Re: lunacy

[aburke5054@aol.com]

You are making an argument of the form, "Imagine NCLB is a terrible 
thing. Therefore it is a terrible thing." This was not a particularly 
convincing argument the first time you made it and it has not gained 
strength by repetition, no matter how much sense it might make to your 
flock of conspiracy theorists.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: GERALD BRACEY <gbracey1@verizon.net>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Mon, 15 May 2006 10:05:13 -0400
Subject: [arn-l] lunacy

 For the inmates that missed it the first time around, here's my 
attempt absolute, complete, totally lunatic attempt to morph NCLB into 
a plot against public education. It appeared in the Fall, 2004 issue of 
Dissent Magazine. Gotta run now, bay at the moon for a while.
Jerry

-----------------------



THE PERFECT LAW:
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND AND THE ASSAULT ON
PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Gerald W. Bracey

 Gerald W. Bracey is an associate professor of education at George 
Mason University and an associate of the High/Scope Educational 
Research Foundation. His most recent book is Setting the Record 
Straight: Responses to Misconceptions About Public Education in the U. 
S., Second Edition (Heinemann, September 2004).


 Imagine a law that would transfer hundreds of billions of dollars a 
year from the public sector to the private sector, reduce the size of 
government, and wound or kill a large Democratic power base. Impossible 
you say. The law exists. It is Title I of the Elementary and Secondary 
Education Act of 2001, better known as the No Child Left Behind law 
(NCLB).

 The Bush Administration has oft been accused of Orwellian double-speak 
in naming its programs and NCLB is a masterpiece of a law to accomplish 
the opposite of what it apparently intends. While claiming to be the 
law that--finally!--improves public education, NCLB, in fact, sets up 
public schools to fail setting the stage for private education 
companies to move in on the $400 billion spent annually on K-12 
education ($500 billion according to recent statements by Secretary of 
Education Rod Paige). The consequent destruction or reduction of public 
education would shrink government and cripple or eliminate the 
teachers' unions, nearly 5 million mostly Democratic voters. A law to 
drool over if you're Karl Rove or Grover Norquist. The Perfect Law, in 
fact, as in The Perfect Storm.

 It doesn't look that way at first glance. Indeed, NCLB appears to be a 
law that flies in the face of all that the Bush administration stands 
for. That administration has tried to deregulate and outsource 
virtually everything it touches. Yet from this most deregulatory of 
administration comes NCLB laying 1100 pages of law and reams of 
regulations on public schools. But those pages are just the law's shiny 
surface to blind onlookers and confuse them.

 The principal instrumentality for accomplishing this amazing end is 
called Adequate Yearly Progress or AYP. All schools that accept Title I 
money from the feds are compelled by the law to show AYP. If they 
don't, they are labeled "failing schools." The official tag is "in need 
of improvement" but no one outside of the U. S. Department of Education 
uses that term. “Failing school” is the label of the day.

 The concept of AYP in Title I is not new, but NCLB yokes it to 
sanctions that become increasingly punitive with each consecutive year 
of failure. These sanctions alone should have been a clue to Democrats 
that the law was not what it said it was--punishment is not an 
effective means to achieve either individual or institutional change.

 NCLB requires not only that each school make AYP, but also that each 
of many subgroups make AYP. For many schools, once test scores are 
disaggregated by gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, special 
education and English Language Learners, there are 37 separate 
categories. All must categories must make AYP. If one fails, the school 
fails. Not surprisingly, a study found that more diverse schools were 
more likely to fail--the odds that one group doesn't make it are 
against them. Even if all sub-groups make AYP, it only counts if 95 
percent of the kids in each group showed up on test day. If not, the 
school fails.

 AYP works like this: All schools must test all students every year in 
grades three through eight in reading and math (and in a couple of 
years, science as well) and test one high school grade. For these 
tests, each state established a baseline of achievement. Its plan for 
AYP must be such that by the year 2014, 100 percent of the state's 
children achieve at the "proficient" level. At the moment, each state 
defines "proficient," but that will likely change. More about that 
anon. For some states, the progress from baseline to end state is a 
straight line. Other states have an accelerating curve with little 
required initially but a great deal of improvement required as the 
witching year of 2014 approaches.

 How realistic is a goal of 100 percent proficient? Well, at the 2004 
convention of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the 
California Department of Education presented projections indicating 
that by 2014, 99 percent of its schools would be failing. In fact, this 
projection appears to be optimistic. It was predicated on assumptions 
about how fast test scores will improve. So far, these assumptions are 
not being met.

 A reader might say, "Yes, but that is California. California is so 
educationally awful that it inspired a John Merrow PBS special, ‘From 
First to Worst: The Rise and Fall of California's Public Schools.’" And 
it is true that in the National Assessment of Educational Progress' 
2003 reading assessment California was at the bottom: 49th at the 
fourth grade level and tied with Hawaii for 50th at the eighth grade.

 But consider a 2004 headline in the St Paul Pioneer Press: "All 
Minnesota Left Behind?" The article beneath the headline described a 
report from the state's Legislative Auditor projecting that by 2014, 80 
percent of Minnesota's schools would be failing and that many of them 
would have failed for five consecutive years, a condition that 
unleashes the most draconian of NCLB's sanctions.

 Academically, Minnesota is not California. In the Third International 
Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), 25 of 41 participating nations 
outscored California in mathematics and only four (Iran, Kuwait, 
Colombia and South Africa) scored lower (the remaining 12 scored about 
the same). In science 20 scored higher and six scored lower. For 
Minnesota, the numbers are quite different. Only 6 of the 41 nations 
outscored Minnesota in math and only one outscored it in science.

 This leaves us with the condition that 80 percent of the schools in a 
state that outscores virtually the entire world will be labeled in a 
few years as failures.

 Why would anyone foist such a draconian system on the public schools? 
To answer this question we must go back to the original legislation and 
note that it contained Bush-backed voucher amendments. If passed in 
this form, students would have been able to use these vouchers at any 
school that would accept them.

 Congress struck the voucher provisions from the law. In the 2000 
elections, voucher referenda in California and Michigan had suffered 
70-30 defeats. The defeats were unusually decisive and not just because 
of the margins. Milton Friedman had argued that voucher efforts lose 
because, although the voucher proposals are “well thought out and 
initially warmly received, the educational 
establishment--administrators and teachers' unions--then launches an 
attack that is notable for its mendacity but is backed by much larger 
financial resources than the proponents can command and succeeds in 
killing the proposals."

 In the 2000 referenda, though, advocates outspent opponents--in 
California by 2 to 1--and the outcome was still not close. The public 
at large decisively rejected the concept of vouchers in one liberal and 
one conservative state. After these referenda, even ardent voucher 
advocates such as Harvard's Paul Peterson opined that vouchers would be 
of interest only to a small proportion--perhaps five percent--of 
parents, mostly those with kids in inner city schools. Congress decided 
that they had no place in NCLB.

 If Bush succeeds in his re-election campaign, vouchers will be back. 
Actually, they already are. Bush proposed a $75 million voucher program 
for a half-dozen cities. Congress trimmed it to a $15 million program 
for only the District of Columbia. The proposal passed the House by a 
single vote but was repeatedly rejected by the Senate until it was 
attached to a $328 billion omnibus spending bill. Even Democrats who 
opposed vouchers thought that law too important to kill just to keep 
vouchers out of the District. The bill passed 65-28. A second-term Bush 
will no doubt broaden the scope of voucher proposals.

 Vouchers, of course, send money to private schools and remove money 
from public schools. At present, the principal beneficiaries of 
vouchers are religious schools, especially Catholic schools. In 
Cleveland, one of two cities with ongoing, tax-funded voucher programs, 
96 percent of voucher-using students attend church-affiliated schools 
and 67 percent attend Catholic schools.

 The DC program will offer a child up to $7500 per year, but the elite 
privates in the DC area charge more than $20,000 tuition. Independent 
private schools have also shown no interest in vouchers out of fear 
that government money will lead to government control.
 Catholic schools, on the other hand, charge much less and have been 
hemorrhaging students. In 1960, Catholic schools accounted for 12.4% of 
all students. In 2000, 4.7 percent. The Catholic connection was made 
clear when Bush made his strongest pitch for the DC voucher proposal in 
the East Room of the White House to 250 members National Catholic 
Education Association, in town to mark their 100th anniversary. It 
could be seen as a cynical ploy to buy the Catholic vote in November.

 Thus, after the 2000 elections, even voucher proponents concluded that 
the middle classes were pretty much satisfied with their schools. To 
make vouchers attractive to the middle classes, some way would have to 
be found to drive a wedge between the parents and their public schools 
and shatter that satisfaction. AYP's impossible standards provide the 
way. At the AERA convention mentioned earlier, representatives from the 
Boulder Valley School District, the district that surrounds the 
University of Colorado at Boulder, reported that parents were surprised 
when some of their "good" schools failed. It causes, the researchers 
said, "dissonance" in the parents. One can only wonder how the 
dissonance will clang louder as the number of failing schools grows 
exponentially over time. Already the law appears to be taking its toll. 
A June, 2004 survey by Educational Testing Service found that in 2001, 
8 percent of parents gave public schools an A and 35 percent gave them 
a B. In 2004, the figures were down to 2 percent and 20 percent, 
respectively. A program that fails all schools, provides no information 
on how to improve any of them, but, then, improvement is not the goal.

 Presently, there are few non-religious schools to receive vouchers, 
but if the vouchers are there, one can expect the for-profit 
Educational Management Organizations to expand and come calling 
(currently, there are 53 such companies managing 461 schools). Indeed, 
the first overbearingly ambitious plan from the largest such company, 
Edison Schools, Inc., depended on Bush's father and his father’s 
secretary of education, Lamar Alexander, successfully advocating 
vouchers. (Alexander was a former paid consultant to and board member 
of Edison’s then-parent company, Whittle Communications). Edison's 
founder, Chris Whittle, had planned to have 1000 private schools by 
2000, and that plan hinged on Bush pere and Alexander pushing vouchers 
through congress (though it was never mentioned in any Edison press 
releases). When Bush lost to Clinton, the plan came a cropper and left 
Whittle managing a few schools, not owning 1000. But Chris Whittle is 
an ambitious man and if the vouchers are there, he will come.

 One can get some sense of where people think NCLB will lead by looking 
at what is being said about it by organizations that should, 
ideologically, oppose it. In 1996, for example, the Heritage 
Foundation, whose mission statement says it promotes free enterprise 
and limited government, condemned federal intrusion into education as a 
"liberal solution." Yet, this organization, once dubbed by a Slate 
editor Michael Kinsley "right-wing propaganda machine," not only 
endorses NCLB, but also brags that one of its policy analysts, Krista 
Kafer, "produced two papers that helped define the lines of debate" 
over NCLB.

 The most ardent voucher proponent in academia, without doubt, is 
Harvard's Paul Peterson, also a senior fellow at the Hoover 
Institution. Hoover proudly announced that Peterson, along with Erik 
Hanushek, another senior fellow, had been named to a Bush-sponsored 
National Education Panel to evaluate NCLB.

 The Eagle Forum's Phyllis Schlafly contended "the tests mandated by 
NCLB had ripped back the curtain and exposed a major national problem." 
But, she went on, NCLB wouldn't do much about that problem. We need 
"innovative solutions to introduce competition into the monopoly 
system." Vouchers, in other words.

 With the voucher-touting Right solidly lined up in favor of NCLB, 
shouldn't the Center and the Left but just a bit suspicious of it?

 For its part, the Department of Education sent Secretary Paige to both 
the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute to praise 
choice, NCLB and the DC voucher program.

 Even with each state having a unique definition of proficient, the 
situation means that most schools fail. But it will likely get worse. 
If each state has a unique definition, no two states can be compared. 
Lack of comparability alone would make some people uncomfortable, but 
some of the early results seemed, well, anomalous. In the first 
estimate of how many schools would fail, Michigan found itself home to 
1500, while Arkansas had none. This finding did not produce, so far as 
is known, a stampede of Michigan parents seeking to educate their 
children in the Razorback state.

 Thus, there will be pressure to seek a common yardstick which, in this 
most normative of nations, will let people compare the states. It 
exists. It is called the National Assessment of Educational Progress 
(NAEP). NAEP reports results two ways: in terms of scores on the tests 
and in terms of what percentage of the students attained its three 
"achievement levels," basic, proficient (the magic word) and advanced. 
Secretary Paige has already said that he will use the discrepancy 
between NAEP and state test results to shame the states into better 
performance (ironically, the biggest discrepancy turned up in Texas, 
where Paige had been superintendent of Houston public schools. Texas 
said 91 percent of its 8th-graders were proficient in math, NAEP said 
24 percent).

 The result from Texas gives some idea of the problem: The NAEP 
achievement levels are ridiculously high. In the 2003 math assessment, 
for instance, only 32 percent of the nation's fourth graders reached 
the proficient level. Even in high-scoring Minnesota, only 42% were 
designated proficient (for some minorities, nationally, the percentage 
proficient fell as low as 5 (five) percent). American fourth graders 
were well above average on the TIMSS math test, and third in the world 
in science. But only about a third showed up as proficient on NAEP math 
and science tests administered the same year. Kids who are virtually on 
top of the world are not proficient? Makes no sense.

 And it gets worse. The NAEP levels are not only ridiculously high, 
they are "fundamentally flawed," to use the words of the National 
Academy of Sciences. The NAEP achievement levels have been examined and 
found wanting by the National Center for Research in Evaluation Student 
Standards and Testing, the National Academy of Education, the National 
Academy of Sciences, the General Accounting Office, and individual 
psychometricians. The reports say that the process is fundamentally 
flawed, confusing, internally inconsistent, and lacking in evidence for 
validity. These conclusions would condemn any proposed commercial test 
to the trash bin. But NAEP chugs along ignoring the flaws. Having many 
students score low has political uses.

 If NAEP comes to be the common yardstick, the dissonance in people's 
minds will only increase because the NAEP standards insure that no one 
will ever attain 100% proficiency for any group. Asian American 
students score considerably higher than other ethnic groups in math, 
but on the 2003 NAEP math assessment, their best performance was 48 
percent proficient at the 8th grade. In his AERA presidential address 
in 2003, Robert Linn of the University of Colorado estimated that we 
could have all 12th-graders proficient in math in 166 years.

 There are many other problems with NCLB that are smaller and of a more 
technical nature. For instance, the role of summer loss in poor 
students but not middle class or affluent students, meaning that some 
schools that do well during the school year will not make AYP because 
of what happens when they are closed. Or the impact of the "choice 
option." Students in schools that have failed for two consecutive years 
must be offered the option of choosing another school. This requirement 
leads to logistical nightmares--currently Chicago must offer the option 
to 200,000 students but has only 500 spaces--and to peculiar 
alterations in the schools test scores. Purportedly, the choice option 
must be offered first to the "neediest" students, namely those with the 
lowest test scores. But if these kids leave, the sending school's 
average score goes up through no merit of its own. At the other end, 
the receiving school will find it harder to maintain AYP with these 
incoming hard-core non-achievers.

 And no one seems to have thought much about mobility. In some schools, 
the kids in the building in May are not the kids who were there in 
September. How, then, can the school be held accountable for their 
performance?

 Although private companies are not yet taking over schools, they are 
already cashing in on the law. The law makes provisions for “secondary 
providers”—private firms—to tutor low-scoring students and provide 
other services. The Wall Street Journal estimated that there are some 
$24.3 billion for companies to lust after in aid to high-poverty 
schools, reading programs, technology improvements, and building and 
running charter schools. Educational Testing Service vice president 
Sharon Robinson is said to have called NCLB the test publishers’ full 
employment act.

 The big problem with NCLB, though, remains that its intent is the 
opposite of what it claims. Former assistant secretary of education, 
Chester E. Finn, Jr., once said, “The public education system as we 
know it has proved that it cannot reform itself. It is an ossified 
government monopoly.” As the pre-ordained casualties from NCLB mount, 
The Chester Finns, George W. Bushes and the aforementioned think tanks 
on the Right will intensify their attacks on the “government monopoly” 
while holding vouchers as the solution use. If their attacks on public 
schools are successful, NCLB will indeed have proved to be The Perfect 
Law.





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