Archives for category: NCLB (No Child Left Behind)
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The Last Living Defender of NCLB Speaks

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2012 //
5

I should have titled this “one of the last living defenders of NCLB speaks,” but it required too many characters for a headline. I am sure that in addition to the author of this article, NCLB is still defended by Sandy Kress, Margaret Spellings, and others who designed it. Maybe there are another 50 or 60 people who still defend it. I just can’t think of their names offhand.

Most people, including educators and parents, think of it as a disaster. Most think it turned our schools into testing factories and squeezed out such things as art, history, literature, physical education, science, foreign languages, geography, civics, and other things that are important. No one can deny the importance of basic skills but no one should claim that they are a complete education, or that scores on standardized tests are all that matters.

NCLB was and still is a landmark in the dumbing down of American education.

The writer is under the misapprehension that NCLB had something to do with raising standards. If only.

The author, it may not surprise you to learn, was President George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter from 2001 to 2006. He was also a member of the White House Iraq Group.

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

What is a Highly Qualified Teacher?

By dianeravitch
July 19, 2012 //
15

A reader gives her view of what it means to be a “highly qualified teacher,” if not by the elastic definition in NCLB, then by her own knowledge of teaching:

As many have pointed out, no new teachers are “highly qualified.” While some new teachers may be more prepared than others, many years of teaching experience is necessary to become a truly effective (and therefore highly qualified) teacher. So not only are TFA teachers certainly not highly qualified, they are not even very well prepared. While some of them may have strong academic backgrounds and lots of motivation, why is that enough? Shouldn’t we demand that the people who teach our own children not only have strong academic backgrounds, but also strong backgrounds in education? I graduated with a bachelor’s in science from one of the top universities in the country, taught college students there for a year, got my master’s degree in education there (one of the top teacher prep programs), have the benefits and support of three teaching fellowships that constantly push me to be a better teacher, and I still know that, going in to my 3rd year of teaching, while I am doing a good job, I have a long ways to go to be a truly transformational teacher for all of my students. And I want my own children to have nothing less than that. Why is it okay to concentrate inexperienced teachers in high poverty districts when that would not be acceptable elsewhere?
Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teach for America TFA, Teachers and Teaching

Should Children Eat Tests? Or Should Pearson?

By dianeravitch
July 19, 2012 //
23

Jason Stanford wrote a blistering critique of the misuse of testing in Texas and Sandy Kress responded. Sandy Kress was the architect of No Child Left Behind, which imposed a testing regime on the entire nation. Kress is now a lobbyist for testing giant Pearson.

Stanford summarized his original column, called “Let Them Eat Tests,” as follows:

  1. Texas taxpayers are paying Pearson $470 million for the STAAR test.
  2. Sandy Kress, the father of No Child Left Behind, lobbies for Pearson in Texas.
  3. The school taxes I pay fund a system that corrupts the classroom experience for my two sons who attend an elementary school in Austin by requiring them to learn test-taking skills to pass Sandy Kress’ tests.
  4. Sandy Kress, enriched in very small part by my tax dollars, chooses to send his children to private schools where they don’t have to take his standardized tests.

Kress took this as a personal attack, as well as an attack on the concept on the value of testing and accountability. Read his response. In fact, read the whole exchange. It is a very thorough airing of important issues that concern every state and every citizen these days.

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

A New Teacher Says He Is Not “Highly Qualified”

By dianeravitch
July 19, 2012 //
4

Dave Reid is an engineer who decided to become a public school teacher after a career of 25 years in the high-tech sector.

He has been blogging about his experiences as a new teacher of math in California.

He sent this comment to add to our discussion of whether five weeks of training is enough to be considered a “highly qualified teacher.”

As a new, second career teacher, I find it amazing that the adverb “highly” is prepended to “qualified” for any teacher with less than ten (10) years experience. What profession designates its rookies and junior staff with the same descriptor as if they were on par with veterans and experts in the field?While I believe select alternate certification programs can be advantageous for second career professionals, and in times where supply cannot meet demand, programs like TFA can help bridge the gap, but blindly believing that youthful passion will save the day is naive, and anointing them “highly qualified” is absurd.I wrote about these descriptors in early 2011 in the following posts.Highly Qualified” Interns – a Mendacious Misnomer:http://mathequality.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/mendacious-misnomer/)Dashboard Delusions – The ED’s Ineffective Measure of Effectiveness:http://mathequality.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/dashboard-delusions/Dave
Categories Alternate Route To Certification, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teach for America TFA, Teachers and Teaching

Are TFA Teachers “Highly Qualified”?

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2012 //
54

Valerie Strauss of The Washington Post asks a seemingly obvious question:  Should a teacher with only five weeks of training be considered “highly qualified”? The answer is obviously no..

But the question pertains to Teach for America, which has lobbied Congress to make sure that its neophytes are somehow treated as “highly qualified” under the No Child Left Behind act. The federal appeals court in California has twice said that TFA teachers are not highly qualified, and that they should not be concentrated in districts of high poverty and high disadvantage, where children actually need “highly qualified” teachers, not young college graduates with five weeks to training.

Congress is debating the issue, and TFA is exerting its muscle and lobbyists and war chest to make sure that its fresh-faced recruits are dubbed “highly qualified” by any new version of the law. As Strauss says, “Let’s see just how powerful Teach for America is with Congress.”

 

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teach for America TFA, Teachers and Teaching

Stephen Krashen on the Common Core Standards

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2012 //
19

This letter by Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus of education and linguistics at the University of Southern California, will be posted today on the New York Times website. I just received it:

The common core movement seems to be common sense: Our schools should have similar standards, what students should know at each grade. The movement, however, is based on the false assumption that our schools are broken, that ineffective teaching is the problem and that rigorous standards and tests are necessary to improve things.
The mediocre performance of American students on international tests seems to show that our schools are doing poorly. But students from middle-class homes who attend well-funded schools rank among the best in world on these tests, which means that teaching is not the problem. The problem is poverty. Our overall scores are unspectacular because so many American children live in poverty (23 percent, ranking us 34th out of 35 “economically advanced countries”).
Poverty means inadequate nutrition and health care, and little access to books, all associated with lower school achievement. Addressing those needs will increase achievement and better the lives of millions of children.
How can we pay for this? Reduce testing. The common core demands an astonishing increase in testing, far more than needed and far more than the already excessive amount required by No Child Left Behind.
No Child Left Behind requires tests in math and reading at the end of the school year in grades 3 to 8 and once in high school. The common core will test more subjects and more grade levels, and adds tests given during the year. There may also be pretests in the fall.
The cost will be enormous. New York City plans to spend over  half a billion dollars on technology in schools, primarily so that students can take the electronically delivered national tests.
Research shows that increasing testing does not increase achievement. A better investment is protecting children from the effects of poverty, in feeding the animal, not just weighing it.
Categories Common Core, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Poverty

What Is “Addition Through Subtraction”?

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2012 //
10

Critics of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have long warned that the federal government’s demand for ever higher test scores would lead to perverse consequences. There would be narrowing of the curriculum, teaching to the test, cheating, and gaming the system. All of these things have happened, but the advocates of high-stakes testing don’t listen and don’t care.

It isn’t always easy to explain what it means to “game the system.” Connecticut provides an excellent exemplar of what it means and how it is done.

Quite simply, there are districts that have figured out that the best way to raise test scores is to assign more children to the alternate assessment given to students with special needs. As the number of reassignments grows, the scores on the regular state tests rise.

And without any change in curriculum or instruction, the leadership can boast of getting great results. This is what has been called “addition by subtraction.”

It is also a good example of gaming the system.

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

Do Not Accept the New Normal

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2012 //
14

Since No Child Left Behind began its reign of error a decade ago, the American public has slowly but surely changed its understanding and expectations of schools.

We have come to think that every school must “make” every student proficient, and if it cannot, then the school is a “failing” school.

We have come to look on schools as “failing” if they enroll large numbers of students who don’t perform well on standardized tests, regardless of their personal circumstances, their language ability, or their disability.

We have come to believe that teachers alone can bring every student to high test scores. And if we don’t believe this is possible, we are accused of defending the status quo or not caring about students or not believing they can succeed.

In pursuit of impossible goals, goals that no nation in the world has reached, we have come to accept (with glee, if you are a corporate reformer, or with resignation, if you are informed by reality) that schools must close and staff must be fired en masse in pursuit of that evanescent goal of “turnaround” from failure to success.

And here is the latest small and barely noticed episode in the continuing assault on common sense and public education.

The Los Angeles Times reported that students and parents demonstrated to protest the planned layoff of at least of the staff at Manual Arts High School. This school has been run for four years by a private group called L.A.’s Promise.

It is no longer unusual to see students and parents protesting the mass dismissal of teachers, so they will be ignored. That’s the new normal.

What is odd here is that L.A.’s Promise laid off about 40% of the staff last year. 50% last year, 40% this year.

It seems that this organization will just keep firing teachers until they finally get a staff that knows how to raise test scores and graduation rates higher and higher.

Such punitive actions display a singular lack of capacity on the part of leadership to build and support a stable staff.

Such heavy-handed measures surely demoralize whoever is left.

We have become so accustomed to mass firings and school closings that we have lost our outrage, even our ability to care.

Another school reconstituted, another school closed, more teachers fired. Ho-hum.

That’s the new normal. That is what is called education reform today.

So normal are such crude and punitive measures that the events at Manual Arts High School didn’t even merit a real story in the Los Angeles Times. It was posted in a blog.

Destroying public schools is called reform. Mass firings of staff are called reform.

It’s the New Normal.

Don’t accept it. Don’t avert your eyes. It’s not supposed to be this way.

Schools need a stable staff. Schools need continuity. Schools need to be caring and supportive communities.

Schools need to be learning organizations, not a place with a turnstile for teachers, administrators and students.

Don’t lose your own values. What is happening today is wrong. It is not education reform. It is wrong.

It does not benefit children. It does not improve education. It is wrong.

Diane

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

Vermont Stands Up for Its Children

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2012 //
10

Vermont decided not to apply for a waiver from NCLB.

Not because it loves NCLB. No one does.

But because Vermont education officials had their own ideas about how to help their schools.

And they discovered that Arne Duncan’s offer to give them “flexibility” was phony.

He did not want to hear Vermont’s ideas. Contrary to his claims, the waivers do not offer flexibility.

What Arne Duncan wants states to do is to agree to his own demands, not to shape their own destiny.

He wants them to allow more privately managed charters. He wants them to evaluate teachers by student test scores. He wants them to adopt Common Core state standards.  He wants them to agree to threaten and close down schools with low test scores. He has a laundry list of what he wants them to do.

Of course, this is all very puzzling since none of Arne Duncan’s mandates have a solid basis in research or evidence. In that regard, they are not much different from NCLB. You might say they represent NCLB without the timetable.

Even more puzzling is the assumption that Arne Duncan and the U.S. Department of Education know how to reform the schools of the nation. It is not as if anyone would look at Arne Duncan’s Chicago as a model for the nation. That district is once again being “reformed,” this time by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

And from a strictly Constitutional point of view, the U.S. Department of Education has never been empowered to tell schools and school districts how to reform themselves.

Quite candidly, there is no one at the U.S. Department of Education who is competent to tell entire states how to reform their schools.

So, kudos to Vermont.

A state that said no to federal control, federal mandates, privatization, and other bad ideas.

As often, I add a footnote to the original post: Bruce Baker of Rutgers alerted me to a change in governance in Vermont. The legislature just passed a bill to have the state commissioner of education report to the governor. This opens the way for business community and privatizers to exert more influence. Privatizers like to eliminate input from parents and communities, making it easier for them to get what they want.

Vermonters: Don’t let it happen.

Stay outside the consensus.

Keep Vermont and Vermont parents and communities in charge of your schools.

Diane

Categories Duncan, Arne, Federal Waiver, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Vermont

BLOCK THAT EUPHEMISM!

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2012 //
4

I wonder why our policymakers in Washington, D.C., love euphemisms. Ten years ago, Congress passed No Child Left Behind, and by now, is there anyone in the United States who takes seriously the idea that “No Child” has been “Left Behind”? Since Congress can’t agree on how to change the law, maybe they could just rename it and call it “Many Children Left Behind” (MCLB) or “No Child Left Untested” (NCLU). When the name of a federal law is so clearly at odds with its actual results, either we must rename the law or declare it a failure or both. But, please, no euphemisms, no flowery predictions in the title of the legislation.

Then there is Race to the Top. No one has explained what it means to “race.” Does it mean that with more and more pressure on teachers, their students will get higher test scores? Surely, a “race to the top” has nothing to do with equality of educational opportunity. And what, exactly, is “the top”? Does that mean that if we just test everyone with greater frequency, then student scores will rise to the top of the world? Where is the evidence for that? Another deceptive euphemism.

The euphemisms that are most annoying, however, are “turnarounds” and “transformations.” When we think of a turnaround, we are likely to think of a charming little dance, perhaps one where we all hold hands and circle the Maypole, with rosebuds fluttering around the heads of the children. But “turnaround” means something dark and sinister, not a happy dance. It means that if you get the money, you must fire the principal, fire half or all of the staff, close the school, give it a new name. That’s harsh medicine, not a turnaround. Whether the new school will be better or worse than the old one is by no means clear. What is it about closing a school that promises that the achievement gap will close or that children who don’t read English will now learn English and speak it fluently? I don’t see the logic or the sense.

Honesty is the best policy. If the federal government really wants to fire the principals and teachers in the 5,000 schools with the lowest scores, why don’t they call it the Close Bad Schools policy? Or something that approximates the brutal reality? Why don’t they explain the mechanism by which mass firing leads to better education?

Just call it what it is.

Diane

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