Re: Fw: A Diminished Vision of Civil Rights

[aburke5054@aol.com]

 One reason we have NCLB is that civil rights groups got tired of the diminished vision of public educators giving innumerable reasons why children can't learn, why accountability won't work, why standards aren't for poor kids and minority kids, and what the schools really need is more, more, more money.? And James Crawford claims that America's civil rights groups have such "diminished vision" they just don't know what's good for them.? 


 
Art


-----Original Message-----
From: Monty Neill <monty@fairtest.org>
To: rethinkaccountdc <rethinkaccountdc@yahoogroups.com>; ndsgroup@yahoogroups.com; RScriticalteach <RScriticalteach@lists.execpc.com>; care@yahoogroups.com; ARN-state@yahoogroups.com; ARN-L <arn-l@interversity.org>; arn2-strategy <arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 3:19 pm
Subject: [arn-l] Fw: A Diminished Vision of Civil Rights










This is a very important article by Jim Crawford in the June 6 issue of 
Education Week. Monty

----- Original Message ----- 
From: James Crawford 
To: Monty Neill 
Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2007 12:28 PM
Subject: Fwd: A Diminished Vision of Civil Rights



Education Week, June 6, 2007

COMMENTARY
A Diminished Vision of Civil Rights:
No Child Left Behind and the Growing Divide in How Educational Equity Is 
Understood

By James Crawford

At the core of today's debates over school accountability lies a contentious 
question: Does the federal No Child Left Behind Act represent a historic advance 
for civil rights, or a giant step backward for the children it purports to help? 


This argument has divided the civil rights community itself, along with its 
traditional allies in Congress. One side supports stern measures designed to 
force educators to pay attention to long-neglected students and enable all 
children to reach "proficiency" in key subjects. The other side argues that the 
law's tools of choice-high-stakes testing, unrealistic achievement targets, and 
punitive sanctions-have not only proved ineffective in holding schools 
accountable, they also are pushing "left behind" groups even further behind. 

Disagreement is especially acute among advocates for English-language learners, 
known in the shorthand of K-12 education as "ELLs." These students pose a 
fundamental challenge for the No Child Left Behind accountability scheme, owing 
to the near-total absence of valid and reliable assessments of their academic 
achievement. Usually tested in English, a language they have yet to master, ELLs 
tend to perform poorly in both reading and math. Indeed, the law defines them as 
students who have difficulty meeting state standards because of the language 
barrier. Nevertheless, under every state NCLB plan, English-language learners' 
scores on invalid tests must be included in "adequate yearly progress" 
calculations, and, where they fall short of AYP targets, schools must undergo 
"corrective action." 

In other words, high-stakes decisions about the education of these students are 
being made on the basis of data generally acknowledged to be inaccurate. Schools 
with an ELL "subgroup" are being labeled and punished for failure-not because of 
the quality of instruction they provide, but because existing tests are unable 
to measure what ELLs have learned. 

While acknowledging this reality, the Mexican American Legal Defense and 
Educational Fund and the National Council of La Raza have emerged as 
uncompromising defenders of the No Child Left Behind law. They oppose exempting 
English-language learners from standardized tests, regardless of the tests' 
validity, for more than the one year that is currently allowed by federal 
regulations. In the words of a MALDEF lobbyist, leaving English-language 
learners out of No Child Left Behind's accountability system would mean 
"removing the incentive to teach them." The two organizations favor increased 
funding to develop appropriate assessments, hardly a controversial idea. In the 
meantime, however, they insist on the continued use of flawed assessments to 
judge schools and, by implication, to make flawed decisions about educational 
programs. 

Critics of NCLB-style accountability-who now include a substantial majority of 
educators working with English-language learners-cannot see how such a blunt 
instrument could produce academic benefits. More importantly, they point to the 
law's harmful impact on minority students generally and on ELLs in particular. 
The perverse effects are well-documented: excessive class time devoted to test 
preparation, a curriculum narrowed to the two tested subjects, neglect of 
critical thinking in favor of basic skills, pressure to reduce or eliminate 
native-language instruction, demoralization of teachers whose students fall 
short of unrealistic cut scores, demoralization of children who are forced to 
take tests they can't understand, and, perhaps worst of all, practices that 
encourage low-scoring students to drop out before test day. 

No one questions that, because of the No Child Left Behind law, English-language 
learners are receiving more "attention" than ever before. But, as many 
educational researchers and practitioners can testify, results in the classroom 
have been far more negative than positive. Supporters of the law have generally 
declined to respond to what educators are reporting, and instead have accused 
the law's critics of opposing accountability or believing that minority children 
"can't learn." 

How could civil rights advocates disagree over such fundamental issues? The only 
plausible answer is that there is a growing divide in how educational equity is 
understood. Some clues can be found in the changing terminology used to discuss 
school reform. 

Once upon a time, civil rights advocates were united in pursuing the goal of 
equal educational opportunity. They fought against racial segregation in public 
schools and demanded equitable resources for all students. Their focus was on 
"inputs," pushing state and local officials to provide adequate school 
facilities, well-designed instructional programs, effective teachers, and 
attention to the effects of poverty-such as parental illiteracy, poor health, 
and malnutrition-that pose obstacles to learning. In those days, the enemy was 
clear: a two-tier system that provided an inferior education to many children on 
the basis of skin color, language background, class status, and place of 
residence. 

But in the No Child Left Behind era, the words equal educational opportunity 
have largely faded from the public discourse. In their place, there is talk of 
eliminating the "achievement gaps" between various groups of students. 

The latter term was seldom heard in the 1980s or 1990s, as is shown by a quick 
archive search of major newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington 
Post, the Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and 
Education Week. Then, around 1999, "achievement gap"suddenly burst into the 
popular lexicon. The credit is largely due to then-Gov. George W. Bush of Texas 
and his political guru, Karl Rove, who were planning a presidential campaign in 
which school reform would figure prominently. 

Their strategy-which ultimately proved successful-was to seize an issue 
traditionally "owned" by Democrats and give it a "compassionate conservative" 
spin. By stressing the achievement gap, candidate Bush redefined civil rights in 
the field of school reform: "Some say it is unfair to hold disadvantaged 
children to rigorous standards. I say it is discrimination to require anything 
less-the soft bigotry of low expectations." Retiring the Republican theme of 
dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, he called instead for an enhanced 
federal role based on the Texas model of high-stakes testing. 

In 2001, key Democrats in Congress, including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Rep. 
George Miller, encouraged by certain liberal advocacy groups, joined forces with 
the Bush administration and with Republican leaders in Congress. The result was 
bipartisan passage of the No Child Left Behind Act late that year. 

Eliminating achievement gaps is paramount among the law's goals; equal 
educational opportunity is not. In fact, the latter term-which had been 
prominent in previous versions of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education 
Act-appears nowhere in NCLB. (No doubt an anonymous congressional staffer 
performed a search-and-delete operation on the bill, just as one did with the 
word "bilingual," which was also expunged.)


What's the significance of this shift in terminology? Achievement gap is all 
about measurable "outputs"-standardized-test scores-and not about equalizing 
resources, addressing poverty, combating segregation, or guaranteeing children 
an opportunity to learn. The No Child Left Behind Act is silent on such matters. 
Dropping equal educational opportunity, which highlights the role of inputs, has 
a subtle but powerful effect on how we think about accountability. It shifts the 
entire burden of reform from legislators and policymakers to teachers and kids 
and schools. 

By implication, educators are the obstacle to change. Every mandate of No Child 
Left Behind-and there are hundreds-is designed to force the people who run our 
schools to shape up, work harder, raise expectations, and stop "making excuses" 
for low test scores, or face the consequences. Despite the law's oft-stated 
reverence for "scientifically based research," this narrow approach is 
contradicted by numerous studies documenting the importance of social and 
economic factors in children's academic progress. Yet it has the advantage of 
enabling politicians to ignore the difficult issues and avoid costly remedies. 
If educators are the obstacle, there's no need to address what Jonathan Kozol 
calls the "savage inequalities" of our educational system and our society. 

In other words, despite its stated goals, the No Child Left Behind law 
represents a diminished vision of civil rights. Educational equity is reduced to 
equalizing test scores. The effect has been to impoverish the educational 
experience of minority students-that is, to reinforce the two-tier system of 
public schools that civil rights advocates once challenged. 

English-language learners, for example, are being fed a steady diet of 
test-prep, worksheets, and other "skill building" exercises from a menu mostly 
reduced to reading and math. Their language-learning needs are increasingly 
neglected by the marginalization of bilingual and even English-as-a-second-language 
instruction to make time for English language arts items likely to be on the 
test. Meanwhile, more-advantaged students are studying music, art, foreign 
languages, physical education, science, history, and civics, getting to read 
literature rather than endure phonics drills, and participating in field trips, 
plays, chess clubs, and debate tournaments-all "frills" that are routinely 
denied to children whose test scores have become life-or-death matters for 
educators' careers. 

Ironically, in numerous ways, No Child Left Behind is increasing the achievement 
gap, if academic achievement is understood as getting an all-round education 
and, with it, an equal chance to succeed in life. True civil rights advocates 
cannot and must not ignore the reality behind the rhetoric. 

James Crawford is the president of the Institute for Language and Education 
Policy (www.elladvocates.org), a nonprofit advocacy group in Takoma Park, Md. He 
can be reached at bilingualed@starpower.net.




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