Teachers don’t seem to like NCLB. I know this from lurking on education threads and from the bitching of teachers I know IRL. I fully admit that I have no informed opinion on this topic. I have a vague sense that it’s bad, but this feeling stems more from an anti-administration bias than facts and figures. I don’t know much about the policy or its impacts on children.
What I want to know is:
What’s so bad about NCLB, besides the horrible allegation in the linked article?
But more importantly, what’s good about it? Some might say that Bush deserves some props for at least having the cajones to tinker with education policy. It may not be perfect, but at least it’s something. But there has to be more tangible benefits to NCLB, right? Are there any Democratic-leaning Dopers who support NCLB? Are there Dopers who dislike the implementation of the policy but support its design and intentions?
It’s probably the worst policy to come down the pipeline in quite a long time. I’m not sure that there is anything good about it, at all. It uses high-stakes testing to a massive degree and gets in the way of many teachers being able to actually run their classes.
I can go on, if you’d like. Or point you to quite a few journal articles.
These tests are NOT unreasonable for a student to master before graduation or advancement to the next grade level. Look at the low scores. Can anyone seriously suggest that these students should graduate or be promoted?
There are many resources available to students who struggle with these tests. For high school graduation, students are given several chances to pass.
I’d be more likely to advocate stricter standards, not the tests themselves are too difficult.
I am generally in favor of education reform in the US. NCLB is a first step in that direction. Perfect? No certainly not. But a first step.
Honestly, the teacher unions are simply protectors of the status quo here. If we all agree American education needs to change, we will all find ourselves opposed by the unions. Their prescription for ‘change’ is more of the same. Lots more money especially.
NCLB is (sort of) like the national testing required by many European systems. Who has a better educational system, the US or France? (I admit Germany is more screwed up that a soup sandwich.)
NCLB is an attempt to make the education system accountable, measurable. It will allow society to see which schools, systems and teachers work, and which do not. Needless to say the unions oppose any attempt along these lines.
I am no fan of George Bush but I will give him credit for at least trying something with regard to school reform. Unfortunately the NCLB program was doomed to failure from the moment it was passed.
One of the problems (there are more to be sure) is NCLB does not address some of the root causes of failure in our education system. I like the notion of schools/teachers being held to performance standards just as most any endeavor you can think of is. If you (generic “you”) consistently turn out a poor performance then you should be held accountable (lose your job, go out of business, etc.). Unfortunately NCLB imposed penalties for poor performance without addressing underlying causes of poor performance. Causes that are often quite difficult to fix (poverty/various other social causes for one). All of a sudden schools/teachers had to hit some benchmarks but had little in the way of tools to achieve those benchmarks. Add that to a loophole happy, bureaucratic heavy program and it results in more chaos than anything else.
I do not see any meaningful school reform happening till teachers’ unions are done away with (at least the NEA and AFT) along with teacher tenure. Rein in local school boards (i.e. severly curtail their meddling). It would also be nice to see more equitable funding of school districts but that may be hardest of all. End any semblance of “social promotions” (getting local school boards out of the way should help with this).
Let all that trickle through the system for a bit, see where things stand and then start considering some of these other proposals (if still necessary).
The biggest failure of NCLB is that it uses the old tried and true carrot and stick method to get results. In this case it fails because schools will move Heaven and Earth to make sure that they don’t lose that money due to failure, so they teach the test at the expense of everything else. The joke’s on the kids, though, because the Federal government underfunds education anyway, so all of the hardscrabbling for dollars is wrecking childrens’ education for a few measly bucks.
If you want me to convince you that NCLB is a good thing you’re wasting your time. It’s not even a positive first step. The school voucher program is much better and vastly more flexible. Schools will improve the moment they start losing people. In addition, the schools should have the right, nay, the obligation, to tell parents to STFU and actually discipline the children in their care. Retaking the classroom is the first step to fixing the “problem”. That, of course, assumes that there was a problem. I’ve never really seen it identified in concrete terms, just vague allusions and innuendo. There is a problem now, but is that because of the attempted cure? I dunno.
The above is my impression of how it all works. I could be wrong, your mileage may vary, caveat emptor, etc.
I suppose the biggest problem with the NCLB is that it applies to states in different ways. Truthfully, the problems faced by schools in Michigan and Texas might not be similiar and likewise the solutions to those problems will also be different. We have a ridiculous situation where funds are tied into how well students perform on a standarized test so schools jump through hoops to ensure that their students will pass them. Never mind if they’re getting a good education just make sure they pass that test!
We should radically alter the way we handle a variety of school functions but I don’t believe teachers, school boards, or the states themselves have any interest in radically altering the educational system.
Yes, agreed. Like some other posters have said I definitely think we need reform, but a system that just insures teachers are going to be “teaching the test” isn’t what we need.
I guess I like the “spirit” behind NCLB, in that there should be some change, but not the real specifics. In fact I don’t actually know anyone in real life who supports NCLB. My biggest opposition to it is that it’s an unfunded mandate, and one that does nothing to help children to boot.
I do think the school voucher program is a better step than this. Less students = teachers getting laid off and eventually schools closing and consolidations. And the school voucher program would have parents actually weighing the totality of their kids’ school, not just test scores like NCLB does.
I still have deep problems with the school voucher program, mainly because eventhough it may work out better for the kids that use the vouchers, I’m not sure taking money away from public schools is the best way to fix public schools.
There definitely is a problem and has been a problem when American schoolchildren can’t find Iraq on a map and rank behind several third-world countries in basic skills like mathematics.
Hell, there was a newspaper article here awhile back (around the 2000 campaign time period) about a 21 year old kid who graduated the school system here 3 years earlier and was illiterate, couldn’t read or function in the literate world.
There’s serious problems when someone like that is given a diploma and the school system considers him sufficiently educated to receive one.
For me, the biggest problem with NCLB is that it mandates that over 90% of children in special ed be testing at grade level. Excuse me? The very definition of “Special Ed” is that students test at least a grade level below where their IQ tests say they should! How does it make sense that suddenly they should be passing at grade level? If they did, they would no longer be Special Ed!
My kid’s school sent home a letter that said they failed NCLB two years in a row, so our kid is now eligible to transfer to any other middle school in the district - except that the other middle schools in the district failed as well, so he can’t transfer after all. So now funding is going to be cut - how are they supposed to improve the entire district with less funds and still have tests to teach to?
I can’t begin to defend NCLB. I’m thrilled to hear that my mother’s district (she teaches 6th grade) told the feds to eff off - they’re refusing federal money so as to not take NCLB tests.
No Child Left Behind is single-handledly responsible for turning my ex-girlfriend’s father, a high school principal, from a staunch Republican into a Bush-hating independent. So that’s one good thing, anyway.
It’s more stick than carrot…indeed I am not sure where the carrot is in NCLB.
I am also not sure how the Feds are really threatening anything with the power of the purse. According to the bit below the Feds account for 7.3% of all education funding…hardly overwhelming.
The sad thing is the United States ranks near the top in spending per pupil and near the bottom in test scores compared to other countries (about 2/3 of the way down the linked page is the table that illustrates this). It would seem throwing money at the problem is not necessarily useful (and do not get started on teacher salaries…they are paid fairly well).
As for the issue of “teaching to the test” I believe NCLB only measures literacy and math. I’ll grant those are probably the two most overtly useful needs a person can obtain from an education but they are by no means all of it. I wonder how many other subjects get the short end of the stick when schools focus so heavily on just those two subjects?
With vouchers I think they look good on paper but fail miserably in the real world. Assuming kids can up and choose their schools exactly where do you expect them to all go? In Chicago high schools easily exceed 2000 students. You simply cannot unload all of those students elsewhere as other schools simply do not have the capacity for them (not to mention you still need the teachers to teach them so may just be moving the part of the problem around without solving anything). And I guarantee you some nice, wealthy districts will definitely find a way to block underprivileged kids from rubbing shoulders with their kids.
On top of that how do the kids get there? Schoolbusses cannot take kids hither and yon to whatever school they choose. In rural areas there simply may not be another choice within anything approaching a reasonable distance of the kid’s homes.
Then you have funding issues. In Illinois for instance spending per pupil in a poor area may be a third of what it is in a wealthy district. If all the kids go to wealthy school districts education costs would soar.
Standardized testing is the other side of the coin of standardized learning. Or put another way, established learning. If you compare the school books that my parents used vs what kids are using today it is easier to understand what’s going on. In my parents era, math was taught in a no-nonsense strait forward manner. There was no grading on the curve. 2+2 equaled 4. Addition and multiplication tables were memorized at an early age.
Today my nephews are the recipients of 8 different ways to add 2+2. That’s not an exaggerating. When I asked about this I was told that different children learn things differently. Great, now my nephews can’t do math with the proficiency of their grandparents because they were exposed to 8 methods of addition instead of concentrating on doing 1 correctly. A hundred years of successful teaching methodology out the window. At age 10 their handwriting is worse than a 6-year-old and the school doesn’t see this as a problem. I guess calculators and keyboards can fill in for these antiquated skills but there doesn’t appear to be any replacement skills to justify the “advances” made in education.
Standardized testing creates a benchmark for students to reach. I hear people say that teachers are now forced to “teach to the test” as if this is a bad thing. I couldn’t disagree more. We need to be competitive on a World level and it requires benchmarks. What would accelerate this process would be an elimination of the grading curve so kids know where they really stand. They need to know that they are on track so that they can continue in their chosen fields after high school. The Governor in my state just announced his intentions to raise the bar of skills needed to get into state schools. I predict the teachers union will try to stop him.
As I understand it “teaching to the test” is bad because rather than teaching a deeper and broader understanding of math/reading kids are taught only (or at least mostly) what they need to know to pass the test.
I don’t think you quite understand what “teach to the test” means. Basically, it doesn’t matter if Johnny learned anything, except what’s on the test, and how to pass it. And it doesn’t even matter if he remembers it, so long as he passes the test.
Please see my cites above for examples of standardized tests that are give to students. The material on these tests is typical of what would ordinarily be taught in the appropriate grade.
Also, please note that a perfect score is hardly required to pass these tests. Look at the examples of low scoring papers and ask yourself if you believe this child should be promoted?
I think you are missing the point. No one is saying testing is bad in and of itself but when a teacher’s job is on the line based on how many students pass the test they may teach only what is need to eke out a passing grade to their students.
Ever cram for a test in school? Basically you stuffed your head with short term info to get by and generally forgot most of it within days. Same idea and the student is ultimately not served well by this.
I think it would be better to test kids a grade later for the previous grade. For example, give a 9th grade student a math test that focuses on 8th grade math 6 months after leaving 8th grade. This puts enough time between the teacher and the test to see if any of it really sunk in.
I’m sorry, but I’m a but confused about this post. Are you saying that the “special ed” label has been overused and applied to kids who don’t really have learning disabilities? I don’t mean to sound like an idiot, but I actually am confused about the meaning of the post.
The problem isn’t the content of the tests — they’re mind-numbingly simple, usually, and I agree that if a student can’t pass them, it’s a sign that all is not well.
The problem is more that it is much easier to evaluate a school if you just have one yardstick (test scores) that reduce the school to numbers, the same yardstick for every school. That eliminates a lot of pesky, time-consuming investigation. Basically, it’s like all zero-tolerance policies everywhere. In principle, it’s a good idea, but the devil is in the details, like assuming everyone in grade X should be performing at level X. We all know there’s a problem, but NCLB is part of a larger process to rubber-stamp a one-size-fits-all solution.
There are two tensions at war in education today: standardization of tests and of curriculum, so that it’s easier for the evaluators, and the older model (still used by most colleges) which relies on competent in-classroom specialists to determine the curriculum and how it’s taught. There needs to be a balance: if no one happens to like teaching fractions, little Johnny will never learn them, but if the system is too micro-managed then teachers can’t teach to their strengths or innovate.
A problem with NCLB is that the single all-encompassing means of evaluation, testing, doesn’t really assess the education situation. It’s a spot-check of what students know (although there are some very minor problems with that, too), but it tells you nothing about why they got that way: are the teachers incompetent boobs? Is it that the students are lazy and dull? Not enough textbooks written to go around? Anti-intellectual culture among the children or their families? Too many teachers quitting mid-year due to high stress and low pay? Too large a class size?
So although it gives data on what’s wrong, well, we already know it’s SOMETHING, we just don’t know how to fix it. My own experience (college teaching) is that it’s very hard for students to assess where they would benefit from help, very hard to ask for it (logistically and psychologically), and very easy to get lost in the sea of people and bureaucracy.