Always searching for inspiration…

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

By David C. Berliner & Sharon L. Nichols

Education Week

March 12, 2007

Complete Article