Archives for category: NCLB (No Child Left Behind)
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Zombie Federal Policies

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2013 //
116

Bill Gates is wrong. American education is not “broken.”

Federal education policy is broken.

Testing children until they cry is a bad idea. It is educational malpractice.

Basing teachers’ evaluation, their salary, and their tenure on student test scores is a bad idea. It doesn’t work. It is professional malpractice. The Gates Foundation has invested hundreds of millions of dollars trying to make it work. It doesn’t work. Arne Duncan has made it a cardinal principle of federal education policy. It doesn’t work.

Giving bonuses to teachers based on test scores is a failed idea. It has never worked. The U.S. Department of Education under Duncan put $1 billion into such programs. They fail.

Closing schools doesn’t make them better. It shatters communities and sends children to search for a school that will accept them. That’s federal policy. It’s wrong. It is wrong in Chicago and it is wrong everywhere else.

There is no such thing as a “failing school.” Schools are buildings. Buildings don’t fail. If the students in a school have low test scores, it is the responsibility of the superintendent to find out why and to supply the needed staff and resources to improve the school.

When schools struggle, it is the responsibility of the people at the top to help them, not to close them.

Federal education policy, from No Child Left Behind to Race to the Top, is broken. It has failed. It must be changed.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top

Wayne Gersen: What Obama Could Learn from Vermont

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2013 //
5

Wayne Gersen has been working in several districts in Vermont. He is impressed by Vermont’s determination not to allow testing to be the be-all and end-all of education. The state is determined not to let NCLB wreck its schools and not to ask for a waiver that would allow Duncan to impose high-stakes testing. If only Obama did what Vermont does!

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Obama

The Mess That Is Obama’s Education Policy

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2013 //
55

Valerie Strauss does an excellent job of deconstructing the disaster of Obama’s education policy.

Remember when candidate Obama in 2008 spoke of hope and change. That encouraged many educators to believe that No Child Left Behind would be ended, tossed into the dustbin of history, where it belongs.

Sadly, President Obama built his Race to the Top right on the flawed foundation of NCLB, and made teaching to the test a necessity.

As the for-profit charters proliferated, he said nothing.

As radical governors destroyed collective bargaining and teacher due process, he said nothing.

As cyber charters grew, garnering huge profits but terrible education, he said nothing.

As vouchers spread, he said nothing.

As privatization accelerated, he said nothing.

The very idea of a “race to the top” refutes the principle of equality of educational opportunity.

The Bush-Obama program will go down in history as a disastrous effort to force the children of America into a standardized mold, while unleashing free market forces to make big bucks with scarce dollars.

It will be held up as an example of what school reform is NOT.

Categories Duncan, Arne, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Obama, Race to the Top

Why She Left Teaching

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2013 //
17

From a teacher who gave up:

After 13+ years as a successful special education teacher in Los Angeles and then Virginia, I resigned last year. I just felt like I could no longer teach one more year in the current atmosphere that the teaching profession has become. I decided to take at least a year off, but it may be permanent. I know I have helped so many students and families over the years, and the students remained the only pleasant part of being a teacher at all. The excessive paperwork and lack of funding and support from society, the administration, and the government got worse and worse with every year, and the major down-slide began with No Child Left Behind and the increasing emphasis on test scores. The pressure for my students to pass standardized tests became unbearable even though many did pass and advance in terms of progress, but who cares about progress if it isn’t a passing score, and who cares about whether my students have disabilities, and most importantly, who cares if one test taken on one day cannot possibly assess the many successes and advances my students make yearly? Maybe I will go back to the classroom one day, but for now, I sorely need a break from the circus education has become.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Jason Stanford: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Rhee

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2013 //
19

Jason Stanford, a first-rate journalist in a texas, looks for the lessons in the meteoric rise and astonishing descent of Michelle Rhee.

The major lesson, he says, is not so much about her as about the deep flaws in the test-and-punish philosophy she embodied. Putting the squeeze on subordinates to raise test scores leads to all sorts of negative consequences, but not to good education.

The flaw is inherent in No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

Until we get a better vision of education, there will be more Beverly Halls and Michelle Rhees.

Categories Corporate Reformers, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Rhee, Michelle, Testing

Randy Turner Explains His Suspension

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2013 //
23

Randy Turner was suspended not for his Huffington Post article but for his book. This is why teachers need tenure: Academic freedom.

He sent this comment:

“Thanks for the kind words from everyone. My suspension coming at almost exactly the same time as my Huffington Post blog was a coincidence. Basically, it happened because I wrote a novel, No Child Left Alive, criticizing many of the practices in education today, particularly those done by overambitious administrators. I just finished posting the charges against me on my blog: http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-joplin-school-districts-charges.html

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching

How Arbitrary is NCLB?

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2013 //
6

Matt DiCarlo here describes a paper that shows how utterly arbitrary NCLB is.

Some states look good.

Some states look very bad.

But the states that look bad may actually be outperforming the states that look good..

When will our policymakers acknowledge that NCLB is a harmful, destructive law that has wreaked havoc on American education?

Where Matt and I part company is this observation he concludes with: “…accountability systems can play a productive role in education, but this analysis demonstrates very clearly that, when it comes to the design and implementation of these systems, details matter. Seemingly trivial choices can have drastic effects on measured outcomes.”

No, accountability systems are not likely to play a productive number in education. NCLB is a disaster. Race to the Top is a double disaster.

Who will be held “accountable” for low test scores? Teachers? Students? Principals? Schools? Superintendents? Local school boards? Legislators? Governors? The U,S. Department of Education? Congress?

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. education

NCLB: The Creation of a Mad Dr. Frankenstein?

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2013 //
9

If you want to know how No Child Left Behind has injured our society’s most vulnerable children, read this heart-breaking story about the sanctions imposed on the Rhode Island School for the Deaf.

Written by a recently retired teacher at the school, it describes how the standardized testing regime struck the children and the school like a sledgehammer, causing it to be labeled Persistently Low Performing.

The story begins:

“I recently participated in the inspiring and informative webinar “How to Organize a Grassroots Group” put on by the Network for Public Education and the Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education. I am a retired teacher of the deaf, having retired from the Rhode Island School for the Deaf in the fall of 2011 profoundly dismayed by the unreasonable sanctions placed on the school by the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), headed by Deborah Gist (Broad Superintendents Academy 2008).”

Read this post and ask yourself how anyone associated with the punishments inflicted on this important school can sleep at night or look themselves in the mirror every morning without grimacing.

And the next time you hear a pundit or think tank jockey praise NCLB, tell them about the Rhode Island School for the Deaf.

Categories Closing schools, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Special Education

The Master Plan for Obama Education Reforms

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2013 //
48

Here it is in one neat package: the Obama reform program, drafted by the Broad Foundation and published in April 2009.

Please review the names of those who participated in drafting the plan. Many will be familiar to you. Here you will find the agenda for Race to the Top, which was revealed to the public three months later. These are the people and these are the policies that forged a strong link between No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Here is the framework that saddled the nation with more high-stakes testing, more privatization, more closing schools, more layoffs, attacks on tenure, and other policies that lack any research or evidence.

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Common Core, Education Industry, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, U.S. education

Why Test Security Won’t Solve the Problems Created by Bad Policies

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2013 //
22

This article by Daniel Denvir is the best article I have read to date on the Atlanta cheating scandal.

The “no excuses” mantra is at the root of policies that incentivized cheating. Atlanta is only the tip of the iceberg. There will be more, and most will go undetected.

What distinguished Atlanta was the thoroughness of the investigation.

Of course, adults should not cheat, and those who cheat should be punished.

But it is important to change the context that demands impossible results and punishes adults who don’t produce them.

It is especially pleasing to see this article in The New Republic, which is an influential political journal.

Categories Georgia, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing
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