No Child Left Behind...My Ass!

[teverton1]

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. NCLB was very necessary in making people realize how bad things are.

It's far, far from perfect, but like your comic notes, there's a huge chasm between the standards of our teachers and schools and those of our states. There's an even greater chasm between our state standards and national standards/international benchmarks. That's been made abundantly clear by NAEP and PISA test scores. Glossing over these problems and allowing the status quo to continue for far too long has caused the problem.

I disagree with lack of nuance of NCLB - there should be growth model accountability systems in place to measure the value-added a teacher/school provides (ie. measuring how a teacher/school improves their students' achievement levels rather than the current system which ignores inputs and focuses solely on outputs.) I would expect this to be amended in the law's pending reauthorization. I also disagree with how states have improved their "standards" and assessments, whereas they lean far too heavily at just cramming more content into a student and testing their memorization skills rather than focusing more on their grasp of the content and ability to critically analyze and problem solve (this accounts for a lot of the difference between state assessments and the PISA exam). This is in part a function of funding, as extended response questions cost significantly more money, but it's also a function of expediency and face-saving. A state with lower standards and weak assessment can make itself look better than it is by reporting higher scores (case in point: Mississippi), although that has been exposed through discrepancies on NAEP testing.

[LWolf]

2. "Things" are worse under NCLB, if that's what you mean. nt

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

3. By what measure?

You can't even reasonably assess that much because we have little to no idea where things were before NCLB.

[MichiganVote]

4. However...the efforts to truly and objectively ascertain that 'where we are' in education

did not exist and will not exist because public education is a political football. Scientists don't design the clean, safe planet we should live on and educators free of the political world don't design education.

No one can agree what to measure, when and even why.

[LWolf]

5. Since NCLB doesn't measure where we are now,

the whole thing is irrelevant.

We've known for decades before the "standards and accountability" movement introduced high stakes standardized testing into the arena, first at the state level, and then at the federal with NCLB, what standardized tests are a valid measure of, and what they are not.

They are not a measure of a teacher's, school's, district's, or state's education system.

They ARE a measure of the student, of course. But WHAT about that student is measured?

The first, and strongest, correlation to standardized test scores, EVERY TIME, is parent SES.

We already know that the higher level of poverty and illiteracy in the student's home, the farther behind the student starts kindergarten, the less likely the student is to thrive intellectually, and the more likely the student is to drop out.

We knew that without all the massive investment in test scores.

NCLB doesn't address the source: poverty. It switches focus, and accountability, to the education system. Which, of course, has no control over the level of poverty in the community.

Not only that, but those standardized test scores are easily manipulated to show growth that isn't really happening. Any teacher who has had to sit through regular meetings discussing "data" (not all data, just standardized scores,) and how to achieve goals, (focus on the bubble students, for one,) knows that when threatened, districts take those scores seriously, and focus away from authentic learning, and towards making the numbers work. A narrowing of the curriculum, a drill and kill to pass the test, does not equal more learning, or more educated people coming out of school. Neither does "zero tolerance," used to "push out" many at risk students.

I can tell you that, in the two states, two districts, and 7 grade levels I've taught since high stakes testing began in the early 90s, at the state level where I taught, student motivation is down. Teacher motivation is down. Curiosity, love of learning, and excitement is down. Everything is now a chore to complete, a score to attain. Learning is not valued for its own sake. The shift in attitude I've seen among students and colleagues in the last 15 years is striking. And I've seen it in more than one district, state, and school. And heard it from states, teachers, and schools I haven't seen first hand.

Anecdotal on this post, but should anyone decide to do a controlled study, I'd bet a year's salary on the outcome.

[nyeducator]

6. NCLB

NCLB and the standardized testing mania has provided millions of dollars to educational testing companies. In schools Like New York City, tests change from year to year resulting in disruptions for students and lucrative contracts for testing companies. It's nepotism at its finest.
Perhaps the greatest example of this is found in the close friendship between The McGraw Hill family and the Bush family:
http://www.examiner.com/x-903-NY-Education-Examiner~y2008m10d5-Who-Really-Benefits-from-Standardized-Tests

[LWolf]

8. Yes.

I posted "Reading Between The Lines" on DU about 6 years ago.

It was a smaller board, but still nobody really wanted to take the time to look closely at education.

[davefromqueens]

7. NCLB must be abolished

gonzo, out the window.

[benld74]

9. NCLB was named something else UNDER Bush the Gov of Texas

It did not work then and STILL isn't working.

[endersdragon34]

10. But Kennedy wrote it for the national government...

Both parties need to accept the blame for this one I think :-/

[GoesTo11]

11. NFCLB