Re: NCLB after 6 years - and escalating track record of failure

[Scott Hays <shays@ccwebster.net>]

A persistent critic on this list had (per usual) some negative things  
to say about FairTest's Fact Sheet on NCLB.  Most of it was the  
typical poodoo we come to expect from the source, but one point was  
raised that I want to address.  Incidentally, I have omitted the  
source from the subject line because I am addressing peers and other  
professionals and do not wish to engage in conversation with that  
person (whose response to these thoughts, I am sure, will be most  
clever and entertaining).  At any rate:

"There are people working in schools who shouldn't be there and many  
schools need to be changed in ways that people working in them won't  
like.  That's the painful truth and that's the political pitfall.   
Better tests and more money won't change those things one bit."

Better tests and more money may not change those things, but I think  
the point is that there are better ways to achieve accountability and  
there are better ways to move schools and the people in them forward  
than the lock-step methods promoted by the current law (and the  
corporate supporters it benefits).  Don’t forget for a moment that  
members of the California Curriculum Commission were on their cell- 
phones talking to representatives of major textbook corporations while  
final adoption of the Academic Content Standards for the disciplines  
of English/Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science were taking place.   
Textbooks certainly have a place in the school curriculum … but  
states, districts, and individual schools within districts should have  
much greater freedom in selecting both the instructional materials  
that they use and the pedagogy they use to deliver the content.   
California just had to revise (again) its textbook adoption process in  
order to prevent those in the inner-circle from conversing with  
textbook publishers during the selection process.

And freedom to choose textbooks (or stand-alone, independently created  
instructional materials) and pedagogy is just the tip of the iceberg.   
Professional development within districts and schools needs to be more  
closely aligned with the personal and professional needs and goals of  
individual teachers, departments within schools, and across grade- 
levels in districts.  It can be tied more organically to local  
colleges and universities, to organizations established to provide  
professional development, and/or to the expertise within districts and  
on individual campuses … as desired or needed.  Goal-setting needs to  
be stood on its head … individual teachers need more time to  
collaborate with peers, identify strengths and weaknesses in their  
practice, design lessons and units to address identified issues,  
reflect on the results of their practice in order to modify it, and  
then design their own professional development needs to align with  
those goals and strategies. Student performance (and not just  
performance on tests, though tests certainly can be a part of the base- 
line input data) needs to always be the primary consideration driving  
professional decision-making.  Teachers, furthermore, need to be  
empowered to police their own ranks.  Ninety-nine percent of all  
issues related to teachers taking the “easy way out” or being in a  
situation where they don’t belong would be resolved if teaching were  
more collaborative, if teachers worked in teams and shared resources,  
and if teachers took care of each other ... mentoring and coaching  
would be more natural, professional growth desirable, and student  
performance enhanced.

I am now retired, but the last four years of my career were spent in a  
middle school where we did all of the above.  We carved out time from  
the yearly schedule to give the staff student-free, 1/2 days every  
other week; designed multiple measures of student performance;  
developed transparent scoring systems for the non-objective  
assessments we used, and communicated those to students and parents;  
began developing units of study within academic departments that were  
keyed to identified areas of focus based on student performance, and  
then took time to examine student work to modify our practice; set  
personal and professional goals that we tracked and documented through  
the course of the year and reported those to the principal who used  
that information as the basis for his frequent observations; and we  
had begun to plan a year-long staff-development program (much provided  
by experts already on staff) aligned to the goals we had identified;  
representatives from each grade level of the staffs of the three  
schools in the district met frequently to align district goals and to  
discuss relevant issues.

Since retirement, I think the practice has not been followed as  
energetically as it was when I was there.  The Superintendent resigned  
due to a terminal illness, the middle school Principal where I worked  
retired, as did two or three other key individuals.  This highlights a  
deep weakness in our public school system that scarcely receives any  
attention outside the walls of schools ... effective leadership is  
difficult to sustain once the key players move on or move out.  Please  
note that NCLB does not address this issue, at all ... local  
leadership, in fact, is anathma to NCLB (and all top-down management  
regimens like it) ... but until we figure out what to do about it, all  
the change in the world will only be transitory.

By the way ... I have not received any messages from ARN for several  
days (maybe even weeks), but the last two I have received have all  
been mega-digests.  This one had 70 messages in it; the one I received  
a couple of weeks ago had 89.  Is anyone else experiencing this  
difficulty?  Or am I just doing something wrong?