Thursday, February 17, 2005

Readings for the 27th

Please follow the comments below, which will provide some food for thought for our upcoming meeting.

posted by adam at 11:34 AM

4 Comments:

Blogger adam said...

The Seven Deadly Absurdities Of No Child Left Behind
Submitted to Portside by Gerald W. Bracey

Gerald W. Bracey is an associate professor at George
Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia and an Associate of
the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation,
Ypsilanti, Michigan. His most recent book is Setting
the Record Straight: Responses to Misconceptions About
Public Education in the U. S.: Second Edition
(Heinemann, September 2004).

In her confirmation hearings, Secretary of Education,
Margaret Spellings expressed her desire to fix the No
Child Left Behind law, but also stated, 'We must stay
true to the sound principles of leaving no child
behind.' This will be difficult because the 'sound
principles' are nowhere to be found. Consider the
following seven deadly absurdities of the law
currently.

1. The No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) uses the phrase
'scientifically based research' 111 times and demands
such research from educational researchers, but no
scientifically based research-or any research--supports
the law's mandates. There is no research that supports
NCLB's contention that the way to improve schools is to
test every child every year and to fail schools and
districts that do no make the required Adequate Yearly
Progress (AYP). In fact, research argues against the
use of high-stakes testing as an instrument of school
reform.

2. NCLB lacks research support because NCLB depends
solely on punishment. As schools fail to make arbitrary
AYP the law imposes punitive, increasingly harsh
sanctions. The law is in the tradition of 'the beatings
will continue until morale improves.'

3. Even those who think punishment can motivate people
would never use it as NCLB does. It punishes the entire
school for the failures of the few, often the very few.
If a school's special education students fail to make
AYP, the whole school fails. If a school's English
language learners fail to make AYP the whole school
fails. If 95% of any group fails to show up on test
day, the whole school fails. NCLB requires schools to
report test score data by various student categories---
gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, etc. Most
schools have 37 such categories (California has 46).
Schools thus have 37 opportunities to fail, only one
way to succeed.

4. All students must be proficient in reading, math,
and science by 2014. In his 2003 presidential address
to the American Educational Research Association,
Robert Linn, projected it would take 61 years, 66
years, and 166 years, respectively, to get fourth-,
eighth-, and twelfth-graders to the proficient level in
math. Alas, Linn's projections are wildly optimistic
because he reported national data, not data
disaggregated by ethnicity. In the 2003 National
Assessment of Educational Progress, only 5 percent of
African-American eighth graders and 7 percent of
Hispanics were proficient in math. Only 37 percent of
whites, 43 percent of Asians, and 15 percent of Native
Americans reached this plateau. At least one author has
written that the 100% proficient requirement is so
irrational that it might be unconstitutional.

5. As a consequence of #3 and #4 above, California
projects that by the deadline year of 2014, NCLB will
label 99 percent of its schools 'failing.' California
students don't do all that well on tests, but Minnesota
is one of the nation's highest scoring states. In the
Third International Mathematics and Science Study, only
6 of the 41 participating countries outscored it in
mathematics and only one of 41 attained a higher
science score. Yet Minnesota projects that 2014 will
find 80 percent of its schools wanting. Most states
have been afraid to see what their projections look
like.

6. Any school that fails to make AYP for two
consecutive years must offer all students the option to
transfer to a 'successful' school. Thus, if a school's
special education students fail to make AYP one year
and its English language learners fail the next year,
the school must offer all students the 'choice option'
in spite of the fact that the school worked for the
other 36 student categories. In cities, the choice
option is a farce. This year, Chicago had 200,000
students eligible, but only 500 spaces for them. In
2003-2004, 8,000 New York City students chose to
transfer. After taking flak from principals whose
schools received these students, the city deliberately
flouted the law, permitting only 1,000 transfers. Thus
far, the Department of Education has not responded. It
has also happened that children leaving a 'failing'
school were actually enrolling in a lower scoring
'successful' school. If a school's special education
students or English Language Learner students fail to
make AYP, the school fails even if it is doing a
wonderful job with all remaining categories.

7. Schools alone cannot accomplish what NCLB requires.
This seventh absurdity is the big one. Many observers
have noted that American schools are always failing
because so much is expected of them. NCLB expects even
more-it expects schools, all by themselves, to close
the achievement gap between affluent and poor, majority
and minority. This is ridiculous. The gap appears
before school-one study found that the three-year-olds
of professional mothers used more words when
interacting with their mothers than mothers on welfare
used in interacting with their three-year-olds. That's
right, three year old kids in one group used more words
than adults in another group. After all, if one assumes
a six hour school day and a 180 day school years, then
between birth and age 18 children spend only 9 percent
of their lives in schools. Family and community factors
such as poverty affect achievement. Poor children enter
school well behind their middle class peers, and while
research finds they learn the same amount during the
school year, they lose that learning over the summer
and they fall farther and farther behind. Critics, of
course, blame the schools for what happens in the
months the schools are closed.

There are other absurdities--for instance, the
contention that students not 'proficient' are 'left
behind' presents a false dichotomy. If the threshold
for 'proficient' is, say, a test score of 80, then a
child who scores 79 is 'left behind'-but the reader can
no doubt get the picture, from just the seven
sillinesses above.

Some of us have always seen NCLB as yet another Bush
administration Orwellian Double Speak program, right up
there with Clear Skies, Clean Waters, and Healthy
Forests. It aims to increase the use of vouchers,
increase the privatization of public schools, transfer
large sums of public funds to the private section,
reduce the size of the public sector, and weaken or
destroy the teachers unions (two Democratic power
bases). It is certainly true that the primary
beneficiaries of the law to date are the testing
companies, the test preparation companies, and
companies that provide tutoring. In Virginia where I
live, supplemental educational services are being
provided by 34 companies based not only in Virginia,
but New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Florida, Arizona,
Colorado, North Carolina, Louisiana, California,
Massachusetts, Texas, and the District of Columbia. No
Child Left Behind is the educational equivalent of the
Iraq war. Bush now wants to extend it into the high
school grades, a process analogous to invading Iran.

11:37 AM  
Blogger adam said...

From Linette Lowe:

For interesting look at the priorities of the United States Government, http://www.ourfuture.org/docUploads/TomPaineEducationBudget.pdf.

11:43 AM  
Blogger Jon said...

Even state legislators offer suggestions for improving NCLB!

http://www.ncsl.org/programs/press/2005/pr050223.htm

When you arrive at the above link (The National Confernce of State Legislatures) the links on the right hand side of the page to navigate to an Executive Summary.

Enjoy!

7:53 PM  
Blogger Jon said...

Although not NCLB related...

The National Governors Association has begun a rather straightforward tout against High Schools…in general. One would hope they are ready to put their money where their mouth is...

http://www.nga.org/

4:00 PM  

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