Re: NCLB Reductio ad Absurdum

[Free2teach1@aol.com]

Isn't it ironic that NCLB, the education law, is so utterly STUPID. On  
second thought, it's probably more sad than ironic.
 
In a message dated 12/9/2006 10:45:49 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
bobschaeffer@earthlink.net writes:

Die-hard  NCLB defenders, who accept the law's 100% "proficient" dictate 
as a matter  of ideology or faith, need to read the headline carefully 
and try to  comprehend it: NCLB's literal goal is _imposssible_ to achieve.


NO  CHILD LEFT BEHIND APPLIED BEHIND BARS
CITY SCHOOL FACES AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK  EDUCATING YOUNG INMATES TO STANDARD
Baltimore Sun -- December 9,  2006
Sara Neufeld

The Eager Street Academy is a Baltimore public  school behind bars, with 
the most troubled student body in the city.  Nonetheless, its staff has 
the impossible job of complying with the  federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Located in the Baltimore City  Detention Center, the school's 
approximately 130 students - ages 14 to 17  - are charged as adults in 
some of the city's most notorious killings and  other crimes.

Many of them had dropped out of school before landing in  prison, and 
about a quarter come in reading at a second-grade  level.

No Child Left Behind requires schools to give annual  standardized tests 
to all their students, and all students must  demonstrate proficiency in 
reading and math by 2014.

Schools such  as Eager Street that repeatedly don't make "adequate yearly 
progress"  toward that goal face the public embarrassment of being put on 
a state  failure list, with sanctions that can ultimately be as severe as 
staff  replacement. That leads to demoralized teachers and difficulty  
recruiting.

"It's not that we want to get out of anything, but no  other schools I 
know of have this to contend with," said Eager Street  Principal James 
Scofield. "To look at the data and assess the school, it's  just not fair."

Teachers at many other troubled schools also feel that  No Child Left 
Behind holds them to an unrealistic standard, punishing them  if they 
don't make years of progress with ill-prepared students in a  matter of 
months. But Eager Street is in a particular predicament, because  most of 
the student body turns over from one year to the next.

The  state uses the scores of a handful of kids to calculate whether 
Eager  Street has made adequate yearly progress. The calculation can be 
made  using the scores of as few as five students, those who were 
enrolled early  in the school year and are still around on testing day. 
Generally, that  means they are the students facing the most severe 
criminal  charges.

100 percent failure
The test results for all students are  posted online and printed in the 
newspaper: a failure rate of 100 percent  this year in seventh- and 
eighth-grade math and high school algebra and  government.

"It shows us at zero," said Scofield, a veteran city  schools 
administrator. "It looks as if we're doing nothing."

Eager  Street students, all but a handful of them boys, have had 
extraordinarily  difficult lives, Scofield said: A "huge" number have 
been abandoned by  parents. A 16-year-old who recently enrolled hadn't 
been to school since  fourth grade, when his mother pulled him out to 
support the family by any  means necessary, including selling drugs.

Students can leave Eager  Street if a judge releases them or lessens the 
criminal charges and moves  them to the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice 
Center. Otherwise, they stop  school on the day they turn 18, when they 
are moved to the prison's adult  wing.

"If I just got locked up, got my freedom taken away, if I'm  facing 10 
years and I'm 15 or 16 and I'm worried about turning 18 and  going to the 
adult side and getting raped, I'm not thinking about a test,"  Scofield said.

Required tests

No Child Left Behind  requires schools to test all students in reading 
and math annually from  third through eighth grades and once in high 
school. In addition, Maryland  requires students to pass high school 
graduation exams in algebra,  biology, English and government.

Eager Street is the only school of its  kind in the state. Elsewhere in 
Maryland, the Department of Juvenile  Services, not the public school 
system, educates incarcerated students.  Most DJS facilities don't have 
enough students enrolled for multiple  months to get an adequate yearly 
progress ranking.

State Education  Department officials say the city school system can 
choose for Eager  Street not to receive an annual ranking based on its 
test scores. Instead,  it could count the scores of Eager Street students 
at the schools they  attended before being locked up, something many of 
the DJS facilities  do.

City schools interim Chief Executive Officer Charlene Cooper  Boston, who 
was made aware of Eager Street's predicament by two staff  members who 
spoke at a school board meeting last month, said she is  examining that 
possibility.

But Scofield said it wouldn't be fair  to hold neighborhood schools 
accountable for the scores of students who  hadn't been there in months 
or years.

Instead, Scofield said, he  and his staff would welcome the opportunity 
to see their school evaluated  based on students' progress while they are 
there.

A national  criticism of No Child Left Behind is that it discourages 
teachers from  working with the most vulnerable students. For example, if 
a 17-year-old  starts the school year reading on a second-grade level and 
progresses to a  sixth-grade level in six months, a teacher has done 
significant work, but  the student still won't pass the state test.

To judge schools based on  progress, though, would require a change in 
federal law.

No Child  Left Behind is up for reauthorization in Congress next year. 
Boston said  several states are urging the federal government to find a 
way to evaluate  schools based on the progress they make with students, 
not whether the  students are on grade level.

Through the  cracks

Maryland Deputy State Superintendent Ronald Peiffer said a  
progress-based evaluation model poses a philosophical difficulty because  
it assumes students will not meet basic standards.

"We want the  schools to get credit for the students making progress," he 
said, "but we  don't want the students to fall through the cracks because 
at the end they  can't graduate or they don't have the skills to get 
where they need to  go."

Last year, the U.S. Department of Education began allowing two  states, 
Tennessee and North Carolina, to measure students' progress in  addition 
to measuring whether they pass their tests. Arkansas, Delaware  and 
Florida will test that model this school year.

The department  is studying last year's results from the trial states.

Chad Colby, a  federal Education Department spokesman, said U.S. 
Education Secretary  Margaret Spellings is interested in allowing states 
to give schools credit  for progress, but all children will still need to 
demonstrate proficiency  by 2014. Congress will make the final 
determination, he  said.

Maryland schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick has submitted a  letter 
to the federal government saying she would be interested in trying  a 
progress-based evaluation eventually, but the state does not have the  
technology to implement it effectively.

"We're anxious to see how  other states work it out while we get our 
technical pieces in place,"  Peiffer said.

At Eager Street, Scofield said much of his staff's work  centers on 
getting students re-acclimated to being in school.

In  English teacher Charles Dugger's classroom, a sign above the 
blackboard  reads, "A STUDENT MUST STUDY!" Dugger pointed to it this week 
as he told a  boy that he must start taking books back to his cell at night.

Unique challenges

The school occupies two cramped but well-kept  trailers in the prison 
parking lot, locked behind numerous fences and  gates. Wearing camouflage 
pants or green jumpsuits that say "JUVENILE"  across the back, students 
attend classes from 8:45 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. on  weekdays, except for the 
dozen or so in protective custody. Teachers  deliver their work to their 
cells. About six more who are involved in  gangs have a separate classroom.

Opportunities for extracurricular  activities are limited, though Dugger 
volunteers after school to teach  yoga.

There are two social workers, and staff is lobbying to get a  school nurse.

One day last month, Scofield pulled a boy out of class  after learning 
that his mother had died that day.

"A lot of these  children are emotionally scarred," Scofield said. 
"They're socially  unprepared. They feel violence is the norm because 
that's what they've  seen. We have to address their social and emotional 
needs  first."






Judy  Rabin

Given the existence of an idealized vision of the community,  movements of 
protest are likely to occur within the political nation when the  discrepancy 
between the image and the reality comes to seem intolerably  wide.

--   J.H. Elliott