Re: Left Behind by Designhh

[aburke5054@aol.com]

Leaving aside Jerry's concern with whether "percentages" or "scores" 
present a purer index of achievement, the AEI paper under-analyzes the 
"test-based accountability" problem in three important dimensions.  
First, NCLB accountability is more than "test-based"-- it's 
"school-improvement" based as well.  Ignoring the school improvement 
part is the stock-in-trade of charlatan critics of NCLB, but it's akin 
to saying that all there is to medicine is tests and diagnosis and 
ignoring treatment.  Second, there is no long-term advantage for 
schools in ignoring children most in need of help, because NCLB 
requires schools to bring all children to proficiency.  Third, there's 
a lot happening between the requirement to bring all children to 
proficiency and decisions by teachers and principals to ignore some 
children and concentrate on others.  Illuminating the processes behind 
those maladaptive decisions is essential, not only for parents and 
kids, but also for education.  Invoking "Campbell's Law" as the 
explanation as if it's a law of nature is an exercise in silliness and 
an irresponsible argument for anyone connected with education to make.

Finally, NCLB says that states should put additional resources into 
schools that serve disadvantaged kids and other kids with learning 
challenges.  That's a good thing, no?

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: GERALD BRACEY <gbracey1@verizon.net>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 3:22 pm
Subject: Re: [arn-l] Left Behind by Design



I thought that the most important point made during the day was that
counting the percent of kids proficient is a really dumb way of 
measuring
anything (although it is simple and makes people understand they know 
what's
going on).  As I have shown in several places, measuring percent 
proficient
can lead to a perception that an achievement gap is narrowing when, if 
you
measured it by test SCORES, you'd find it widening.


Another important point I thought got left out of the story was that 
the
data NCLB increases the costs of teaching disadvantaged kids (the USDE 
guy
said it "exposes" those costs)---either way, it's likely to make 
recruiting
teachers into low income schools even harder.


I thought Susan Traiman's arguments--a sharper critique according to 
the ED
week Story--were rather much beside the point.


JB


----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Schaeffer" <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>

To: "ARN Main List" <arn-l@interversity.org>; "arn2-strategy"
<arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>

Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 11:06 AM

Subject: [arn-l] Left Behind by Design



> The current issue of Education Week describes a new study published 
by the
> conservative American Enterprise Institute concluding that "No Child 
Left
> Behind" is, indeed, encouraging teachers to focus on "bubble kids" 
with
> scores just below the passing cut-off level to the detriment of 
students
> who are performing far behind or far ahead of average.

>

> The study, "Left Behind By Design: Proficiency Counts and Test-Based
> Accountability" focuses on the Chicago Public Schools system

>

>   http://www.aei.org/events/eventID.1544/event_detail.asp

>







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