Duncan pledges ‘No Child’ relief for states

[alp227]

Source: The Washington Post

If Congress fails to act on President Obama’s call to rewrite the No Child Left Behind law by the start of next school year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said he will take steps to ease some of its most punitive provisions for states that are making strides in improving schools.

“We are hearing a tremendous amount of frustration across the country,” Duncan said in a conference call Friday with reporters. “We are not going to sit back here and do nothing.” He spoke on the condition that his remarks would not be made public until Sunday.

Many teachers and state leaders have long protested that the 2002 law is too punitive, too strict and fundamentally unrealistic. The law sets a goal for all students to show proficiency in reading and math by 2014.

Duncan predicted in March that by next year, the vast majority of public schools would miss their ever-increasing target pass rates on standardized tests in those subjects. Schools that fall short are labeled as failing to make “adequate” progress and face possible sanctions, such as requirements to offer tutoring or allow students to transfer. In the worst cases, they may face mandatory administrative overhauls.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/duncan-pledges-no-child-relief-for-states/2011/06/10/AGOrJ2QH_story.html

[midnight]

1. I love how all the emphasis is on test scores that have been

shown to have been manipulated so as to promote the New York educator into the lime light and pass these horrible educationally policies... That continue to leave our children behind and the test makers, and those that score them- the winners...

[Starry Messenger]

2. The punitive policies should have been "eased" out of Education 2 years ago.

[Igel]

4. Before that.

If you implement the "right" policies for the initial teaching of a group of kindergarten kids and by 6th grade they're below standards it's a fairly sure bet that they'll be below standards in 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grades.

If you respond that all that's needed are the right policies to uplift and remediate the not-so-good students in 6th grade, after you've implemented the "right" policies those 8th graders that are below standards should be up to snuff by the time they're seniors or juniors.

If they're not, you know that the policies are wrong. It doesn't take a decade to figure this out: You know about remediation strategies within 3 years and about initial teaching strategies (if they're different from remediation) in 6 or 7.

The problem is that you'll *never* get 100%. This is confusing expectations based in hope with expectations based in reality. The only way to get 100% compliance (apart from lowering standards) is to put borderline kids in the "spec ed" category, to find some way of dealing with LEPs, and those kids who are trained to be helpless or who just don't care need to be channeled elsewhere in the ed system or removed from the ed system. Nobody wants to do it, even though in schools that are improving the number of LEPs and spec ed kids tends to soar, the number of transfers out and the number of drop outs similarly increase.

This was obvious when * and Kennedy were pushing NCLB back in the early 2000s. It was obvious since then, too. Until politicians and advocates accept that one should have hope-based expectations in teaching but reality-based expectations in evaluating the results of the teaching it'll go nowhere. If you get a 5% improvement in scores it's a lot--many "best practices" are good if you get far less improvement over baseline. NCLB wanted a 40% improvement, ed theorists promised that they were 100% sure that they knew exactly how to teach teachers to teach. The theorists then decided to blame everybody but themselves and the students--themselves because they can't possibly be wrong, the very idea is ludicrous; the students, because no victim can ever bear any responsibility for their own problems.

[Plucketeer]

3. I heard that Engineer Arne commented

we were watching as a colossal train wreck was playing out. HAH! Maybe so. And there's Engineer Arne - no emotion whatsoever on his face - hands on the brake lever as the Education Express races towards it's doom!

[yurbud]

5. if there is money for mandatory tutors, that's great.