Re: [eddra] [ HuffingtonPost.com ] Recommendation: The Zero Percent Chance of 100 Percent Success

[aburke5054@aol.com]

  NCLB was not designed to create perfect schools. It was designed to spur action in a system that had too many holes - holes that too many poor children, minority children, children with disabilities, and children relatively new to English fell through. It would of course help to have better tests, but it is far more important to make better use of the tests we have now, than to delay action until we have a full panoply of  "multiple-measures," "growth models," "exhibitions, performances, and portfolios," and the rest of the things that show up on quixotic assessment wish-lists. 
 
 The claim that NCLB "punishes" schools and a better approach would "assist" them is nonsense that reflects either intent to deceive or egregious misunderstanding of public education. NCLB makes demands on public education. When schools don't make AYP, it is public education that is responsible for improving them. For the most part, that means states have to take action. States, however, have perverse disincentives to taking action: They don't know what to do, they don't want to take on the task of working with schools that have lots of problems, they don't want to spend more money, and, not least, they don't want to rock the boats of people who work in schools. These roadblocks to getting the job done in schools don't pop up because of the way we are currently testing or the stakes we currently attach to test results and changing testing won't change them a bit. 
 
 Finally, the notion that people in the civil rights community who support NLCB do so simply because no one has explained to them how destructive NCLB is seems to me incredibly condescending and disrespectful.
 
 Art 
   
  -----Original Message-----
 From: monty@fairtest.org
 To: arn-l@interversity.org; arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com; eddra@yahoogroups.com
 Sent: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 3:34 PM
 Subject: Re: [eddra] [ HuffingtonPost.com ] Recommendation: The Zero Percent Chance of 100 Percent Success
 
       I fear the obvious fact that the NCLB goal is impossible does not matter to a number of people who cannot be decried as privatizers out to wreck public education. Rather, some see NCLB has a means of putting attention on schools and the need for progress, thus the goal as a valued aspiration. As such, it would not do much harm. It is the the combined reduction of the goal to test scores and the sanctions attached for failing to make AYP (not make the impossible) that render the goal destructive.    Thus, we need to be more effective than we have been in two areas: First, so long as high stakes are attached to tests, corruption of teaching and undermining learning will occur, to the detriment most of all of those students whom the law is most intended to help and whom these unnamed proponents of NCLB (civil rights folks, mostly) seek to help. Second, there are rational ways to push states and districts to more funding equity and adequacy, to deployment of resources, to having rational expectations for learning progress as indicated by multiple sources of evidence. Such an approach must focus on assistance rather than punishment.    I think the Forum on Education Accountability document Redefining Accountability has done the best job thus far on point 2 (http://www.edaccountability.org/pdf/FEA-CapacityBuilding.pdf). There is a lot on point 1 available.   Questions thus are, how best to reach and persuade some of these folks (mostly civil rights activists, but some others as well) so they will not simply call for renewing this destructive law. And what ways of phrasing this issue will they hear and understand, positively react to. The more such folks we win over, the easier it is to win the battle over whether NCLB is or is not a "civil rights" law.   Monty Neill FairTest      ----- Original Message -----  From: gbracey1@verizon.net  To: eddra@yahoogroups.com  Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 4:25 PM Subject: [eddra] [ HuffingtonPost.com ] Recommendation: The Zero Percent Chance of 100 Percent Success 
      gbracey1@verizon.net has just sent you a piece from HuffingtonPost.com A couple of days ago Bob Linn told legislators reaching 100% proficiency was impossible. Here's a play off that hearing. Jerry Gerald Bracey: The Zero Percent Chance of 100 Percent Success Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/../../gerald-bracey/the-zero-percent-chance-o_b_43506.html  "There is a zero percent chance that we will ever reach a 100 percent target," said Bob Linn at the March 13 joint House-Senate hearing on the No Child Left Behind law. ... Read the rest at HuffingtonPost.com   © 2006 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.   -- Powered by Movable Type Version 3.2 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/      __._,_.___    Messages in this topic  (2)    Reply  (via web post)  |  Start a new topic    Messages | Files | Photos | Links | Database | Polls | Calendar       
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