Re: NCLB demands (?)

[aburke5054@aol.com]

NCLB does not define achievement standards in terms of "grade-levels."  
Earlier incarnations of ESEA did.  Everybody involved in education is 
used to talking about "grade-levels" so Secretary Spellings probably 
continues to do so out of habit.  Plus it's easier to say "grade-level" 
than it is to say "proficient in content and performance standards that 
were determined after a long and complicated process of study and 
discussion within each state."  No need to invoke dark forces at work.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: GERALD BRACEY <gbracey1@verizon.net>
To: arn-l@interversity.org; LiteracyForAll@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thu, 06 Apr 2006 12:00:57 -0400
Subject: [arn-l] NCLB demands (?)

  Someone should pin Margaret Spellings down on what NCLB requires of 
states. In a speech last spring she said it demands that all children 
read at grade level. Yesterday, in a WSJ letter to the editor, she she 
spoke about "the 'bright line' goals of the law, including annual 
testing, disaggregated test score data and full grade level proficiency 
in reading and math by 2013-2014."

 Does anyone on the Assessment Reform Network listserv know what she 
means by "full grade level proficiency?" Does she even know?

 "Grade level," as usually defined, leaves 50% of all children, by 
definition, below grade level. To the best of my knowledge, no team 
anywhere has assembled a list of developmental competencies or skills 
and said "all children should be able to do this by 5th grade." And 
likely for the same reason that no team has said "all children should 
be at least X inches tall by 5th grade." It only makes sense to report 
physical growth data normatively. My grandson was in the 90th 
percentile for height, my daughter informed me when she brought him 
home some years ago. She might have fretted had he been in the 10th, 
but the normative report acknowledged something: human beings vary 
greatly.

 Why should it make any more sense to report non-normative data for 
cognitive development than physical? Starting in the 1960's some 
psychometricians tried to construct criterion-referenced tests--and 
failed (what pass for CRT's today are not).

 Nevertheless, grade level is a popular phrase with Spellings, however 
ambiguously she uses it. In a speech at Avon Avenue Elementary School 
in Newark a few weeks ago, she wanted kids "proficient and on grade 
level by the 2013-2014 school year." So the two are separable, not 
interchangeable? In 2004, on The News Hour, she told Ray Suarez the 
schools were striving "so we can get kids on grade level by 2013-2014 
as the law requires." And in a 2005 Washington Post op-ed she wrote 
that NCLB "asks one thing: that our public schools teach students to 
read and do math at grade level."

  A Google search of "grade level" and "Margaret Spellings" results in 
66,200 items, about 66,100 more occurrences than in the law itself and 
most of the references in the legislation are to the grade level 
placement of either teachers or students. "Grade level" as a metric 
comes into play only in the discussion of Reading First.

 The law, of course, talks about "the state's proficient level of 
student academic achievement" as in "the timeline shall ensure that not 
later than 12 years after the end of the 2001-2002 school year, all 
students in each group described in subparagraph (C)(v) will meet or 
exceed the state's proficient level of achievement."

 It could be just sloppy speech, but it seems to me there could be 
something quite nefarious in the Secretary's confusing grade level with 
proficient. Some people are already uncomfortable with 50 definitions 
of proficient, but proficient is a fairly vague term compared to grade 
level. Would people accept 50 definitions of, say, "fourth grade 
level?" Might be a bit hard to swallow today (when local control was 
meaningful, nobody cared much).

 Ridiculing the idea of 50 different definitions of fourth grade level 
might well smooth the way for national standards, national tests, 
national definitions. And, of course, NAEP lies conveniently in the 
cupboard with its definitions and determinations of basic, proficient 
(the magic word), and advanced (and its ridiculously high achievement 
levels as well). When I have raised this possibility at conferences, I 
have generally received a response of "no way." The states would never 
put up with that kind of federal intrusion. But recall that for the 
first 18 years of NAEP's existence, it was against the law to even 
collect state-level data. The law prevented the reporting of anything 
smaller than a region, a singularly useless unit of analysis. Now, 18 
years after the law was changed, NAEP routinely collects and reports 
state-level results. And NCLB requires all states to participate. How 
convenient.

Jerry