Education Week reports that the Senate and House are near agreement on a deal to reauthorize NCLB, aka the Elementary Secondary and Elementary Act.
While it is too soon to know what will emerge from the conference committee, it is disappointing to see that the accountability Hawks kept the burden of annual testing, which is not found in any high-performing nation. The administration of George W. Bush and the testing companies won on this one.
“The compromise uses the Senate bill as a jumping-off point here. Quick refresher: That means states would still have to test students in grades 3-8 and once in high school in reading and math. But states would get to decide how much those tests count for accountability purposes. And states would be in the driver’s seat when it comes to goals for schools, school ratings, and more.
“States would be required to identify and take action in the bottom 5 percent of schools, and schools where less than two-thirds of kids graduate
“States would also have to identify and take action in schools that aren’t closing the achievement gap between poor and minority students and their peers. But importantly, the bill doesn’t say how many of those schools states would have to pinpoint, or what they would have to do to ensure that they are closing the gaps—the bill allows state leaders to figure all that out.
“On opt-outs: The bill largely maintains the Senate language, which would allow states to create their own opt-out laws (as Oregon has). But it maintains the federal requirement for 95 percent participation in tests. And unlike under No Child Left Behind, in which schools with lower-than-95 percent participation rates were automatically seen as failures, local districts and states get to decide what should happen in schools that miss targets. States would have to take low testing participation into consideration in their accountability systems. Just how to do that would be up to them, though.”
After 15 years or more of not “closing the gap,” federal law will require states to punish schools that don’t do it. Does anyone in D.C. understand that the gap is a product of standardized tests? That standardized tests are burned on a bell curve? That bell curves never close? That mandating it doesn’t make it so? A mandate to reduce class sizes to no more than 12 for the neediest children would be far more effective than a demand to “do something.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Educationalchemy has a great post about this-Competency Based Learning, Online Education and Lamar Alexander’s ESEA Revisions. “You can see now why Lamar Alexander’s re authorization of ESEA promoted a return to the states for decision making about assessment. It’s not the tests. It’s the online ed tech corporations that can now deliver state-wide curriculum and instruction.” http://educationalchemy.com/2015/10/17/competency-based-learning-online-education-and-lamar-alexanders-esea-revisions/
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Unfortunately, I think it was inevitable. There was never any real debate on “assessment” in the Senate. They see it as a technical problem to be solved- better tests or online assessment where kids won’t know they’re being assessed. I don’t think there was ever any real attempt to look at the ideas behind the testing.
The part I listened to was really depressing. They talked about two things- federalism, or the liberal v conservative fight over how much power the states have versus the feds and nifty new testing schemes.
That’s not really a substantive debate. It’s process arguments and technical fixes. I don’t think they re-examined anything. It’s all just tweaking NCLB. I’ve given up on DC and public schools. Maybe in 20 more years they’ll revisit this approach, but I just feel like it’s a brick wall of “movement” ed reform and nothing is getting in there.
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In this post Educationalchemy explains the Big Picture: http://educationalchemy.com/2015/10/30/common-core-and-corporate-colonization-the-big-picture/
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I don’t think very many people understand the bell curve or how standardized tests are written and how they differ from classroom tests that teachers write. I teach this in my Algebra 2 classes and students are flabbergasted. I teach my friends, colleagues and acquaintances and they are even more flabbergasted. Could Diane write something very specifically on this (I know she has in the past) and try to get it published in the New York Times …. I know many people have written about this, but it’s hard to get a larger audience….
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Watch for increased campaign contributions—from the billionaire oligarchs funding the public education demolition derby—at the state level for state legislatures and governors.
How many states legislatures and governors to the oligarchs already own besides Florida and Ohio?
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If they push all the decisions to the state level, the practical effect will be Republicans will be running most of education policy, for two reasons- 1. it’s basically run at the state level and 2. Republicans hold many, many more state level offices than Democrats do.
Democrats may have “reformed” themselves right into total irrelevancy on public schools in vast swathes of the country.
If they don’t have Duncan-like power at the Presidential level and they have many fewer Democratic elected officials at the state level (and they do) people who support public schools should probably be focusing on what Republicans do rather than what Democrats do because Democrats won’t have much say in anything.
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Good point. In addition, the oligarchs will be spending money to oust progressive Democrats who support the public schools in states the Democrats still control like California, and CA is vulnerable because it has term limits and Brown, who can’t be totally bought, can’t run for Governor again.
According to Gallup polling, in 2014 only 11 states were solid Democrat compared to 10 for the GOP. Five states lean GOP and 6 lean Democrat. 18 states are competitive—those 18 states will be where the oligarchs concentrate most of their money, I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_U.S._states#Current_party_strength
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The revision of NCLB is not much better than what we had before, more test and punish. I am concerned that the portability clause of Title 1 money will become a slush fund for charters. The 95% participation rule continues the type of extortion tactics that have characterized the Obama administration. The bottom 5% rule, as you point out, demonstrates no understanding of standardized tests and leaves the door open for a continuous flow of students to charter bottom feeders. None is this, of course, is evidence based, but it’s what Washington wants. The feds should have to kick in additional funds to these low achieving schools rather than punishing the students with the threat of chaos and upheaval, but, of course, that’s not in their proposal. All this politicized garbage is to be expected from a nation that has sold its soul to corporations where reason and research are lost in the quest for profit.
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This is sad news… because it likely means another generation of students will be subjected to high stakes testing. It also means another generation of parents will view their child’s schooling through this lens. And even worse, it means those teachers who entered the profession in the last 15 years will never have experienced anything BUT the test-and-punish regimen… and they will soon dominate the profession. The paradigm of teaching that I encountered as a teacher and administrator beginning in 1970 is no longer in existence… except in the most affluent school districts where children on the top end of the standardized testing bell curve scores so high on the tests that teachers are not distracted by them and have the opportunity to teach to the passion of their students and not to the test. Everyone else, and especially the teachers working with children in poverty, is living under the “new” paradigm… which will soon become the dominant one in the minds of students, parents, and teachers who entered the realm of public education since 2002.
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Asked and answered: NO. Sadly, they don’t.
“After 15 years or more of not “closing the gap,” federal law will require states to punish schools that don’t do it. Does anyone in D.C. understand that the gap is a product of standardized tests? That standardized tests are burned on a bell curve? That bell curves never close? That mandating it doesn’t make it so? A mandate to reduce class sizes to no more than 12 for the neediest children would be far more effective than a demand to “do something.”
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Even worse than its maintenance of the status quo is that the “new” revision is now funding birth-5 “education.” Rather than heeding research supporting the efficacy of play-based learning and warning of the damage done by pushing literacy onto children before they are developmentally ready, you read “reports” like this on the CEELO site.
IMPROVING CHILD OUTCOMES THROUGH HIGH QUALITY EARLY LEARNING PROGRAMS
High quality early learning programs promote the developmental and academic success of young children birth through third grade. Research points to key factors that influence child outcomes, including the professional expertise of the adults, the rigor of curriculum based standards…
In other words, we are now going to shove the “rigor of curriculum based standards standards” into infancy. Unless people get past the “glittering generalities” and dig down to what the government means by “high quality early learning programs,” we’re going to see children turned off to learning even earlier than they are now!
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