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No Child Left Behind
4 March 2007It is difficult to find an educator who speaks well of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). It is distained with great vigor. Even though the hallmark of the left Senator Teddy attended the signing with President Bush (the younger) and was seen smiling. How often does the good Senator smile around Republicans?
But in these ~5 years the NCLB has fallen in popularity, the excuse among it’s early supporters who should have known better than to sign up with the Republicans is that the NCLB was never funded, fully. Like anything ever is funded, fully. But as always the truth is just below the surface. NCLB was and is a landmark bill with far reaching and profound effects.
The neat and parent friendly thing about NCLB was for the first time it gave parents the tools to compare student performance across towns. Prior to that school adminstrators could pick and choose what test they gave if they gave any. If a parent complained that Town A scored higher than Town B, the Super/BOE could say, well…..Town B subscribes to theory X on education whereas we subscribe to theory Y and consequencely we test differently and the test are different so comparison is foolish, and why don’t you leave the education stuff up to the professionals. CT was ahead of the curve with the Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMT).
But NCLB also gave parents a way out of bad schools, if a school repeatly fails the Federal Government can step in and take action. GASP, Accountability! Horrors.
Possible federal sanctions include: (1) closure and reconstitution as a public charter school, (2) replacement of most or all staff, (3) takeover by private management, (4) state takeover (if allowed by state law), or (5) some other fundamental reform.
From cga.ct.gov
Did you see #2! “replacement of most or all staff”? What could Senator Teddy been thinking! No wonder he looks so cross lately.
NCLB also implemented “Data Driven” decision making, requiring schools to collect and crunch a lot of data, now this truely has been a burden on the schools and the adminstrators, but it does give the Boards of Education something to sink their teeth into that is impartial and common to across the board in the state of Connecticut. This is a good thing.
So how does our State Government seek to address this issue of failing schools? From the Connecticut Senate Website, “Major Issues 2007″.
To address achievement deficits, the General Assembly may consider proposals to increase the number of spaces in school readiness programs for low-income children in inner cities, raise the quality of those programs, and provide more and better preschool facilities. Other likely proposals include increased financial aid to cities to support new teachers and financial incentives to both retain good teachers at, and attract highly qualified teachers to, schools in priority districts. The state may be asked to help pay for programs to extend the school day or year at failing schools. The General Assembly may also consider proposals to reduce the drop-out rate, improve student attendance, and reduce suspension and expulsion rates in order to close the achievement gap.
More money. This state is #3 in educational spending, and #1 in tax burden. Not much room left on the money side of things.
Frankly I think the quality of teachers and adminstrators is probably excellent. They maybe misguided on what more money can do, but I think they are very good people and well trained and care about their students deeply. But don’t get me started on tenure. Relieving a school district of a less than optimal teacher is difficult, this flow chart for New York is famous.
One of the “issues” about NCLB is that teachers/schools must teach the test. The CMT test. The CMT tests such mundane things as reading, writing and math. What’s not to love about that? And it scores the grades by % reaching proficient, or % passing minimum standards. The big impact on the classroom is that NCLB has forced the classroom to focus on reading, writing and math, other topics such as self esteem classes have had to be cut back. Self Esteem is not tested on the CMT, but rest easy, US students test very high on International Self Esteem evaluations and apparently it’s not related to achievement.
I am very leary of studies, actually I believe NONE OF THEM, studies can be dialed up depending on what organization is funding the study. No credibility left in studies. But I do believe that by and large American students do well on the International stage.
What is problematic is the chronic under-achievement of students in the urban areas. I don’t believe more money is the answer, we already spend vast amounts of money in our urban areas and under-achievement continues.
What works and does not work has been studied extensively it is the Holy Grail of education. And there is some evidence of what does. But that is a future post. Sorry for the teaser. But let me say this, after a certain level of funding has been achieved, and a certain teacher ratio has been attained, more of both does not improve results.
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