From: Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>
Date: Sat Apr 7, 2007 4:54:29 PM US/Pacific
To: ARN Main List <arn-l@interversity.org>, arn2-strategy
<arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [arn2-strategy] Another Senator Gets the NCLB Message from
Educators
Reply-To: arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com
DORGAN HEARS N.D.'s "NO CHILD" CONCERNS
(Fargo, ND) The Forum -- April 6, 2007
by Helmut Schmidt
By Sen. Byron Dorgan’s measures, the federal No Child Left Behind Act
deserves failing grades for its inflexible standards, inadequate
funding, and for penalizing good schools and teachers, even when
students show improvement.
If President Bush wants Congress to reauthorize his centerpiece
education program this summer, something’s got to give, Dorgan said
Thursday.
“Either we have to fix this or scrap it and start over,” Dorgan,
D-N.D.,
told a gathering of about 40 eastern North Dakota teachers, principals
and administrators. “To me, it’s important we try and get this right.”
Dorgan invited them to the Fargo Holiday Inn to get their opinions on
what needs to be changed.
He got an earful.
Several said the tests that determine whether schools have made
Adequate
Yearly Progress to avoid sanctions have schools and teachers focused on
teaching to the test, rather than encouraging deeper study and
creativity.
Schools are also penalized if they don’t make AYP when enough students
in any ethnic subgroups or special education students fail to make
enough progress, said Gary Clark, principal of West Fargo High School.
“The idea that we’re going to make 100 percent of these young people
successful is unrealistic,” said Paul Tefft, a social studies teacher
at
West Fargo High School.
At the same time, Tefft said “(No Child Left Behind) is going to
further
dumb down the courses, water down the content. Young people need to be
challenged.”
Bob Grosz, assistant superintendent for instruction for the Fargo
School
District, said schools should be judged on each student’s growth, not
just test scores, to account for differences between students with
learning disabilities and everyone else up to “the high fliers” who
need
extra challenges.
“Instead of AYP, it should be AYG, Adequate Yearly Growth,” Grosz said.
Karen Kuhn, who teaches learning disabled students at Fargo’s
Washington
Elementary, said some children come from families fractured by drug and
alcohol problems.
The children don’t get the support they need at home, “yet we expect
them to perform as well as others.”
Darrel Lund, a West Fargo Reading Recovery teacher, said there is a
need
for a national test to prevent some states from setting an artificially
low bar for students, while others set higher standards and get
penalized.
In addition, the tests may be high stakes for school districts, but
they’re an unwelcome pain for students, said Laura Dronen, a sophomore
at Fargo’s North High School.
“They’re not getting graded on it, so they don’t worry” about trying to
score well, she said.
Teachers also need a break, Tefft said, noting that the rules requiring
“highly qualified” teachers are structured so that 25 percent of
instructors will fail every year. “It’s silly.”
“Children aren’t widgets. I see teacher morale being affected,” said
Erin Mowers, a teacher at Fargo’s Centennial Elementary.
“This program deals very little with the personal growth of individual
students, when that is something we should be” focused on, Dorgan said
after the meeting.
He said “it stands logic on its head” to require special education
students to meet the same arbitrary standards that average students
must. “That’s a practical impossibility. Yet if they don’t succeed in
doing that, they lose the very funding” Congress authorizes for special
education.
No Child Left Behind was first approved in 2002. The law requires
schools to prove that a high percentage of students are proficient in
reading and writing for their grade levels and that they graduate on
time.
http://www.in-forum.com/News/articles/161874
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