2014 or their schools are failing and subject to harsh sanctions. In no nation in the world are 100% of children proficient. This is an impossible goal. Yet many schools have been closed, many educators fired, because they could not do the impossible.
Seattle Public Schools is lucky to have Director Peters. She is a true leader.
Agreed. And the current School Board is a significant improvement over the Goodloe-Johnson Board. The four in the majority were elected in spite of the Democratic political establishment’s support of reformer incumbents like Peter Maier and Steve Sundquist.
I have commented in the past to a few people that I am considering to run for Governor. I have posted on the SEA and WEA website, talked to a number of teachers and I have gotten the same reaction; all they want to do is gripe. They have no tenacity to say no to common core, or enough is enough. Teachers are running scared and with no one in their corner, I can see why.
I am a Republican and I value the teacher, but because I am a Republican, neither the teacher, nor the unions want nothing to do with me. I tell them that I am your only friend when it comes to education, teachers and their jobs. The only reason I think what Duncan is doing is to force the issue of the legislators to finally tie the teacher’s job to the students’ performance.
The Democrats say, I am your friend. Really!! It is time for either the teacher to start taking action, or succumb to their misery. I also have other ideas about the school system, but right now, it is imperative that teachers start looking at their position in life when it comes to their jobs. A large percentage of what is going on, is going on because of Bill Gates and his money. He has been buying the educational system one piece at a time. The evaluation system is largely stemmed from Jack Welch, in which Gates has termed him as his hero. This evaluation system stack-ranks the teacher and stack-ranking has no regard for union seniority. Nor, does it have any regard to union contracts that states how layoffs are to be conducted. There will be no layoffs, just terminations.
To terminate someone this way, is purely stupid and the building principal can get away with it simply by stack-ranking a teacher they do not like.
When the teachers and their unions finally wake up, it will be too late. When the first ones who are terminated, the effect of common core with the evaluation system, there will no be one or two terminated, but hundreds of them in the first wave.
One of the basic problems every school district faces is classroom size. They want smaller classes and if the teacher and their unions do not take store by what I am saying, the classroom sizes will get much larger because of the termination of teachers through common core and the evaluation system.
Agreement to use student proficiency data to evaluate teachers = NCLB waiver
That was the agreement when applying for the waiver. Washington state didn’t keep up its end of the deal, why would DOE?
Even in business both parties must uphold their end of the contract or there are consequences. They, legislators, superintendents, educators, et al. knew what they signed up for when they asked for the waiver. Let’s not cry foul now, please.
WA does allow districts to use student proficiency data in evals. What they don’t do is mandate that lame and inaccurate standardized test scores have to be the student proficiency data used in evaluations, not do they mandate that a certain percentage must be part of the eval. WA also embarked on a huge project to improve teacher evaluations as part of this waiver that involved all stakeholders. We did our part, but Duncan in his dunce cap didn’t like the way we did things, so he changed the rules to suit his pettiness.
I say GET RID OF NCLB and there will be no need for requests for waivers! Enough is enough already. No state should even have to grovel to request a waiver for such a ridiculous law to begin with.
Do any statisticians want to step up to the plate and send Arne Duncan a letter attesting to the fact that 100 percent proficiency is 100 percent not likely to happen due to the laws of statistics? Am I wrong here? And if this is the case, should our courts not deal with NCLB and toss it out??????
Whomever determined the 100 percent proficiency component of NCLB is right up there with “ed reformers” in the qualifications category… both have no experience yet are ESTABLISHING EDUCATION POLICY WHICH IS ENFORCED NATIONALLY.
Hats off to Washington State for defending public education.
NCLB/ESEA should be challenged in the courts. Congress authorized a federal law that is impossible to comply with. If NCLB does not violate the Constitution it is only because our founding fathers could not imagine Congress passing a law that they new would be violated by every single entity under its jurisdiction. The idea of 100% proficiency regarding the behavior of 25 million children,denies the human condition.
This needs to be sent to every US Congressperson and Senator. I’m willing to bet that the majority of them are clueless about the details.
Students, teachers, administrators, and school districts are now being punished for failing to do the impossible. If parents only knew. In the immortal words of Bob Dylan, “We’ve been shooting in the dark too long, when something’s not right, it’s wrong.”
Because of the waiver being revoked, WA can also dump the NCLB. WA can also re-establish their right under the WA Constitution to set their own educational requirements.
Once educational requirements have been set, even the higher ed institutions must follow the road map. I for one can lead this effort with the experts of the education industry.
To be real sure, public schools cannot be treated as a business, but it can show how education can make businesses flourish. We can have home schools, charter schools and private schools, but all of this will not be worth a hill of beans unless we get control.
Test scores are fine to some degree, but to have standardized tests only shows how well a student does after being taught the test.
Two thoughts:
1 – WA should follow VT’s lead: let all your schools be declared “failing” and make sure the public understands the preposterousness of such a label.
2 – The letter writers should use this as an opportunity to explain to Duncan (AND Obama AND Congress) that STATE and LOCAL Boards set policy, not the Federal Government. When NCLB passed the State and local boards effectively ceded key decisions to the federal government. The Federal government would establish categories for the classification of schools and dictate the use of standardized tests as a key means of classification. RTTT took this a step further and, in doing so, flagged the overreach on the part of USDOE. Hopefully this overreach will become evident to voters and public education can get the testing genie back in the bottle.
“The Ice Bucket Challenge”
Dunkin’ teachers, dunkin’ schools
Dunkin’ states and dunkin’ rules
Dunkin’ every thing in sight
Dunkin’ Duncan might be right