September 19, 2007
NCLB-It’s getting serious
Filed under: NCLB by Maisie @ 7:35 pm
Lest you think that the debate over reauthorizing No Child Left Behind is hard-to-follow/wonkish/a tempest-in-a-teapot or anything like that, note that Jonathan Kozol today entered his 75th day of a partial hunger strike over NCLB.
In protest over that law, Kozol, the widely-published, passionate advocate of educational equality, he has taken himself into the realm of serious danger.
He’s sick of NCLB. Mandating math and reading tests and punishing schools and students who do not meet their targets is “turning thousands of inner-city schools into Dickensian test-preparation factories,” Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page today quoted Kozol as saying. It has “dumbed down” school for poor, urban kids and created “a parallel curriculum that would be rejected out-of-hand” in the suburbs.
Kozol, in his clever way goading legislators on the race and class issues that underlie the debate, would have NCLB changed to permit students in low-performing inner city districts to transfer to schools in the suburbs. See how that plays in Great Neck or Larchmont.
Then there is this dangerous “teacher equalization” effort in the proposed reauthorization bill, which would attempt to force teachers to move to low-performing schools by shifting money around. As Kate Walsh wrote in the Education Gadfly last week, this will probably come down hardest on poor schools and districts:
Congress won’t dare tell states to take highly qualified teachers from the more-affluent districts and reassigning them to the city. Instead, they’re going after the handful of schools in these urban districts that are still able to attract middle class families, in no small part on the basis of their teachers’ quality.
Even in the “wealthiest” schools in urban areas like ours, or Philadelphia’s or Baltimore’s or Detroit’s where half or more of students are poor, this shuffling of teachers will have pernicious effects, she writes.
If teachers are shuffled from rather poor to very poor schools–nonsensical, illogical moves that will create anger and bitterness–what is the likelihood that any middle-class families will remain?
It doesn’t take a historian or a sociologist to recognize that the loss of the middle class in urban school districts has worsened the education of poor children. And it remains unclear how the “equitable distribution” of teachers within such districts is going to help them. More often than not, it will be the teacher who works in a school with a 60 percent poverty rate who must be moved to a school with a 90 percent poverty rate. Poor is poor, and doing the teacher shuffle isn’t going to stack up in kids’ favor.
Finally, the proposal on the table, the Miller-McKeon proposal to reauthorize and revamp NCLB, would introduce performance pay for teachers, inserting the giant federal nose into what should be a local discussion–each district’s negotiated teacher pay plans. It would also offer teacher bonuses based on student test scores. AFT and NEA are fighting this provision but it has powerful supporters.
So it’s not just an inside-the-Beltway kind of thing going on. NCLB’s reauthorization is drawing blood. To draw a little blood yourself, use this handy link right here.
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Maisie,
I fill in the cards, I’ve pushed the buttons for the faxes (though I need a fresh round, I’ll put it into my letter at school), but I have a question, a real question:
Why are we trying to amend this thing and not dump it? I don’t know a single teacher who supports it, and probably not any parents. (Do you have a different impression?)
Why not appeal to our members and our allies on one of the things that we could have nearly 100% agreement and try to get rid of this legislation and start fresh?
Jonathan
Comment by jd2718 — September 19, 2007 @ 9:06 pm
Jonathan,
Well, thanks for pushing the buttons and sending the faxes. I share your frustrations and I know a lot of educators do, but . . .
First, No Child Left Behind is really just the new name for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, whose Title I is the legislation that directs federal money to high-poverty schools. We have to have the law. We get about 10% of our annual schools budget from it.
Second, we have to sort the wheat from the chaff. NCLB imposes teaching and learning standards on schools. New York State had such standards before the law was enacted but many states did not. And there were some really dreadful schools out there, especially in the poorest states. That has really changed under the law.
Also, it imposes accountability. School privatization advocates claim the public schools are a monopoly that is impervious to consumer demand. Accountability is the mechanism by which public education is held to standards (warped as the mechanism may be at the moment).
We are disputing the way accountability is legislated but we aren’t disputing the need for it. This law also gives minority groups, be they racial, or by language or disability, the basic tools to demand delivery of standards-based education, For the sake of those groups if for nothing else the law needs to be in place.
What do you think? Is there another way to accomplish these basic goals? I’m listening.
Maisie
Comment by Maisie — September 20, 2007 @ 3:13 pm
You know, you are the first to ask me that. Thank you. And grrr. Not an easy question. And I’m no politician.
The testing mandates are horrible. In NY, we (standardized/state) tested way too much before NCLB. And now it’s nuts.
I teach math. I know that our state standards in mathematics are embarrassing. (I think that at one point NY State had the best math policies/curricula in the country). So let me question your assumption: New state standards in mathematics in NY hurt mathematics instruction in this state. Why should I believe that they helped elsewhere?
(It sounds rhetorical; it’s not. The follow up is: if they really have helped in some places, why are we looking at 50 sets of standards of varying quality, and not one good one. And if they don’t help in general, then, well…)
AYP was devised by people who knew just a little math. (like the school rating system that we are seeing in NYC. Dangerous to put spreadsheets and formulas in the hands of people who know how to push buttons but not what the buttons really mean. That’s why content and process, not just process, needs emphasis when we teach mathematics.)
Better accountability? Almost anything would be better. But I do not have specific proposals. Anything that makes sense to me would probably violate the idea that education is a local matter. But then again, federal funding does that too.
A dozen or so states have joined together to endorse a single curriculum for Algebra II/Trig, with “modules” built in for some variation, and, I believe, with a single culminating exam. This is an interesting start.
Finally, I firmly believe that discrimination on the basis of race dominates the educational landscape in this country, and that we must work and work, and keep working to remedy it. But I do not think that this legislation has helped (I don’t believe all of what I read on Schools Matter, but I believe some of it), and I do not believe this is the right place to address this very important issue.
Again, thank you for asking. It would be interesting to know what others thought.
Jonathan
Comment by jd2718 — September 21, 2007 @ 7:29 am
[...] when it leads some progressives to attack the likes of Kozol and the teachers’ unions. But Jonathan asks a fair question, one that comes up all the time among my colleagues. And his surprise at being [...]
Pingback by Three over coffee. « PREA Prez — September 22, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
[...] Education, Teachers Unions, UFT, United Federation of Teachers. trackback I have the start of an interesting discussion on Edwize about No Child Left Behind. Maisie makes the case that there is need for some of the provisions in [...]
Pingback by NCLB - revise or dump? « JD2718 — September 22, 2007 @ 1:53 pm
Jonathan,
If you tell me the state math tests have been dumbed down I’ll believe you. And that’s really bad. I’m for academic rigor no matter what. Let the chips fall where they may, if students are not taught to high standards then what’s the point? We’re going nowhere. You have to start from that.
That said, I don’t think standardized tests have to represent all that a student knows and can do. They should evaluate kids to a baseline of achievement. Their purpose is to ensure that kids are getting a sound basic education, not insist that they are expert in a million areas.
I am more familiar with reading and writing skills than math, and I thought the state tests weren’t bad. They sought to test a mix of skills and actually asked kids to read and think critically. I’m not in a position to evaluate the math tests.
Anyway, you ask some really tricky questions, and I think where your logic leads is where my thinking goes to: namely– and I don’t really like to say this and I’m speaking only for myself here– but, big breath, to national standards and a national curriculum. Yes, why should we have 50 varying versions of standards, some far more lenient than others? And isn’t there a body of knowledge kids must have to live in the world?
In reading instruction I’ve come to admire E.D. Hirsch’s argument that students need a basic “core knowledge” which gives them a foundation on which to build comprehension and understand literature, history and sociology. Not to teach it is to short-change students under the guise of political correctness or something. Without reference to a common body of knowledge, I don’t see how reading skills can progress from the decoding phase, nor can young people join debate or involve themselves in civic life.
But I also share your fear about federal interference and I think that the local-ness of education has many positives. So where does that leave me? I’m not sure I know. I’m wandering far afield here.
Back to NCLB. Yes, standards are essential. The current system of measurement of them is terrible. Some sort of growth model of measurement is the only was to make them fair, even though that model is complex and hard for Joe Citizen to understand. Still, that’s the logical direction. If the quality of the tests can be improved by some national panel, that would make the measurement process a lot better too.
The current accountability consequences are far too punitive. But to some degree I fault local educators for knuckling under to them. Why do we react in fear? Ed departments say their hands are tied. Principals are scared, teachers are scared. District people need to stand up on behalf of students to stop this foolish hysteria over testing. A little spine, please. Some push back, please.
And this is where the federal model completely reverses. The federal government can never mandate good education. It has to be done school by school, district by district, classroom by classroom. Educators have to lead. The feds? They play an oversight function, but they are not the educators. That’s our profession and life mission. If teachers think the country has gone berserk over testing then maybe we need to launch a national movement on behalf of sane and rational education standards, not just leave it to the feds, who will screw it up.
If you are still reading (I’m wound up here), one last thing. You say that NCLB has not succeeded on behalf of minority students. Yes. I cannot deny that. But is that a consequence of over-testing? No, I think it’s a legacy of racial discrimination, just as you say. That won’t turn around in a few years of a new education law. I think we have to hold steady on the subgroup testing provisions. They sometimes have quite uncomfortable consequences, but too bad. I cannot think of another way to make districts accountable for all children.
Let me know more about the math tests. How are they embarrassing? What should they ask students to do? Who should make them up and do you think ultimately there should be a national math test? I’d be curious to hear more about that.
Thanks for getting involved and giving me a chance to discuss this,
Maisie
Comment by Maisie — September 22, 2007 @ 6:00 pm
[...] discussions on Edwize about NCLB . . [...]
Pingback by BlogNetNews.com » New York » Edwize — September 23, 2007 @ 3:15 pm
Maisie,
we’ve touched a gazillion topics (I teach math, I can say “gazillion”), and I do want to return to many of them. But for now, I think the biggest is the legacy of anti-Black discrimination in education, and if/how NCLB or similar legislation can help.
How is NCLB’s subgroup data supposed to help? why hasn’t it? (and why has it had so many glitchy side-effects) and how would you picture the subgroup provisions of a revised NCLB helping?
I like what you say about educators leading. I am not trying to pass off responsibility on the Feds. But the question is what oversight by the Feds would have positive effects?
I am not all questions this evening. I think that school level is the wrong level to look. The samples are too small, the subgroups smaller, the possibility of noise in the data far too great. County? State? I’m not certain. But some of the “ugly anecdote-quality stories” have involved weirdness from one subgroup where the group really was too small. Going a little larger won’t be enough.
I know, I just touched one bit of one point/question. But it’s a start.
What do you think?
Jonathan
Comment by jd2718 — September 23, 2007 @ 7:10 pm
Hi again, Jonathan,
That’s an important point about school-level measurement. I agree that you get a lot of noise in the data in such small samples (and with so much attention being paid it makes it worse). Often when you know a school well and then hear that it’s on some state or NCLB “failing” list you see just how blunt or wrong a measuring instrument test scores can be.
However, the accountability has to go to the school level–otherwise a district could average its performance and appear to be doing well with all its schools when really a handful of the district’s schools were failing to educate kids at all.
NCLB allows a school not to count its minority students separately if there are fewer than 20 (I think) in that grade. The thinking behind it is that reporting scores for a very small subgroup (say, of the 3 black kids in a small school’s 4th grade) may violate the privacy of the children in that group. Their scores are counted in the overall grade or school results but not broken out separately. Again, though, that may skew results.
Bigger picture, though: The NAEP 4th and 8th grade reading and math assessments came out today. They are voluminous but the summaries are excellent. Go to http://nationsreportcard.gov. What they show is that black and Latino achievement has advanced with whites, and in some, not all, cases the performance gaps have narrowed (black-white 4th grade reading, black-white 8th grade math). This is evidence that the NCLB focus on subgroups has helped.
What more can be done? Well, just today I got a copy of Michael Rebell’s recommendations for reauthorizing NCLB. (He was lead lawyer on the CFE case and is now at Columbia Teachers College running a new campaign, the Campaign for Educational Equity.) I cannot give a link to this PDF though it might be available by googling the Campaign.
What he recommends is to focus on educational opportunity, not just attainment. In other words, the law should ensure that all students get the same chance to succeed: with truly qualified teachers, appropriate class sizes, adequate facilities, guidance services, summer and weekend opportunities, tutoring, libraries, labs, computers, safe schools, early childhood education, nutrition, medical and dental care, arts access.
Now that to me is a really interesting way to go at this. The call for such equity of opportunity is contained in the original bill’s statement of purpose as it turns out. But putting that in the forefront would shift the discussion and address the achievement of minorities in ways we haven’t done.
Rebell’s revisions would also require that states audit their resources, not just their test scores and ensure that schools have adquate capacity. Doesn’t this sound like a way to proceed?
Comment by Maisie — September 25, 2007 @ 2:43 pm
[...] the ‘old’ UFT position try this column by Randi from October 2007 or this discussion with Maisie on Edwize (skip the post, read the comments) from September [...]
Pingback by Dump NCLB « JD2718 — July 19, 2008 @ 11:10 am