The Coming Fight Over No Child Left Behind
The New York Times reports today that states are gearing up for a fight over the renewal of the No Child Left Behind Act. The law, which tries to introduce accountability into schools through federally-mandated testing, has sparked opposition from those who oppose a federal role in education and those who think NCLB creates too much testing. What’s most interesting about this coming battle is that the positions the parties have taken are a great example of the kind of thinking that represented the late 20th century – and that kind of thinking isn’t good enough for the 21st century.
On the one hand are those liberals who think too much testing is bad. The broader philosophy underlying testing is the need for accountability – some metric to use to measure the success or failure of programs. As the Times story reports, teachers unions don’t like NCLB, and this might be because they’re afraid of legitimizing the principle of accountability in education. Accountability and evaluation could lead to differential pay for better and worse teachers or even to removing teacher tenure – and the unions fear both. The trouble with this position is that measuring performance is necessary. Everyone wants better public education, but the only way to know what works and what doesn’t is to evaluate; and one way to spark change is to hold people accountable for their actions.
On the other hand are the conservatives who think education should be controlled by the states and local government. The broader philosophy underlying this approach is a desire for a limited federal government and for local control over most issues. Communities are different, they argue, and localities know best what is needed to educate their children. Perhaps this argument was convincing in the 18th century when America was a nation of small farmers, or even in the 19th century, when most Americans never traveled too far. But in the 20th century America became the world’s most powerful nation. And since then, globalization has transformed the economy, the way we think about national security, and, yes, what we need from education. In this new global world, the federal government may need to take more of a role in education – jobs and threats require citizens who have greater knowledge and specific skills, and local communities might not be as good at identifying those trends.
So it sounds like NCLB could be the answer; after all, it is motivated by these sentiments:
Still, in an interview, Mr. Miller expressed impatience with lawmakers who, he said, failed to understand the law’s strategic importance to the nation’s future.
“You can get into a lot of petty politics, but there’s a mandate coming from across the country for us to improve this law,” Mr. Miller said. “There’s no other way for Congress to go. The C.E.O.s, the venture capitalists, all of them have commented on the need for America to improve its educational system. It’d be a major shock if we reneged on our federal leadership.”
But the problem is not that NCLB embodies the old conservative or the old liberal approach, but rather that it embodies a third approach – a distinctly minimalistic approach, something like what the third way ended up becoming. Instead of actually tackling a huge and complicated problem and developing a transformative solution, NCLB finds something that’s not too hard to think up, doesn’t require that much change, and is achievable without too much trouble. Of course, the consequence is that it probably won’t help too much.
Testing and withholding funds isn’t innovative enough to make American kids the best educated in the world. And NCLB doesn’t begin to address the bigger – often structural and social – factors that are hindering the education system. The problems with our education system transcend a solution of this narrow scope.
The fight ahead will, of course, be interesting and is, of course, important, but extensive debates over minimalistic education policies are not actually going to improve American education. What is needed is visionary thinking – a grand strategy for American education. Perhaps something similar to NCLB could be one component of that strategy. But it’s certainly not enough to fix American education. And we should remember that as this debate begins.
Excellent blog!
The problem with NCLB is it ignores the reality that all children are not equal in ability, desire, goals or aspirations.
Other nations put students on vocational tracks very early -- like age 12-13. It's an acknowledgement that every student is not going to be able to work calculus equations, and sending them down that road is wasted time and energy.
You can still make a good living in this country without a college degree -- if you're properly trained. For example, auto plants need skilled workers who can operate their high-tech robotic equipment, and they pay as much as 50K to start these jobs. You don't need a college degree for this work. Who wouldn't want to come right out of high school and jump into a job like this? You'd be up 200K over your college-bound friends in 4 years. Transportation and aviation sectors are so desperate for trained drivers, logistics experts, and pilots they're offering big signing bonuses.
Putting young students into a vocational track to enter one of these industries early is a win-win for the student and their employer who doesn't care what they score on a test. They want a skilled worker -- not Isaac Newton.
April 8, 2007 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nonsense.
NCLB is NOT achievable without too much trouble, certainly not in the places where it is most needed. Is punishing those educators in those places helping or hurting?
Let's say the target is 70% proficiency in something, whatever that means. Is a school that raised the score from 30% to 68% evidence of a failing school that needs to be shut down or one that is making great progress? Is its administration performing worse than a school whose score falls from 80% to 72%?
One problem with NCLB is that its yardsticks are too simple-minded.
Which brings us to this:
Why are we on TPM Cafe reading recycled Republican talking-point drivel? Always, Republicans blame the teachers. And even if some teachers ARE acting out of selfish motives, can't it also be true that the games that NCLB fosters, "teaching to the tests" and even cheating by administrators are real problems that must be addressed?
Why are the teachers' motives always fair game, but not the politicians?
Sure there are bad teachers, but if we are going to question their motivation, how about questioning the motives of our politicians and our business elites? Could it be that these elites have decided that society functions better if only a small slice of society is well-educated and that failing schools in certain areas are considered a desirable outcome? Seems to me that this possibility has to be seriously considered, since that is the direction we have actually moving in for many years.
April 8, 2007 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm somewhat sympathetic to this, were it not for the fact that these are the jobs that are being most frantically offshored to places where they don't have to pay 50K per year.
I would like to see greater acceptance of vocational outcomes - but we will never get it as long as we have an unashamedly selfish corporate elite running everything toward ever-expanding inequality. Proper valuation of vocational skills presupposes an egalitarianism in society that we are moving ever further away from.
April 8, 2007 11:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Could it be that these elites have decided that society functions better if only a small slice of society is well-educated"
Really, Tivo, this is Men In Black conspiracy-theory. I don't know anyone from any political POV who believes less educated students are good for the future of this country.
NCLB has poured millions into poor districts, and has actually been a boom cycle for teachers (and retired teachers) who have been paid a lot of extra money to tutor students.
Friendly advice -- you might want to edit that post, before too many people read it.
April 8, 2007 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Again.
Beware of people pushing metrics as a solution. Accountability sounds good, and may even be good, but if metrics are chosen on the basis of the ease of data acquisition, there is a strong possibility that the easily collected data don't measure the important things. To measure the important things you have to know what they are and you won't find this out if the people closest to the problems, whose input could be valuable, are eliminated from the discussion on the basis of their supposed self-interested bias.
April 8, 2007 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know of anyone from any political POV who would ADMIT that less educated students are good for the future of the country, but that doesn't rule out the possibility that that is in fact what they think.
What has been the fate of efforts to equalize funding among school districts as opposed to property tax funding, which insures the continued domination of current elites?
Don't all the elixirs of the Republican right lean in this direction? Charter schools may improve educational opportunity for a select few in certain areas but at the cost of leaving the public schools with the least educable and making the job of educating them that much more difficult. Closing poorly performing schools has frequently led to increased educational difficulties in the schools to which these students are forced to transfer. How does that help?
You chafe at being accused of bad faith. Okay, but why then do you accept the right-wing narrative of the last 30 or so years that routinely ascribes bad faith to teachers, many of whom entered the field out of altruistic motives?
Let's just put it this way: if the goal of our current educational policies WAS to produce a sliver of well-educated people and a mass of poorly-educated people, it could not have been better designed for that job.
April 8, 2007 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I dunno. I have to say that this passage to me reads like a dishonest and really cheap shot. It also reads like a blatant misrepresentation and simplification of complicated issues.
"there are those those Liberals"? That seems like a dodge. It's easy enough to assign a view to an undefined segment. For instance, I could as easily say that "there are those Conservatives who believe pedophilia should be legal..."
Feels a lot like a cheap shot, despite the qualifier that 'too much' is bad.
I don't know about that. Having been a teacher myself, I can tell you that students learn different things at different rates.
Testing is a fundamental of just about any principle or theory of modern education. At the end of the day, there has to be means of assessing performance.
The debate is not whether testing is good or bad. I think, unquestionably, everyone agrees that testing is good and necessary.
The debate is not whether 'too much' testing is bad. Obviously, 'too much' testing is by definition, bad. That doesn't deal with the issue of how we define 'too much.'
Rather, the principal debate is over what sorts of testing are most appropriate. How do we accurately measure whether children as a whole, or children on an individual basis are learnign. How do we measure what they're learning. And how do we use this information to improve education for individual students and the body as a whole.
In that respect, standardized testing can be superficially attractive. But what is it actually measuring? And in particular, how useful is standardized testing when applied to cultural issues, to social issues. Does it really help us identify and remedy problem areas for individual students?
These are real issues. For instance, its extremely well documented now that part of the differences between urban dwellers and rural dwellers, blacks and whites, in IQ tests for generations were inbuilt cultural biases. In its bluntest terms, there were many IQ questions that simply related to white culture not black culture, so whites did better.
By nature, standardized testing involves a potential series of inbuilt biases against some groups, and demonstrably has been biased against blacks, hispanics, immigrants, etc. Is it possible to craft a standardized test so generic it has no measurable cultural bias? Would such a product do anything useful?
My father had a grade three education. In part, this was because the education system of his day was designed to flush people out. Standardized tests used back then had a very good record for winnowing people out and disposing of them.
In my youth, less than 70% of students actually finished high school. Is this a good thing. Can we as a society properly afford to, or justify simply 'giving up' on large segments of the population? Or do we commit ourselves to find better ways to teach them, and teach them to the best of their ability to learn.
It would be nice to simply write off people. But does that work? If a kid drops out of high school, is he human garbage, or is it the educational system that has failed him.
Again, I had a very viscerally negative reaction to this, because it seemed to claim that teachers were sacrificing students for their own creature comforts.
Of course, note the weasel wording "might be because" and "could lead to". It strikes me that this is cover your ass language, the same as 'too much'.
These are words and phrases that the readers eye skips over in absorbing the gist, but it leaves the writer an 'out' to claim 'well, I never actually said that, if you read what I wrote carefully...' then in fact, it is not offensive, in part for saying nothing much. But the innuendo remains, a poisonous sting for which the author takes no responsibility.
I dunno, is the writer actually being dishonest, or is it simply a matter of a punctilious style alternately cautious and inflammatory. I make no judgement, but I would caution readers to watch out for this kind of thing.
But again, I feel forced to respond to the innuendo of the passage. In part, the innuendo is so strong because no other alternatives are suggested. The 'might' and 'could be' do not really temper the clause because only the single option is presented.
There's no suggestion that it is even possible that teachers might have principled objections, or that the chain of cause and effect might not be justified.
For instance, I have a friend, one of the most decent and compassionate people I know. He's intelligent and thoughtful, he's got a Masters degree from England. He's a published novelist. He is an exemplary teacher and an exemplary human being.
And he teaches in an inner city New York school which is filled with disaffected immigrant youth whose parents are working. Compare his results as a teacher to some inept jerk who is teaching at an upper class private school... And how do you think the two of them will stack up?
So what is suggested? Pay on the basis of performance results without attention to the endless intervening factors? Well, I imagine that upper and middle class schools and school teachers will rake in the bucks... And schools and teachers in working class or poor districts, regardless of innate talent or skill, will get shafted. Keep that up for a while, and you'll turn large parts of the public school system into a hellhole.
There are potentially real policy consequences and real issues to these policies, how they might be implemented, how they might be misused. None of this is alluded to. Rather its all about 'some liberals' sacrificing kids for entitlements.
In fact, despite the 'might' and 'could be', its clear that the author presents no alternatives because, despite his waffling, this is what he seems to believe. Consider his concluding statement of the passage:
It's hard to read that as anything but an endorsement of the view that teachers are lazy fops working to avoid accountability and holding on to their perks.
In which case, I suppose I'm free to take offense.
I suppose I should disclose that I've taught school myself. I've also in my prior and subsequent careers reported on school issues, and represented both teachers and school boards. So perhaps this is why I take such offence at reasonable views so cavalierly misrepresented.
I think that the No Child Left Behind Act is a classic case of unfunded mandates and the wholesale destruction they wreak. Were the act to be funded properly, the situation would not be nearly so bad. Worse, while the principles found in the act were laudatory, there was ample potential for misuse and misapplication in the policies that followed therefrom, and that potential was inevitably realized.
I agree with Ganesh Sitaraman that education is a major topic whose problems are greater than a narrow scope. But it strikes me that Sitaraman's perspective itself is narrow.
April 8, 2007 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Like Valdron, I thought the post was basically dishonest. You can see it coming with the start about 20th-century thinking. Can we eradicate that cliche from journalism? It's not as if the dawn of the millenium had rendered obsolete either political principles, such as justice, or the familiar facts on the ground, such as failing inner city schools, racism, and inequality. It's not as if there's been a sea change in politics or philosophy. That's just a cliche used to discount liberalism and cover the DLC's butt or Bush's, as with "everything's changed after 9/11."
Next come the mysterious liberals opposed to testing, another bogus bit of rhetoric, the "those who" style. Valdron's discussed that (and I sure took enough tests as a kid, and thankfully did ok). After that come the conservatives favoring state and local initiatives, but that's just a cover line for real conservatives who just don't like social spending, period, and are convinced that testing is going to lead to free-market solutions. And we already know the problems with imposing free markets on public schools.
Forget it. There is no magic teaching strategy that competition will find. There is no point in withholding funding from schools that are failing because they're underfunded. There is no point in telling parents which public schools stink, because they know, and the white middle class knows enough to have given up on them and rigged the funding system against them.
Try reading real liberal critiques like Kozol's. And then try to find real solutions, even if they take money and social change. I'd respect a poster more if it did involved more than political cliches instead.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
April 8, 2007 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I dunno. I don't know how American school systems do it. But up here in Canada, we generally enforce a uniform curriculum in elementary levels intended to provide for a basic standard of education. A relatively uniform curriculum is employed in junior high school.
Only in high school, ages 14 to 17, does the curriculum begin to differentiate between academic tracks and different forms of vocational tracks. Even there, the first year of high school is pretty uniform, with the increasing diversity and choices aimed at helping students find and to some extent choose their areas of aptitude.
However, I don't necessarily believe that schools should be separating children out at ages as early as 12 or 13. That's pretty young to start making decisions about someone's life, particularly when their own abilities and levels of committment have not matured. The fast starter who peters out, the late bloomer, both are very well known. Motivation seems to be one of the predictors of performance and motivation can come along or fade out at any point.
Flowing students into separate tracks is a risky propositon. Yes, many students will never get the hang of calculus, some will not find an interest in English literature. Some will not have either the ability nor the interest to pursue different forms of higher education.
But it strikes me that the risk is class selection. Ever notice how the rich and upper classes children seldom wind up being auto-mechanics or roofers? Ever notice how large numbers of capable, even brilliant, poor or working class kids get shunted out of the system, or get streamed into being menials?
All children are not equal in ability, desires, goals or aspirations. Fine.
But I think that the system is obliged to offer each of them the best chance at mazimizing those abilities, desires, goals and aspirations... instead of simply shuffling kids off based on what we think is best for them.
April 8, 2007 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 8, 2007 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Too bad elitists like you weren't put in the vocational track when there was still time.
April 8, 2007 12:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
NCLB tests measure a student's proficency in various subjects. They do not measure the competency or incompetency of his teacher. If their purpose, therefore, is to test the teacher, they're not only useless but what they actually indicate will never be dealt with.
It has been suggested that the purpose behind NCLB is the drive to take education out of the public sector and hand it to the private sector. Think vouchers which have been a cause celebre of the right-wing for years which has never recovered from school desegregation and which holds that public school teachers are all indoctrinators of left-wing principles. (The magic surrounding this thinking is unexplainable.)
So, low test scores indicate bad teachers indicate a failed public school system indicate privatize it and all will be well. Were it that simple.
April 8, 2007 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
NCLB has been a proven failure. Time to pull the plug. Why did it fail?
(1) The feds aren't the real source of education funding, so their big stick is a twig.
(2) The whole business of education testing is misconstrued. Closed ended tests are a poor design for the type of skills students need to learn, while it is essentially impossible to get reliable scoring of open ended tests. Timing is a device for the convenience of the test giver, not for determining what the respondent knows or can do.
(3) Even so, the Bush administration has been evading its own requirements.
April 8, 2007 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
So your personal friend is without fault and should be given a pass even though he can’t manage to teach his students to read and those teaching in upper class private schools are “inept jerks”.
Sounds like the language of a bigot to me and points to the need for objective standards
April 8, 2007 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Like Valderon said, I take offense at the suggestion that teachers are irresponsible flops. I am incensed that the administration which feels indignant at teh very notion of accountability, should seek accountability from honorable professionals such as teachers from across the nation.
Valderon's post was from a teacher's perspective. Mine is from the parents perspective. I noted in my earlier posting regarding my daughter's school. 5 years ago, this school was almost written off. But parents, local community reps brought it back together. Our school is a success story denied to millions of schools across the country. Because parents decided that a failed policy doenst have to shut our school down! If it was upto the NCLB our school would be closed now and that despite the parents' "choice" of having that school. So really, the NCLB is a slap to teachers, school administrators and parents alike, but to teh students it is really injustice.
April 8, 2007 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I only found the phrase "inept jerks" in your post. Perhaps you are the bigot.
April 8, 2007 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Compare his results as a teacher to some inept jerk who is teaching at an upper class private school... And how do you think the two of them will stack up?
April 8, 2007 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Phelicity -
You have a good point there - Look at
No Bush Left Behind"
for those still under the impression that millions have poured into poor districts. This it the first time I am linking another website - in case it doesnt work - here it is: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_42/b4005059.htm
April 8, 2007 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
So far you have demonstrated that you don't know how to quote. As I wasn't interested in reading the whole of that post I used a search device to look for your quote, it wasn't there.
It has also been demonstrated in various studies that *value added* comes higher at colleges that admit students who NEED an education, not those who are already halfway through with AP credits. I imagine that this is true of high schools as well. Consequently, your first argument seems a little weak.
April 8, 2007 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good post, Valdron.
And by the way, I agree even though I am not now and never have been a teacher, so even if they question your bona fides, they can't question mine. Teachers' unions are not the only opponents of over-application of standardized testing.
What gets my goat in Mr. Sitaraman's post is that he calls his warmed over and poorly-thought out prescriptions as some kind of "new thinking" even though they implicitly accept without thought one of the Republicans' most prevalent talking points - the culpability of teachers' unions for all the problems of American education.
April 8, 2007 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
The purpose of NCLB was to get rid of the teacher's unions. It's that simple. Goals were established which have no bearing on actual conditions and then when they aren't met the schools and the teachers get blamed for the failure.
The issue of whether measures should be set at the federal, state or local level is just a distraction. NY has had state-wide requirements (the Regents exams) for decades, this hasn't had any effect on resolving the problems of inner city and immigrant students.
Schools can't fix the problems of society. What we are seeing is yet another attempt to run the country from the top down by autocrats. It is part of same mindset which has given us the GWOT, infringements of civil liberties, torture, secret prisons and government sponsored (religiously inspired) morality.
If you want a better educated populace put the money into schools and poverty abatement instead of militarism.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
April 8, 2007 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here is his link. Well, I thought I was going to post it but my browser isn't showing the post link button... If you use the link he included in the text, you have to remove the blank space.
Anyway, this is the well known story of Neil Bush's crappy education program that he uses to enrich himself on NCLB money.
April 8, 2007 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
You really owe it to others to read their posts before commenting on them, even if they are long and boring.
April 8, 2007 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're being intentionally obtuse.
His point was obviously that a measuring stick that attempts to measure results from a teacher in an underfunded inner-city school against those from a wealthy suburban schools are comparing apples to oranges. And that even an "inept jerk" teaching in the latter might outpoint a good teacher in the former.
And if you're truly didn't understand that that was his point, you are an inept jerk.
April 8, 2007 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was commenting on your post, which I did read.
April 8, 2007 1:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
But you refered to the parent which you had not read and I busted you. Just be more careful in the future and all is forgiven.
April 8, 2007 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good 4 America:
While I am more in agreement with you than with Brook Datsaki on educational issues, and think that his other replies to me prove that he's in fact, a self-important twit, I'm not sure what your post adds to the discussion.
I think the decline of egalitarianism in America to the point where a vocational job is no longer considered an honorable profession is a big problem. Sure, most people would like to be, or at least have their children be, in the elite, but it's by definition impossible.
As I indicated in my reply - we will never get to the point where these professions are given their due respect as long as the elites are growing wealthy from shoveling the jobs out of the country.
April 8, 2007 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Valderon was giving an example of the way NCLB is ineffective - not asking for a pass or fail for his friend or the "inept jerks" who crowd the upper class private schools, but rather to make a point by comparison using his personal knowledge.
This by no means suggests that he is a bigot!
April 8, 2007 1:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
indianleftie:
Your link was good enough. It almost worked.
Which brings up a question for the WebMaster: what happened to easy-format mode or whatever it was called that enabled much easier blockquoting and link insertion than is available now? Has the easy-format mode been removed from TPMCafe comments? I found it to be useful and work pretty well.
April 8, 2007 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here is another one from CorpWatch showing corporate lobbying at its best!
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11543
NCLB has never been about the kids or the teachers - it is about sales and making money.
Incidentally, my daughter uses the Open Court materials the CorpWatch talks about - she is at a much higher reading level than what the Open Court uses. Fortunately, the school only uses it to test whether the students are at par with the Iowa testing and dont spend too much time on it.
April 8, 2007 1:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the choice of language by Valdron leaves little doubt of his bigotry.
That said, any testing methodology would of course not measure absolutes, but would be designed to measure relative performance based on the raw material that a school/teacher had do work with. All but the most obtuse understand this.
April 8, 2007 1:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
If I referred to some "black welfare mother" in the inner city, you would call me a bigot. By the same rules, I get to call someone who refers to “inept jerks” in private schools a bigot.
April 8, 2007 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I seem to remember one of the Republican mantras not so long ago, a babble about "unfunded mandates" when the Dems held Congress. Now after 6 years of Bush and a Repug Congress the states are screaming No Child Left Behind is an UNFUNDED MANDATE! (underfunded)
April 8, 2007 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
But I did, specifically, search the parent for your quote, which wasn't there. That is because your quote included a nonexistent "s" in "jerks." So, you didn't really bust me. I waive my claim that you qualify as the bigot, it does seem the parent is at fault. Nevertheless, there are reasons for grammatical rules, however obscure.
April 8, 2007 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, but you are ill-informed.
I even know a teacher in a Chicago high school that has many special programs for children with learning disabilities, and therefore attracts many such students. No allowance for this is made in assessing this school's performance on standardized tests, so the school is behind the eight-ball right from the start.
You see, according to Republican educational theory, "allowing for" differences in the "raw material" a school/teacher has to work with is the "liberal bigotry of low expectations", something NCLB was deliberately designed to avoid.
And no, I see no bigotry in Valdron's remarks. He was saying that even an "inept jerk" teaching in the wealthy areas might rate above a good teacher in the "inner city" using these yardsticks. He was not calling all teaches in the wealthy suburbs "inept jerks". That might be a form of bigotry, but that's not what he said.
April 8, 2007 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink