Re: Leave NCLB Behind

[aburke5054@aol.com]

The mom of the child with special needs who said that NCLB spurred her 
child's school to have higher expectations for him made a lot more 
sense and captured a lot more of the essence of NCLB than this malarkey.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>
To: ARN Main List <arn-l@interversity.org>; arn2-strategy 
<arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 6:21 am
Subject: [arn-l] Leave NCLB Behind


LEAVE BEHIND NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

(Anderson, IN) Herald Bulletin Column

by Stephen Dick, City Editor


Anderson, Ind.— As a newspaper editor, I only have to deal with 
adequate
yearly progress (AYP), well, yearly. The figures are released and we in
the media call our local educators and ask them why their schools are
failing and what they plan to do about it. The educators play up the
positives, if any are found, and offer a stiff upper lip to what is
essentially a losing situation.

They know the game is rigged from the beginning and emphasizes (I would
argue thrives on) failure. But they have to put their heart into it
because the consequences are dire.

AYP is the accountability arm of the federal No Child Left Behind Act,
the crown jewel of George W. Bush’s eight years of mismanagement. The
act uses standardized testing for Title 1 schools (those receiving
federal dollars for low-income students, i.e. most) to give schools a
pass/fail in a myriad of ways.

Students are channeled into subsections, such as black, white, 
Hispanic,
low-income (based on school lunch assistance) and special education to
name a few. If a single subsection of students fails the standardized
test (in Indiana, it’s the ISTEP) the whole school fails.

If you’ve noticed that special education children are expected to learn
at the same pace as other students, you’ve grasped the idiotic essence
of NCLB. Children who are having a tough enough time in school are now
looked at like losers by other students and administrators. Since the
AYP figures are made public, everyone gets to see that black students
failed at one school, Hispanics at another, which gives racists
ammunition to reinforce their stereotypes.

Educators know that all children learning at the same level is 
ludicrous
and will never happen. But if they don’t work toward that goal, NCLB
mandates that states take over underperforming schools, which really
means nothing but the school system looks bad, as if it can’t manage 
its
own house, and that’s another byproduct of NCLB: It exacerbates
education problems by motivating with punishment instead of help.

To reach the testing goals, educators must stress math and reading at
the expense of other worthy subjects: social studies, science, art and
music. The concept of well-rounded education falls by the wayside as
more and more precious teaching time goes to cramming for the test.

Some educators will even go the extreme. According to a New York Times
article, John Burks, a principal at New Braunfels Middle School in
Texas, threatened to kill his science teachers and himself if scores
didn’t improve on the state standardized test called TAKS. Burks denies
it, but police are investigating the matter as a terrorist threat.

Like all the other ills that plague America in the 21st century, this
assault on common sense education can be traced to conservatism.
Conservatives have never liked public education because, like Social
Security, it removes a lot of money from the hands of the profit class.

NCLB was a declaration of war on public education, and Democrats such 
as
Sen. Edward Kennedy have plenty of blood on their hands by backing it
up. If public schools are declared a failure over and over, parents 
will
turn to private schools and raise such an outcry that public money will
follow students to those “better” schools. That’s the theory anyway. In
extreme cases, schools will be sold out to private groups like Edison,
which took over the Philadelphia schools and turned a profit on tax
money while keeping test scores the same.

When Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was here, she told a cheering crowd
that NCLB should not be renewed by Congress. Indeed, whether Democrats
or Republicans take over the White House and Congress this fall, NCLB
seems doomed, according to an article in The American Prospect. Even
Republicans see that the act stresses the worst in education.

What is missing in NCLB is addressing the extreme inequality among
school systems. Until the gap in rich and poor school systems is 
closed,
poorer students are going to underperform and lack the opportunities
richer schools have.

States are also straining school systems by slashing education budgets,
which means fewer underpaid teachers for more students and less money
for books and other teaching tools.

NCLB, with its emphasis on segregating and polarizing the education
process, needs to be deep-sixed. A public education is available for 
all
children. Now we have to find a way to universalize educational
opportunities and place emphasis on real learning and not the rote
memorization required for tests.

http://www.pharostribune.com/statenews/cnhinsall_story_091112054.html