Veteran educator Elliot Self says it is long past time to revise No Child Left Behind, and he urges everyone to make their voices heard.
My first recommendation to Congress would be to restore the original name of this landmark 1965 legislation, whose primary purpose was equity for poor children and districts, not accountability: the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), not President Bush’s colorful NCLB.
Self offers nine recommendations in this article. The balance of the article explains each recommendations.
“I believe that we need a new National policy that supports a 21st century education for our children. I am suggesting nine broad changes to the law that would help schools and teachers across the country better meet the needs of diverse students and schools in a complex 21st century world. The recommendations suggest a very different type of law that, instead of a set of top down mandates, emphasizes collaborative working relationships with states, schools and districts and local flexibility, creativity and innovation. They suggest that NCLB should be focused around a 21st century education mission statement and set of goals and should support the development of high quality standards that make significant learning possible.
“The recommendations promote a broader view of accountability and assessment policies and practices, emphasize the development of a rigorous, expansive, high quality curriculum and school programs, and promote the use of powerful instructional strategies. They are designed to address the deep-seated problems with the current law.
Self’s nine recommendations are the following:
“Create a law designed to encourage and guide states, districts and schools to develop 21st century schools, rather than coerce them into submission.
Create a 21st century education mission and vision statement to focus the law.
Encourage the development of high quality state standards.
Support the development of curricular programs that are consistent with high quality standards.
Reduce the amount of standardized testing and encourage the use of multiple types of assessments to measure success and progress.
Encourage districts and schools to develop and implement benchmark and graduation projects.
Encourage districts to provide a variety of elective courses and comprehensive extra-curricular activities and programs.
Encourage professional development that supports the use of powerful instructional strategies.
Create the means for greater collaboration and sharing among states, districts and schools.”
What are your recommendations for the federal role?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s long past time to dump, cancel, abort, obliterate, erase, liquidate, raze, repeal and flush into oblivion the abomination which is NCLB.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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This reads like bullet points on a resume. “Put it with the rest of them.”
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“Revise NCLB?”
Note to Self:
Do not revise
But simply shelf
A pack of lies
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Well, I give him credit for floating a broader idea, since congressional Democrats and the President’s team have inexplicably and bizarrely decided to focus exclusively on defending standardized testing.
George W Bush must be smiling. The most passionate defenders of his law are all Democrats – the same people who ran (and got elected) on repealing or fixing NCLB are now begging Lamar Alexander- they’ll trade him anything!- if he’ll just let them retain NCLB testing and associated punitive measures for public schools.
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Chiara: well said.
President Bush’s NCLB aka No Child’s Behind Left.
President Obama’s RTTT aka Dash For The Cash.
Junk the high-stakes standardized tests that are the foundational support of the above. Even Mr. NCLB himself, Mr. Sandy Kress [His Own Bad Self!] said in a Politico piece:
[start quote]
Politicians and pundits from left, right and center have been beating up on No Child Left Behind. And Texas lawyer Sandy Kress has had enough. Kress, a longtime adviser to George W. Bush, was an original architect of NCLB. He stands by the law – and says it’s being blamed for a heap of problems that it did not in any way cause. “It’s sad to see all the brickbats,” Kress told Morning Education. “And worrisome.” Kress argues that the federal testing and accountability provisions were designed to prod district bureaucracies into demanding more qualified teachers, better instruction and top-notch materials. Instead, he said, administrators took the easy way out and bought loads of practice tests and test prep products in a frenzied rush to boost student scores. Kress used to lobby for Pearson, which of course sells many of those tests and test prep products. He doesn’t work for the company now, though, and says he can freely share his view: Yes, there are too many tests (and too many bad tests) – but no, it’s not the fault of NCLB. “Why [states and districts] chose to have tests on top of tests on top of tests” instead of improving instruction “is beyond me,” he said. The testing mania not only spurred the anti-NCLB backlash, but it flat out didn’t work, Kress said: “If you spend all your time weighing your pig, when it comes time to sell the pig, you’re going to find out you haven’t spent enough time feeding the pig.”
[end quote]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2015/01/13/nclb-architect-defends-nclb/
¿? I have a feeling that like Dr. Raj Chetty, Mr. Kress prefers the phrase “Campbell’s Conjecture” rather than “Campbell’s Law.”
Apparently Sandy “Teflon Defense” Kress feels that in this most cage busting achievement gap crushing 21st century of creative disruption in education that personal responsibility and accountability are just, so, 20th century.
Rheeally! And in the most Johnsonally sort of ways too…
But here on Planet Reality we respectfully disagree.
Sandy, you broke it, you own it. No excuses.
Really!
😎
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It’s amusing when you go back and read it, huh?
This is from 2007:
” Teachers cheered Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton when she stepped before them last month at an elementary school in Waterloo, Iowa, and said she would “end” the No Child Left Behind Act because it was “just not working.”
Mrs. Clinton is not the only presidential candidate who has found attacking the act, President Bush’s signature education law, to be a crowd pleaser — all the Democrats have taken pokes. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico has said he wants to “scrap” the law. Senator Barack Obama has called for a “fundamental” overhaul. And John Edwards criticizes the law as emphasizing testing over teaching. “You don’t make a hog fatter by weighing it,” he said recently while campaigning in Iowa.”
“Mr. Kennedy now plans to take the lead with the bill early next year. “We have to convince people that the bill we introduce, that this will not be a rubber stamp of the current law,” he said in an interview.”
It’s like deja vu all over again 🙂
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How come nobody is asking the experts in child development? They want a system were kids can thrive. Why not match their abilities to the grade level and let them learn?
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Greater collaboration? I agree that collaboration must happen, but it must be productive. Many times it does not address a concern, but rides the tide of making more to be concerned about. Then when you get something off the ground nobody else did because the are still talking about it. Frustrating…
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Chiara: which is why I think that the way to approach this latest attempt (or any other) at slight-of-hand rebranding is—
Hold everyone’s feet to the fire. Your own included. All the time. No exceptions. You don’t sell yourself, or your principles, short for what predictably turn out to be ephemeral political advantages, especially at the cost of severely (if not fatally) wounding both your real-world political impact as well as your moral standing.
A stunning example is provided by the link I provide above to a very recent posting on this blog. Just consider that Sandy Kress is (literally not figuratively) trying to defend his own ludicrous and toxic words and deeds by claiming that he was just playing a kind of (deadly serious) political game. It just didn’t turn out out well. He wants us to feel his pain!
😒
And notice that weighing and feeding pigs seems to be a favorite meme of rheephormistas of all colors, shapes, sizes and labels. Seems they think of it as the moral equivalent of a Monopoly “get out of jail” card.
😕
Yes, it just didn’t turn out well FOR HIM. All he is doing now, and it is painfully obvious, is trying to touch up damaged goods aka Sandy Kress so that he can continue to make himself an attractive catch for present and future employers. He is deadly in earnest about reinventing himself. But as for the rest of us…
If I may, let me provide an English-to-English summary of what he said: I went into a high-stakes game I knew was rigged against the vast majority of people in this country and I bet their futures against possible personal gain for myself. Turns out that the people that rigged the game meant what they said and said what they meant, and did exactly with those furslinger tests tests tests and unattainable 100% proficiency rates just what they intended from the beginning to do. Y’all got it all wrong. I am the real victim here and I wish people would stop making me responsible for selling them down the river—hey, if you don’t like what happened, don’t blame the players, blame the game!
This is what passes for self-reflection and serious discourse among the leaders, enablers, enforcers and spin doctors of the self-styled “education reform” movement.
😳
Let me briefly remind viewers of this blog that when it comes to making a drastic change in course the owner of this blog set, and sets, a good if rare example for people who have been or are in the public spotlight. She worked through it carefully, publicly, and thoughtfully over a number of years, in part drawing on her experiences and training to get back down to her own most fundamental beliefs and moral grounding. She spared no effort to make crystal clear what prompted her change in direction; she held her own feet to the fire. She paid a price but she gained something a Sandy Kress and his peers can never reclaim: self-respect born of doing the right thing even when it came at a price few in her position would ever pay.
Notice the subheading of this blog: “a site to discuss better education for all.” Not “a site to discuss better education for a few strivers” or “a site to determine guidelines for education triage so we can throw out the uneducables” or “a site to discuss what I can do to burnish my image so some clueless billionaires will throw a some largesse my way.”
Really look at the subheading. I will state the obvious: like getting rid of kings and queens for democracy and ending chattel slavery and ensuring equal rights for women and so many other world-changing ideas and practices—
It is both a very modest, and a very radical, idea. It’s a never-ending story. There’s no conceivable metric that will tell us when it has been been accomplished. By definition, there can’t be because it implies, IMHO, that our minds and hearts, ideas and passion, are bent towards a goal that will always be just beyond reach, but always worth striving for.
I have sometimes thought, especially when reading attacks on the owner of this blog for being “shrill” and “strident” and a “kook” that William Lloyd Garrison would have found this blog a welcome home:
“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.”
A better education for all. A worthy idea for the last century. For this century. For the next century. And for centuries yet to come.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
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“Science Kooks”
Show me a place
Where kooks follow science
That’s where I’ll race
With kooky defiance
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