Archives for category: NCLB (No Child Left Behind)
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“Everything You’ve Heard about Failing Schools Is Wrong”

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2012 //
6

That’s the title of an excellent new article by Kristina Rizga in Mother Jones.

Rizga spent a year embedded at Mission High School in San Francisco and got to know some of the students and teachers well.

According to the federal government, Mission High School is a “failing” school.

Rizga got there expecting to see “noisy classrooms, hallway fights, and disgruntled staff. Instead I found a welcoming place that many students and staff called “family.” After a few weeks of talking to students, I failed to find a single one who didn’t like the school, and most of the parents I met were happy too. Mission’s student and parent satisfaction surveys rank among the highest in San Francisco.”

She found a “failing” school where the majority of the 925 students are Latino or African-American or Asian-American, a school where 72% of the students are poor. She also discovered that 84% of the graduating class went on to college, higher than the district average.

But it is a failing school!

Of course, the feds would love to close the school and do a “turnaround.” But the principal, relatively new to his job, the teachers, and the students don’t want to lose their job.

If you need convincing that NCLB is a disaster for our schools, and that the “turnaround” demands of Race to the Top are equally harmful, you will enjoy this article.

It is the wisest in-depth journalism that I have seen on education issues in recent memory.

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

Texas Parents Plan Rally for Chicago Teachers

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2012 //
3

Just in:

Here in Austin, Texas on Saturday, August 25th 7:00-9:00 pm we’ll be having a rally to support the Chicago teachers. Parents supporting teachers. Solidarity!
TexasParentsOptOutStateTests@yahoo.com
Categories Chicago, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Parents, Texas

Where Is the Grass Greener? Texas or NJ?

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2012 //
5

Sara Stevenson explained how NCLB is still ruining public schools in Texas.

This reader in New Jersey says that getting the waiver has given unprecedented power to the state, which is now intervening in districts across the state to impose Governor Christie’s will on everyone. Bear in mind that on national tests, New Jersey is typically #2 in the nation (behind Massachusetts) and the governor is acting as if the entire system were a disaster.

Wouldn’t it be great if the politicians stuck to what they know?

I still cannot figure out which is worse. I hear nightmares of the impact of NCLB in states that did not apply for the waiver, but here in NJ the waiver is being used to intervene in massive ways by the state in local school districts, threatening them with take overs, instituting Regional Achievement Centers (RACs) which are really ‘the state is here to tell you how to run your district centers’ funded by Broad money (so read, ‘dismantle your public school system’), focus and priority schools are being made to jump through hoops for crazy reasons, and ‘failing’ charter schools are being doled out to CMOs. Is this better? Maybe the grass is always greener, but right now it is looking brown all over.
Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), New Jersey, Texas

NCLB Still Ruining Schools in Texas

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2012 //
8

Texas did not apply for a waiver because it did not want to accept federal intervention into its schools.

So Texas is still subject the the punitive sanctions of the idiotic law that got its start in Texas, a gift to America’s schools thanks to Sandy Kress, Margaret Spellings, Rod Paige and George W. Bush (with a bow to Senator Ted Kennedy, Rep George Miller, and Rep. John Boehner, among its lead sponsors).

I got this note from Sara Stevenson, the dauntless librarian at the O. Henry Middle School in Austin, Texas:

Last week AYP was announced. Our middle school is one of
only five in eighteen that met AYP in our district. Therefore, last
week forty-five students transferred, even though we are officially
closed to transfers. Now we’ll have 1070 kids, instead of the 1025
we’d planned for, and my principal has to hire two new teachers at the
last minute. In addition, the “failing” schools are losing some of
their best students and involved parents. How will this help them to
make improvements? The law is just so senseless. I also looked at the
targets for next year. If this year we had been judged by next year’s
standards, we would have failed in every subgroup. We will all fail
next year, no matter how hard we try. This is just a terrible way to
start a new school year.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Texas

What Happens to Charters That Recruit Needy Children?

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2012 //
7

When the charter idea was first proposed, in 1988, the idea was that charters would enroll the students who were failing, for whatever reason, in regular public schools. The charters would enroll the dropouts, the about to dropout, the students who were unable to function in a regular environment. The charter would come up with workable ideas and share them with the public school, to make the public schools better.

Things haven’t worked out that way. Now charters compete for higher test scores, and it is risky to enroll high-needs students because they will drag down the school’s average. The charters run by hedge fund managers want to win. They want the highest scores, so they tend to pick and choose to boost their scores.

Now their goal is to compete and win, not to collaborate and support public schools.

Blame it on NCLB.

And now we have this, from a reader:

In Trenton, NJ, the only charter that went after those difficult-to-teach students was just closed for not making adequate progress. the property was awarded to another charter operator with ties to Commissioner Cerf. go figure.
Categories Charter Schools, NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

When Will Public Schools in Texas Close Down?

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2012 //
3

The new AYP figures are just out in Texas, and only 44% of the schools in the state made adequate yearly progress.

Next year it will be a lot worse.

By the rules set out in the NCLB law, the schools that can’t make it in a five-year frame will have to do something dramatic:

They can turn into a charter school.

They can fire all or most of the staff.

They can be taken over by a private management firm.

They can be taken over by the State Department of Education.

Or, they can do some other kind of major restructuring.

Well, folks, sorry to say that public education in Texas is heading for a cliff.

Remember that it was the “Texas miracle” that put the whole nation on the magic school bus to privatization.

Please, Texas school boards, keep passing those resolutions against high-stakes testing.

And here’s an idea: If nothing changes (and it won’t), just don’t give the tests next year.

If you want to keep public education, don’t give the tests.

Unless, that is, you want to give your public schools to some private company to run.

Categories Accountability, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Texas

Test Scores Drop in Pittsburgh, But Why? UPDATE!

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
12

Test scores dipped in Pittsburgh for the first time in five years, and the graduation rate is flat.

Here are some possible reasons.

Budget cuts.

Teacher layoffs.

Budget cuts and layoffs mean larger class sizes.

Schools will be closed, and teachers are uncertain about where they will be assigned.

One thought: budget cuts and turmoil do not enhance learning.

Both cause anxiety among teachers and undoubtedly among students as well.

Time for leaders in Pittsburgh to think some more.

Newsflash! This tweet just arrived:

More to it than turmoil & budget. Gates driven reforms not working. Community misinformed. Teachers blamed.

I forgot that Pittsburgh is one of the districts that received a big grant from the Gates Foundation ($40 million) and adopted the Gates’ approach: data-driven instruction, Gates-style teacher evaluation, etc. Pittsburgh was one of the Gates’ prize districts. We will wait to hear what Bill Gates says about this.

It seems clear by now that the Gates Foundation has never reformed any district, but has no hesitation telling districts what to do so that every teacher is in the top quintile.

Their constant meddling makes you long for the days when all they wanted to do was create small schools, not tell everyone what to do all day.
Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teachers and Teaching, Testing

How NCLB Redefined Teachers

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
8

From an article in Salon (to which I linked yesterday). This is the passage that many people identified as most relevant to their own lives:

“Since 2001, when, for the first time in the history of federal education policy, George Bush’s No Child Left Behind linked school and teacher assessment — and cash rewards — directly to children’s standardized test performance, teachers have been, too often, nothing more than the getters of the scores. What matters in this calculation isn’t the person in front of the class, what his expertise is, what he thinks, about anything. Teachers are no longer the scholars. They are not wise or trusted. They are not valued for their knowledge or ingenuity, but for their ability to abide, to “buy in,” to “manage” a classroom, punch the biometric clock and agree to all things. They are the middlemen, only, the vehicle through which pre-set processed information is handed along. The vehicle that would rarely question an administrator, let alone carry a sign. The vehicle that can be replaced, as I was, when my principal ‘released me from my assignment.'”

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

The Inside Scoop on the Texas Miracle

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
9

Hey, I’m a historian and it’s my job to have a long memory, but I know that many people don’t remember how the whole nation got stuck with this crazy No Child Left Behind law.

Back in 2000, when George W. Bush was running for president, he talked about the Texas miracle. There was a secret formula, he said, and it was really simple: Test every child every year. If scores go up, the school gets honored, maybe even a bonus. And if the scores drop or go flat, the school is humiliated.

How easy. Testing! Accountability! And look what happened, or so he said: The test scores went up, the dropout rate went down, and the achievement gap was closing.

That sounded so totally wonderful (and almost cost-free except for buying lots more tests) that Congress decided everyone should do it and they passed NCLB. The law ended up on President Bush’s desk in January 2002, and he proudly signed it, with Democrats and Republicans together behind him.

True bipartisanship.

Now we look around at the wreckage and we see that lots of children are still left behind.

What happened? Here is a good place to find out. There was no Texas miracle.

When I was growing up in Houston, we used to read a funny little book called “Texas Brags,” which contained all the crazy boasts that Texans made, not expecting anyone to believe them. You know, we’re the biggest and the best and we have the most and the largest of everything. And you better believe it!

Hey, folks, here’s the inside scoop. We were not serious! It was a tall tale.

Categories Accountability, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing, Texas

How Can We Cure Very, Very Sick Public Policy?

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2012 //
3

A teacher in Philadelphia wrote a terrific article explaining why her school is “incredible.”

The state labeled it “low-performing.”

Now her students will be allowed to “escape” to another school.

But, she points out,

A staggering 95 percent of our students come from poor families, nearly 30 percent are learning English, and at least 16 percent have special needs. You will never hear me use those numbers as excuses, though. I tell anyone who will listen that my students are some of the most intelligent, engaging, enthusiastic, and resilient children in Pennsylvania.

She describes the many successes of her students, each of whom has achieved a personal triumph this year and concludes:

 Each and every child in my classroom had his or her own successes. Will those successes be reflected in their test scores? I hope so. But even if they are not, that doesn’t diminish their triumphs.

Yet when these students come back to school in September, they will hear that they go to an underachieving school, and that they can go to a “good” school. What message will they take away?

It would never cross my mind to call a student “bad.” But now the state is labeling entire schools — and, in turn, communities — “bad.” That is distressing not only because I know my colleagues and I are committed to excellence, but also because it will be one more way society is telling our students they are unworthy.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Philadelphia, Poverty
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