Re: orchestrated blame game

["Monty Neill" <monty@fairtest.org>]

Interesting, indeed. 

Finn has been promoting a national test, tho seems in public statement to believe this cannot be mandated but could perhaps be brought in the back door by bribing states to use the same test (and bribing them again to use common cutoff points - presumably set similar to NAEP's). I assume he still supports vouchers, which would be his failed program on steroids. 

That would not seem to do much to improve the issues Jerry noted were raised at the conference. So what are the right wingers to do? A shrub-in-Iraq-like 'stay the course' regardless of the disaster? 

Katie Haycock  (Ed Trust is a frequent Fordham partner) writing in Ed Leadership seems not to have gotten message, presenting a Pollyanish view of all those wonderful educators she has observed using NCLB to make great schools - ignoring the overwhelming evidence that educators think NCLB does far more damage than good. 

Perhaps the NCLB proponents will themselves fracture. That would be a good thing, helping to open the door to battling for fundamental change to federal law.

Monty
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: GERALD BRACEY 
  To: arn-l@interversity.org 
  Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 9:44 AM
  Subject: [arn-l] orchestrated blame game


  I'm not aware of the AEI papers referred to, but Thursday I attended a conference co-sponsored by AEI and Fordham.  After the first four presentations by Mike Casserly, Jeff Henig, Paul Manna and Mike Petrilli, discussant Checker Finn said he should be handing out mood altering drugs because the gloomy presentations had induced depression.  

  He said poor kids were achieving more, but asked if it were due to NCLB.  Didn't have an answer.

  He blamed part of the situation on the "complete inadequacy of the testing industry to handle the data" but allowed as well that the "law itself is a huge overreach" on the part of the feds.

  He left open whether or not things could be fixed by amendments or whether the whole thing has to be rewritten.

  In the interaction between Finn and the presenters that followed, Petrilli said that in the drive to get a bipartisan bill, people ignored whether or not the parts fit together well.  

  It was noted that 200 times as many kids use choice outside of NCLB as in.  From the floor I suggested that that was likely due in part to the stupid way in which the law defines failing schools [NOTE TO ART: THE CONFERENCE WAS CALLED "FIXING FAILING SCHOOLS," NOT "FIXING SCHOOLS IN NEED OF IMPROVEMENT"].  That is, by a single subgroup failing to make AYP two consecutive years.  Since these groups were most often ELL or SPEC ED, most parents didn't see the schools as failing.  I noted as well that it appeared that many of the students using the choice option were high performing students which would only serve to further weaken sending schools, not only because of the kids leaving, but because of the loss of the most involved parents.

  Over the day, it was acknowledged that the choice provision is without question the most disastrous provision, although Supplemental Educational Services took some blows as well.  Jane Hannaway argued that if the choice provision was going to work anywhere, it would work in Miami-Dade and laid out the reasons why.  Yet over 19,000 students made use of various other choice options, but only 633 used NCLB.  

  Part of the problem is conflicting accountability systems:  64% of the schools that passed Florida's accountability standards failed to make AYP.  Sixty-five percent of the parents chose schools that failed to make AYP--27% of the kids went from one A school that hadn't made AYP to another A school that had.  

  Speakers acknowledged the double standard of requiring scientifically-based research for schools, no accountability for SES providers (I don't know if Petrilli acceded to this--I have him on record earlier when he was with the department saying that the lack of oversight was deliberate in order to create "as vibrant a market as possible.") 

  Rick Hess even sheepishly observed that while the law requires SBR for schools, there is no SBR undergirding the law itself.  ARNers might recognize this as the first absurdity in a presentation I have called "The Seven Deadly Absurdities of No Child Left Behind.

  I thought this conference laid much more blame on the inherent structural inadequacies of the law, not on the resistant actors.  "Recalcitrant" schools was mentioned once, but not vehemently.

  More after I get caught up.  Friday went to San Bernardino to meet with some remarkable teachers.  More about that later, too.

  Jerry