Some Children Remain Behind; Not Every Child Is the Same March 30, 2007
Posted by hpiette in Classroom Reflections.add a comment
With all of the articles that have flooded my Google Reader account dealing with the controversial subject of the No Child Left Behind legislature, this one from the Washington Post offering almost a satiric perspective, interested me the most. Several who are for this legislature argue that those who oppose it are trying to shield our young minds from the reality of competition the world has to offer. But as explained by the author of this piece, the superintendent of Fairfax County, Virginia (which has a well testing district) does not consider this to be an issue. Rather he feels his duty as an educator is to stand up for what he believes is most important which does not include telling students above their shoulders “you must complete” this test. As future English instructors, I feel many of us can learn from his example though we may not be superintendents.
The federal approach to No Child Left Behind is what you might expect from an administration whose response to a failing strategy in Iraq is to throw good bodies after maimed ones. “We need to stay the course,” Raymond Simon, the U.S. deputy secretary of education, told The Washington Post’s Amit Paley. “The mission is doable, and we don’t need to back off that right now.”
Right now Jack Dale (the superintendent) is battling the U.S. Government with the support of many other districts, in order to at least change the part of the legislation that requires students born in a different country take the same annual test that everyone else does. Dale refuses to test these students because he understands the impossibility of them doing well. He agrees students from families which are not native speakers but who were born in this country should be tested but at a third grade level. The government’s response included removing 17 million dollars of funding from the district.
No Child Left Behind is built on a mirage. At some point that’s always just over the horizon, the law assumes, all children in the nation will miraculously read and compute at grade level, simply because they have been tested and tested and tested again. The theory is that somehow, when told the exact number of children who are lagging in achievement, teachers will agree to render the magic that they have thus far withheld and — poof! — those kids will become smart, cooperative and productive.
As we get closer to that utopia, it’s becoming ever more clear that Some Children Remain Behind and that, gadzooks, Not Every Child Is the Same. Oh, and this: Staking everything on a test doesn’t produce a flowering of inspired teaching, but rather what Dale, a former math teacher, calls an “obsessive focus on tests.”
But Dale, a former math teacher himself, is frustrated with almost the “robotic” answer he keeps getting in return. He explains many teachers are losing their ability to become those who inspire students but are obsessed with making sure students pass a test. One test which determines funding, jobs, reputation, etc. In other words, students are being plucked from the opportunity of having an education which is not solely based around mechanics but how to read and write in a more mature, cognitive way. In addition, those who cannot possibly perform as well are being singled completely out of an education at all. Like previously stated, the government expects children will suddenly over time reform to this regime like curriculum and become better students but I can imagine there are many actual teachers who would disagree.
No Child Left Behind is built on a lie. Not every kid will go to college, no matter what you do. So you can either lower the standards enough to pretend that everyone is succeeding, or give up on the lie.
But the feds won’t talk about that; they just repeat “Stay the course,” and any school system that balks is threatened with punishment.
“I’ve been warned that to speak frankly in this area is not wise personally or professionally,” Dale says. But he’s speaking anyway, because, as a good teacher, he knows that “we don’t succeed well when we go punitive. You need standards, but they should be aspirational; it needs to be about incentives, not punishment.”
Regardless, Jack Dale continues fighting for changes hoping to gain more flexibility for schools which are deemed “failures” according to standards. I agree with the author and this superintendent as it is expressed in the article that not every child is meant to go to college and you cannot force them. The best we can do as instructors is to try to inspire as many as we can to ensure well-developed minds who will want to go to college. As always one cannot get every student, but a good teacher will try. By lowering these standards, the government would be giving many more students the opportunity to succeed, rather than scaring them away totally.
In Fairfax’s ‘No Child’ Fight, A Refusal to Leave Children Behind
by Marc Fisher
The Washington Post
March 22, 2007
NCLB and High-Stakes Testing: What is truly at stake? March 21, 2007
Posted by hpiette in Classroom Reflections.add a comment
In an article I found with Education Week, two educators named David C. Berliner and Sharon L. Nichols are speaking out in a commentary written on the false validity of No Child Left Behind which is similar to many of the points that I have made with my blog entries. These two from Arizona State University and the University of Texas discuss how if Congress does not soon change the original format of this act that American schools will be more “at risk” than they ever have before.
In his 2007 State of the Union address, President Bush claimed success for the federal No Child Left Behind Act. “Students are performing better in reading and math, and minority students are closing the achievement gap,” he said, calling on Congress to reauthorize this “good law.” Apparently, the president sees in No Child Left Behind what he sees in Iraq: evidence that his programs are working. But, as with Iraq, a substantial body of evidence challenges his claim.
Within this commentary both authors talk about how this form of academic measurement is in fact damaging our children’s future because they agree that those who have created this legislature must have had absolutely no contact with students. The reason for this is that if they had they would recognize many different aspects that come into conducting a classroom such as different learning capabilities as well as those who are learning English as a second language or perhaps those who are from a poverty-stricken area in which education is not considered important because that is what students are taught through society.
We note in passing that only people who have no contact with children could write legislation demanding that every child reach a high level of performance in three subjects, thereby denying that individual differences exist. Only those same people could also believe that all children would reach high levels of proficiency at precisely the same rate of speed.
Validity problems in the testing of English-language learners and special education students also abound, but we limit our concerns in this essay to the No Child Left Behind law’s reliance on high-stakes testing. The stakes are high when students’ standardized-test performance results in grade retention or failure to graduate from high school. The stakes are high when teachers and administrators can lose their jobs or, conversely, receive large bonuses for student scores, or when humiliation or praise for teachers and schools occurs in the press as a result of test scores. This federal law requires such high-stakes testing in all states.
But as a result of this annual measurement of a student’s performance that determines where they will end up along with their teachers and the school in general, what we can see happening is what others worried about thirty years ago which was creating only a single test to measure total effectiveness which has now become an overwhelmingly apparent problem. In fact, judgment in addition to punishment is being placed in several district areas in which this test is supposed to improving proficiency? I agree with these authors by saying that it is difficult to believe that American schools are becoming more proficient by students and teachers being punished by circumstances that they cannot fully control.
We have documented hundreds of examples of the ways in which high-stakes testing corrupts American education in a new book, Collateral Damage. Using Campbell’s law as a framework, we found examples of administrators and teachers who have cheated on standardized tests. Educators, acting just like other humans do, manipulate the indicators used to judge their success or failure when their reputations, employment, or significant salary bonuses are related to those indicators.
The law makes all who engage in compliance activities traitors to their own profession. It forces education professionals to ignore the testing standards that they have worked so hard to develop.
We found examples of administrators who would falsify school test data or force low-scoring students out of school in their quest to avoid public humiliation. We documented the distortion of instructional values when teachers focused on “bubble” kids—those on the cusp of passing the test—at the expense of the education of very low or very high scorers.
In addition to trying to teach to a test in a diversified classroom setting with different learning capabilities, race, gender and socio-economic status, the worst possible scenario is occurring in which educators are actually forcing students who do not perform as well out of their school for fear of public humiliation. Forcing students to leave school, how does this help educational proficiency? Again, I agree with the authors because this form of measurement is corrupting education far more than actually being beneficial. Students are being tracked from education regardless of a meta-cognitive process. Similar to Dick Gregory’s “Shame” students are being deprived of their education, but in this case they’re being tracked because of a test. I think it is ironic that some educators and principals are cheating or kicking students out of school because they don’t want the humiliation. Isn’t that humiliating anyway? Overall, after looking at the same situations through my own writing I feel that NCLB does need to be changed to say the least because it is removing students from a well-rounded education that teaches them to love or at least appreciate writing and reading.
High-Stakes Testing Is Putting the Nation At Risk
