Reality Check: NCLB is a Fraud
One of the efforts over the past decade or so has been to blame the educational establishment (that is the public educational establishment) with the lackluster attainments of poor and minority students.
To cement this theme in the mind of the public, which likes public education, it was necessary to come up with some "proof" of this failure. When bogus books and articles didn't work the right came up with the federal "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) law. The key aspect of this law is that it imposes rigid testing requirements on schools. Those that don't show adequate "progress" are subject to various punishments. The thesis being that if the students aren't doing well enough it is the teachers or administrators who are at fault. A corollary is that the teachers are especially at fault because their strong unions are preventing progress and defending weak teachers.
Those who drew up the law must have been those who had failed math while they themselves were in school. Showing improvement every year is a mathematical impossibility. At some point you reach a limit. Well, the law makers aren't really that stupid. They designed a bill which will force schools to fail. Then can then use this failure to bolster their argument that eliminating unions and providing government money to support private (read parochial) education is a better path.
Arguments about the mathematical flaws, the distortions in the syllabus when it is necessary to "teach to the test" and the examples of states offering softball tests haven't derailed the program. There is a new report out which may help in the effort, however.
So, here are some actual findings from some real studies. The report is the work of the Educational Testing Service which administers the SAT and other tests. They find that the home environment is the most important factor in contributing to the success of students in school. They used several markers to determine this environment. Here are the bullet points from their press release:
* Thirty-two percent of U.S. children live in single-parent homes, up from 23% in 1980.
* Thirty-three percent of children live in families in which no parent has a full-time, year-round job.
* By age 4, children of professional families hear 35 million more words than children of parents on welfare.
* Half of the nation’s two-year-olds are in some kind of regular day care. Seventy-five percent are in center-based day care rated of medium- or low-quality.
* A comparison of eighth-graders in 45 countries found that U.S. students spend less time reading books for enjoyment - and more time watching television and videos - than students in many other countries.
In other words, a two parent home, good child care, adequate family income and less TV watching lead to better performance in school. The other side of the coin is that what happens in school has little effect if the home environment is deficient. This has implications for all those who continually support educational reform fads. It's not how reading is taught that matters, it's rather does the student come from a home where reading is important? It not new math or rote tables that matters, it's does the student come from a home where parents help with homework?
Schools cannot fix the problems in society. Admitting this would then require that government fix the problems in society. How would they do this: poverty elimination, higher wages for those at the bottom, better health care services and child care, and paid maternal leave. But this is anathema to the libertarian/conservative dogma that everyone is on their own. If you fail, it's your fault.
The full report is on the ETS web site .
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Comments :
Some disagreements
It was liberals who have led the way in pointing out the achievement gap, since back to Kozol and before, and demanding that it be addressed. NCLB is not a perfect method of tackling student achievement, but it was good enough that it got overwhelming Democratic support in both the House
(197-10) and the Senate 
(47-2). The primary reason IMO to like NCLB is that it mandates reporting within sub-categories, so if schools are failing a particular type of student that will become apparent and can be addressed.
The thesis being that if the students aren't doing well enough it is the teachers or administrators who are at fault.
Well, yes, of course. The alternative is that students are at fault -- find me a teacher who believes that his/her students are to blame for poor performance on a test and I'll find you a crappy teacher.
Showing improvement every year is a mathematical impossibility. At some point you reach a limit.
Not so, as the goal is fixed: proficiency. States have until 2014 to get there. Until then schools must make incremental progress towards that goal, but there are no consequences unless a school fails AYP for two consecutive years, and then the response is stepped up gradually over five years.
The report is the work of the Educational Testing Service which administers the SAT and other tests. They find that the home environment is the most important factor in contributing to the success of students in school.
Of course they do -- it's the ETS! They have a massive stake in presenting the SAT and their other tests as genuine measures of student knowledge, rather than as highly coachable tests that discriminate against poorer students who do not pay for test-prep courses or materials. This doesn't mean one should dismiss their study offhand, of course, but some caution is warranted.
In other words, a two parent home, good child care, adequate family income and less TV watching lead to better performance in school.
Certainly. The home environment has a large influence, but again the NCLB attempts to normalize out societal effects by focusing on improvement.
This has implications for all those who continually support educational reform fads.
Perhaps, but NCLB doesn't institutionalize education fads, it measures outcomes.
It's not how reading is taught that matters, it's rather does the student come from a home where reading is important? It not new math or rote tables that matters, it's does the student come from a home where parents help with homework?
This, however, is much too strong a conclusion. While coming from a home where reading is important certainly helps a student, how reading is taught absolutely matters -- with effective instruction, poor readers will become good readers and good readers will become excellent readers, while with ineffective instruction students will not improve at the pace of their peers.
Schools cannot fix the problems in society. Admitting this would then require that government fix the problems in society.
This is probably a debate for another day -- problems such as poverty certainly require extraordinary effort (although I suspect libertarians and conservatives will have different ideas from liberals as to what form of effort is likely to be effective). Any systematic increase in student comprehension from poverty abatement would be wonderful, of course, but it's hardly the primary reason to combat poverty.
If you fail, it's your fault.
That's not the philosophy behind NCLB, which is instead that if you fail, your school will be held accountable. Maybe that's why so many conservatives and libertarians can't stand NCLB.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
I do agree that there are some problems with NCLB
Testing shouldn't be the focus of school. Tests need to adequately reflect what students learned, rather than their test-taking skills. NCLB needs to be sufficiently funded by the federal government. I think many liberals who were initially pleased have been disappointed by how NCLB has worked out in practice. Hopefully we can learn from both the strengths and weaknesses of NCLB.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Citations?
Do you have any personal pedagogical experience (aside from being a student)? Have you ever taught in public schools? Have you ever taught in wealthy suburban schools and then in inner city ones?
Your claim that it is the teacher's fault if kids do poorly is exactly what the report disproves. Your criticism of the ETS is also backwards. What their study shows is that testing is irrelevant, outcomes can be predicted to high degree just by knowing the demographic characteristics of the student body.
Tell me how blaming the teachers is going to improve things. Are we going to suddenly get a better class of teachers? How would we do this? Is their education so inadequate that a new course of study will improve things? Perhaps you think that paying them more will attract a "better" quality of teacher. If this is so, exactly what qualities would these teachers have that is now lacking?
There have been enough variations on pedagogy over the past several centuries that everything you can think of has already been tried. If any one of them was obviously superior to the others everybody would know about it and it would be in widespread use.
Where is the data to back up your assertions, you apparently wish to dismiss the results of an actual study. Do you have anything better to offer?
--- Policies not Politics
Citations to what point?
Your claim that it is the teacher's fault if kids do poorly is exactly what the report disproves.
Teachers are responsible for improvement, the report is focused on factors that impact cross-group comparisons.
Is their education so inadequate that a new course of study will improve things? Perhaps you think that paying them more will attract a "better" quality of teacher. If this is so, exactly what qualities would these teachers have that is now lacking?
Often it is, yes. Of course paying them more would attract better teachers -- better meaning with a more comprehensive understanding of the subject matter they teach.
There have been enough variations on pedagogy over the past several centuries that everything you can think of has already been tried. If any one of them was obviously superior to the others everybody would know about it and it would be in widespread use.
This unfortunately does not necessarily hold true within education (see, e.g., whole language versus phonics), but regardless I'm unclear as to what point you're trying to make here -- do you think I support education fads? I'm simply stating that it *does* matter how reading and math are taught. I don't think you could find many teachers who would agree that the method of teaching is irrelevant as to students' comprehension.
you apparently wish to dismiss the results of an actual study
Mostly I wish to contest your application of the results of that study to NCLB. I also wish to note that ETS is not an unbiased observer when it comes to evaluating what influences students' scores on standardized tests; you can certainly take that for what it's worth to you.
Do you have any personal pedagogical experience (aside from being a student)? Have you ever taught in public schools? Have you ever taught in wealthy suburban schools and then in inner city ones?
An irrelevant question, but I'll answer anyway. Yes, I took classes in college in how to teach math and science, then I taught math/science in an alternative school for a short while (the school closed due to funding problems). I've also worked for a test-prep company tutoring for the SAT and other standardized tests.
What's your experience with NCLB and education in general?
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
NCLB
Did you read the NCLB law? I don't know what you think "improvement' means. The test are administered at certain grade levels each year. That means that this year's fourth grader are compared to last years. There is no measure of how well individual students "improve".
So if you get a consistent set of kids coming into the system who are poorly performing then expecting this batch to do better in four years than the previous group did meaningless.
The NCLB tracks school "improvment" not student improvement. Don't you think if the aim was to improve student achievement that this is what would be tracked?
Let's take a simple example, which occurs all the time. A kid comes into the school in the third grade from a non-English speaking country. He gets tested in the fourth grade. His performance is "deficient". Next year a different student comes in at the third grade and is tested a year latter, he is also equally deficient. What does this prove except that it take more than one year for a student to learn English?
What could the school do to make the progress better?
I'll say it again, you don't have to believe it if you don't wish to, but NCLB was designed to discredit public education. I suggest you speak to some actual teachers about what has happened to education since NCLB. You will find that they all hate it. They have to teach to the test, optional subjects have been dropped so that more time can be devoted to test prep and the kids are unhappy that they are under so much pressure to perform well on tests.
Programs like art, music and even history are being shortchanged because they aren't part of the evaluation. What's tested is math and reading. Everything else is being sacrificed.
I still don't see any citations for your statements.
--- Policies not Politics
Well
I don't know what you think "improvement' means. The test are administered at certain grade levels each year. That means that this year's fourth grader are compared to last years.
Improvement in the context of my quote, which addressed teachers, means taking kids who enter grade X at level Y and having them leave for grade X+1 at level Y+1 (or more). Improvement in the context of schools means consistent improvement across all grade levels.
Let's take a simple example, which occurs all the time. A kid comes into the school in the third grade from a non-English speaking country. He gets tested in the fourth grade. His performance is "deficient".
Happens all the time, does it? This claim suggests you're not actually familiar with the provisions for students learning English. Also, what do you suppose is, roughly, the percentage of students who enter the public school system in third grade rather than first?
Did you read the NCLB law?
I've skimmed much of it. Have you?
I still don't see any citations for your statements.
I'll repeat: for which of my statements do you require citations?
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
In GoRight's honor
+ 4
For the entire series of comments
:}
"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge" -- Kahlil Gibran
I hope GoRight drops in sometime
Thanks for the feedback =) I know there are plenty of people here who share rdf's frustration with NCLB (I do on some points), maybe we can drag more of them into the thread. It's an important topic, one that I don't think is as clearcut as it might initially appear.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Re: music programs shortchanged
This is certainly a legitimate concern but may be overstated
.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
I'm not sure that it's overstated, Brendan.
School programs in Music and the Arts are being cut drastically, and, in a good many cases, whittled to the bone throughout the United States. This is not good at all, because music and the arts are important for kids (and adults alike), to provide much-needed breaks from the toughness of academics, and to allow a certain amount of creativity to flow through. This is the case, even in people who can't be musicians and/or artists. So, yes, music and art programs, too
are being shortchanged.
I'd be interested
to see some citations for a few of your assertions, especially these:
NCLB was designed to discredit public education.
...
You will find that they all hate it.
I am actually a pretty experienced inner-city teacher, and I certainly don't think NCLB is perfect. I do think that it is helpful in that it looks at student subgroups so a school can't claim that it's doing great and cover up the fact that the (girls, poor kids, Hispanic kids, kids with learning disabilities, etc.) are learning, too.
Teaching to the test isn't a bad thing if the test is a good one, really.
Just to be perfectly clear, I'm not defending NCLB wholesale in its present form. I am saying that the measure of a good teacher is the performance of her students. Basic skills can be measured, and they should be.
experience?
Exactly what subjects or grades do you teach?
The experiences of those who teach the subjects that are part of the testing and the grades that are part of the testing seem to be different from those who don't.
A music teacher that I've heard about is having a great time, while the English teacher next door is under a lot of stress.
--- Policies not Politics
asdf
Well, I started teaching 8th grade English in the projects in arguably the worst school system in the country. I then went on to teach high school English and social studies in an inner-city alternative school mostly serving kids who'd been kicked out of their other schools for behavior problems.
As you might imagine, when the high schoolers got to us, the majority of them hadn't passed the state test that had to be passed in order to graduate. We spent a lot of time getting ready for the test. For the last month before the test, we threw the regular curriculum out the window and alternated periods of math and English. I suppose this sounds like a nightmare to you, but you know what?
There wasn't anything on those tests that the kids shouldn't have known by high school. There was no earthly reason they should've had failing scores prior to leaving their regular schools. And we also spent some time on "test-taking skills."
You know what happened? The scores jumped, predictably. Half of our students passed and almost all the rest of them improved dramatically. They knew for a fact that they had just passed the same test that the rich kids from the suburbs passed, they worked harder than I've ever seen them work and they started doing homework. Because they wanted to pass this test.
After the testing, we went back to the normal schedule--but the whole vibe of the school was different. They kept turning in homework. We went on some educational field trips and got back to the kitchen and the gym when we weren't in the classroom.
The reason we need *standardized* testing is that we have to make sure that we're doing right by all of our kids. If the kids in the inner city don't know their fractions or can't read with comprehension at the same level as other kids, it's a problem. That problem is caused by lots and lots of things, but when you're a teacher (or administrator, or what have you) you have to work with what you control--and you sure can control what happens in school better than any other thing.
****
Now that I've answered your question with probably more information than you wanted :) I'd just like to reiterate that I'm not a wholesale proponent of NCLB in its current form, but I think it's a complicated issue that suffers greatly from oversimplification.
Now will you tell me from where you got the idea that NCLB was designed to discredit public education?
Reply
I don't know where you teach, but NYS has had Regents exams for decades. They provided a state-wide objective standard that has to be met in a wide variety of subjects.
They are (were?) much harder than the NCLB exams. Many states with poorer educational outcomes don't have such standards, so obviously there has a great deal of variability throughout the country. What NCLB did was to impose a false set of standards. Since the individual states get to create their own tests and standards, pushing weak states upward could (and has) been marginally successful.
What may have been needed in Mississippi was not what was needed in NY. The difference between the Regents and the NCLB tests is that when a kid flunks the Regents he has to retake the course work. In other words, the test is a measure of his performance as an individual and the results can be used to tailor his program.
When a kid underperforms on an NCLB test the school and the teachers are punished. The results of the test aren't even available until after the decisions are made as to whether the student should move up a grade. So there is no useful classroom information generated.
So what logical conclusion can be drawn from a system that punishes schools but doesn't aid students?
Now to your other question.
I'm a "philosopher". I lay out my premise and then offer data to support my position. My premise is that NCLB is designed to discredit public education and the teacher's unions specifically.
As corroborating evidence I offered my remarks, including the one I just wrote above. If I was writing a formal paper I'd add lots of citations, but this is overkill on a blog.
If you want to see how others view the program there is lots of public information available. There are numerous speeches from people like Randi Weingarten head of the UFT in NY. There are also real papers from academics who specialize in education. On the flip side there are statements from supporters of school vouchers and similar programs which are designed to weaken public education.
If we assume that each side is partisan than we have to examine their motives. The teachers are against NCLB. I've never met a teacher who was against the Regents exams. They like them because they add structure to the course. And yes, there is some teaching to the test just before the exams are given. But the exams are varied enough that the best preparation is going over the curriculum thoroughly. The questions vary from year to year, as do the topics covered. This is not true (at least in NY) of the NCLB tests. They are highly predictable. This may be workaround by the Ed Department to help schools meet the standards, I don't know.
The fact that teachers are against this can be taken as an indication that they are primarily interested in preserving their livelihoods and tenure. True, but I've never met a teacher for whom such concerns were paramount. All they expect of the union is to bargain for a decent wage and working conditions.
People don't become teachers because it's a cushy job. They become teachers because they are idealistic. Those that aren't quit. That's why there is a 30% drop out in the fist couple of years. Only someone who believed they were making a difference would work such long hours for so little money.
On the other side we have people who want to shift funds from the public coffers to private ones. People who are interested in money are not idealists. At best they are businessmen and at worst they are ideologues who want the state to pay for their program of indoctrinating children into their belief system.
So, I don't lay out all the arguments, just enough to make a case. For anyone who wants to delve deeper into the subject there are lots of places to look. I can point out the road to take, but I'm not going to take people by the hand and walk them down the path.
One of things I've found is that those who tend to me more "liberal" are willing to do some digging while those who tend to be more "conservative" already feel they know enough and won't.
--- Policies not Politics
Oy.
Seriously, rdf, you don't have to tell me why people become teachers.
The reason why I was asking you where you got the idea that NCLB was designed to discredit public education is that (even though I'm far from conservative) it's an interesting idea that I'd never heard any rigorous support for.
I imagine that you and I probably have more in common than not as far as views on education go. I think the all-stick-no-carrot thing is a ridiculous way to motivate schools--but I also think that a lot of urban schools have become dumping grounds for the teachers and administrators that schools in wealthier districts wouldn't tolerate, and for a long, long time we could just look the other way and think that things weren't that bad because we didn't have the data staring us in the face that said THE CHILDREN ARE NOT ALL RIGHT.
I don't disagree with you about the Regent's exam--to my way of thinking, NCLB tests should be the floor, so it makes sense that states would have harder tests. But what does it tell us when so many kids can't even pass these easier tests?
It's not that I'm unwilling to do digging, you know.
I think the best thing GW Bush ever said was the "soft bigotry of low expectations" bit. I wish, wish, wish it would've been someone else who said it so I could put it on my wall.
Money
You and I both know that one of the primary reasons inner schools do poorly (aside from the demographic reasons given in the report I cited originally) is because they are underfunded.
This is the core of the entire educational fiasco. When local schools are financed by property taxes those in the wealthy areas get a better quality of education (I'm not talking about teachers, I'm talking about physical plant). Have you taught in schools with missing or broken equipment? How about with no text books?
In New York, NYC has sued the state for underfunding the schools with the equalization payments that it is supposed to provide to compensate for the unfairness of the property tax system. NYC won several suits, but the legislature refused to allocate the money. What next?
The scandal remains the same, the social services that are need to ameliorate poor home environments cost money and the educational spending needed to bring inner city schools up to standard also costs money. The ugly truth is that the white, affluent class is not willing to spend the money. Whether this is racism or classism is irrelevant, the result is the same.
In Alabama the school system is so bad that the Republican governor asked for an additional $1 billion for education. The public voted it down. Those in areas where there are a high proportion of blacks send their kids to private schools, so why should they support public education?
The irony, is that a poor public school system has a strong correlation with poor economic activity. So the whites aren't doing themselves any favor. They live in a poor state which hurts them as well, but fail to see the connection.
--- Policies not Politics
Yep.
Couple of things that spring to mind from your post--the numbers can support the assertion that inner-city schools are underfunded or overfunded depending on how you look at it. Lots of urban districts spend at or above the state average, and so conservatives tend to argue that the "underfunding" idea is false.
I think it was Kozol who said it best (and I don't remember exactly how he said it, of course), that in a just society funding would be apportioned according to need. So an urban school that has funding at the state average still isn't necessarily adequately funded. Apart from the social services issues, there are so many other things (e.g., inefficient physical plants that cost a lot more than wealthier districts have to spend) that urban districts have to pay for that other districts don't, or get more cheaply.
And yes, I've never taught in a school that had adequate supplies. In any sense of the word adequate.
But having said all that, I've seen so much money wasted in stunningly stupid endeavors. I don't know how wealthy districts spend their money, but I imagine that some of the things I've seen wouldn't happen anywhere but in a district that serves kids we've already given up on. These schools need more money, but there also needs to be *something* in place to make sure it's spent well.
I didn't mean to get rude with you earlier. This is probably the subject most near and dear to my heart, and the sense of urgency I feel is acute.
Waste
The issue with waste is hard to quantify, those who see it always think that it is more endemic in their environment.
So, two random examples:
Roslyn, Long Island (very rich) - the superintendent embezzled over $11 million dollars and threw the district into a financial tizzy. Where was the oversight?
Princeton University is using some recent gift money to build a stable to hold student's horses.
NY state's formula is supposed to compensate for the costs associated with teaching in an urban environment and those associated with under performing students. That's why there has been a game of classifying students as "special ed" because the reimbursement rate is higher.
On the other hand the really big screw ups seem to occur in the private sector: Enron, Worldcom, etc.
It's not whether the organization is public or private that seems to matter, but whether there is adequate oversight. Corruption is more widespread than people realize in the US, but the mechanism is well understood elsewhere.
--- Policies not Politics
Short question
Do you think conservative and libertarian voters are generally supportive of NCLB?
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
My read
...is that conservative views on NCLB are somewhat mixed. Some conservatives think the concept is good and the implementation needs work. Others think the concept is broken from the start.
In this context, I define "the concept" as: "the federal government should use the various carrots and sticks in its arsenal to hold states and localities responsible for achieving better K-12 student academic performance, as measured by standardized test scores."
You will even find some conservatives who think that this concept should be extended to higher education, not just K-12.
Caveat: this is probably more a read of conservative intellectuals than it is of conservative voters. I can only speak for a relatively small number of conservative voters.
Libertarian views on NCLB are pretty negative, obviously, since it enlarges the federal role in education.
Examples
On the con side: George Will
On the pro side: Michael Petrilli
(I find the latter article's argument to be highly uncompelling.)
Reply from elsewhere
I wrote this in reply to a remark on another site:
Do you know what "teaching to the test" means in practice?
What you are describing is teaching to a syllabus, which nobody objects to.
Teaching to the test means focusing on only those areas that will appear on the test while neglecting others that are in the nominal syllabus. It also means frequent test drills using questions which are similar to those expected to be on the test. It also means working on explicit test taking skills, such as when to skip questions, when to guess and in what order to approach the questions.
Contrary to what you think, teaching to the test actually limits the amount of material students learn.
There are several other side effects from "high stakes" testing. One is the reduction in programs for the gifted or talented. Since school ratings are determined by "proficiency" levels, those who score above grade level are counted the same as those who score at grade level. Thus there is no incentive to promote these enrichment programs since they do nothing to improve the school's overall score.
Another side effect is the reduction in non test subjects. Students don't get tested in history, so there is less time spent on it and more on English. Programs in art, music and physical education have been cut way back or elminiated entirely.
As for pedagogical techniques making a difference, this is a limited effect. There are schools using the Montessori method, there are Waldorf schools, there are open plan schools, there are schools which use whole language and those which use phonics, there are those which teach arithmetic and those that teach "new math", there are those that teach by rote and those that favor student self discovery.
All these variations (or their equivalents) have been in existence since Socrates - the first person to suffer because of his pedagogical method. If there really was something that was so obviously superior then everyone would know it and there would be extensive evidence.
Finally what education is meant to archive depends upon the society. The madrassas have different goals then does Harvard. In general schools perform the task society demands of them. In autocratic societies teaching by rote is popular. In democratic societies getting kids to think for themselves is more common.
NCLB is an attempt to move away from the philosophy of John Dewey (self motivation, learning by doing and hands-on learning) and back towards rote. This is in line with the autocratic style of the religious right and conservative ideologues.
--- Policies not Politics
NCLB
strangles both the upper and lower end students. Gifted students get bored to tears as the teachers fearing losing funding work to bring up the lowest performers in the class. If a low test score doesn't show up for class, and just disappears this is great news for the school, because it brings up the average test score.
Teachers and principles are actually relieved when the lower end students quit coming to school and they can sneak them off the books. Principles cheat so they won't lose funding for their schools.
My sister is a teacher so I get all the gory details.
Global warming will increase, for a few minutes, if NLCB is scrapped, because teachers, students and parents will breathe a collective sigh of relief.
It is the economy, stupid.