No Child Left Behind: Convince me that it's a good thing

Great Debates
41

I am not discounting the scenario you are suggesting but on a conceptual basis that is easily addressed over time. To my knowledge, teachers unions aren’t objecting to the questions on the test, they are objecting to the test.

In the last 20 years I’ve watched the collapse of education in my country starting with the grading scale. I remember when grading on the curve was introduced in my school. It was obvious to me as a kid that this would mean a class could completely blow off school and still knock out good grades. Kids could get a 50% on a test and get an A. The teacher looks like a superhero for passing a bunch of morons. 12 years later little Johnny can’t make change.

42

I’d be interested in hearing these reasons. If it is considered too much of a hijack of this thread I’d be happy to participate in another focusing on these issues.

I have no problem with spending more money on the problems in education if anyone can show it is money well spent. Yes I understand and accept there are inefficiencies in government but that does not make it reasonable to throw good money after bad. The US (as shown in a link in one of my previous posts) is near the top in per pupil spending in the western world and near the bottom in the ability of students it turns out.

Personally I think the answer is not more money as such but rather a more equitable distribution of the money that is there. Many wealthy school districts have all they could ever need for their students and then some while poor school districts can struggle to get what most would consider the most basic of needs for the students. Unfortunately correcting this problem is probably one of the most difficult things to change of all the ideas being discussed here.

43

One of my professors always used to say this about school funding-having plenty of money for a school doesn’t guarantee success. But having very little money DOES guarantee failure.

44

How odd. None of my daughter’s high school classes were graded on a curve, honors or non-honors. For honors classes, the result was that many kids chose regular classes in order to improve their GPAs, which certainly did not help their education any. When I was in high school, 40 years ago, all my honors classes were graded on a curve, with a floor of 85 (A B+ - New York used odd numerical grades.) My high school had the highest test scores of any regular high school in New York.

All my classes at MIT were graded on a curve, by the way. There are times when it is very appropriate.

I suspect many teachers don’t object to the test, but to the inflexibiltity of NCLB. I have a friend who teaches elementary school near Phoenix, in a poor district. She has over 50% turnover a year. I’m sure the test results are very useful in measuring her teaching ability. :rolleyes:

45

Probably no need for a new thread. In short, teaching began, and still is to a large extent, a profession composed mostly of women. In the early days it was considered perfectly OK to pay women very little and to have onerous employment requirements such as remaining unmarried. Some of these practices, including pay inequality, remained until the 60’s and 70’s in some places. They were turned back largely through the work of unions.

Same thing for tenure. When one can be fired for getting married or pregnant - or more reasonably in the modern era - simply because the principal doesn’t cotton to you, one can see why some form of tenure is a good idea. Dismissal at whim is one thing in the business world where one stands a better chance of making some cash. But teachers… come on, give 'em a break.

Once again though, I say these practices should be modified to bring them up to date. And this is where I part ways with the unions - most would prefer no changes, which I think is part of the problem *. But still, one must take the history into account to understand how we got here with practices like tenure.

Show me how the money spent on the arts is well spent. Or on national security. It’s largely a matter of opinion. Standardized testing is just a dullard’s way of creating some data. Leave it to the professionals - they have a pretty good idea of when kids are learning and when they are drooling.

Agreed. Part of the problem is the idea of using property taxes. This practice needs to be gutted completely.

There are a lot of things about public education that are ridiculous. They’re just not the things people think they are. Anyone here know why kids have off during the summer?

Anyone?

Answer: Because of farming. Yes, here it is 2006, and we still give kids time off for the harvest. That is how forward thinking we are in education.

** My mother is a bigwig in a teacher’s union. When I have dinner with her and her cronies we generally end up in shouting matches. They seem to be opposed to ANY changes simply out of fear, which I think is silly. Then they accuse me of not knowing the history of why they are necessary. That’s when I bring up the farming… *

46

It will take more than that. In California a lot of the money goes to the state to be reallocated - according to a formula that maybe made sense when Prop 13 was passed. My school district gets badly screwed relevant to another, comparable, district which spent more per student when the formula was set. Changing the formula, I learned, is impossible, because the LA legislators would have to agree - and LA does very well under the present formula.

47

This is untrue. Like dalej42, I work for an educational testing firm. Because of non-disclosure I won’t tell you which specific states (but hey, google it if you want), but several states administer separate tests for special education students, and tests for students for whom English is not their first language.

Given you’ve confidently made the above statement, are you somehow under the impression that all children across the US receive the same test? There is no “No Child Left Behind Test.” States make their own tests, or they join up with other states and co-create a test and share the expense of developing and administering the test.

Given the fact that some states didn’t take money for Goals 2000 because they didn’t want to give up any curriculum autonomy, I doubt there were ever any serious discussions about a national test. There would have been a huge uproar, guaranteed.

48

I regret that my knowledge on the program, as it works outside of my local system, is very limited. I’ll answer as best as I can.

My understanding is that the agency which employs me is being paid through our school district. Whether it’s money that they have allocated out of their own budgets for NCLB compliance or federal NCLB money, I’m honestly not sure. My suspicion is that it is not in fact federal money, but I have no way of backing this up.

Our local system has set up something for its tutors not at all unlike what the federal NCLB program has done for local systems: if the students don’t improve, the system can refuse to pay the agencies they have hired.

As for the reason I attribute NCLB to the current success of these students, that has probably more to do with my own ego than any real truth of the situation, I suppose. Being a tutor, I feel that individualized education has a strong impact on these students’ lives. Being young, headstrong, and full of myself, I feel that if I could have a few hours a week with every English-speaking failing student, I could fix our education problems overnight. :slight_smile: Before NCLB, my clientele was pretty exclusive. Now I feel like I’m teaching everyone, and bringing the success that only the well-off could afford before to those who need it most.

Was there anything stopping an individualized tutoring solution before? I don’t think so, but our school system has chosen to meet the NCLB mandate in this way, and I think it’s the right way.

On a national level, I’m somewhat skeptical of the objectives set forth by the program. To use a sports analogy, it’s comparable in many ways to a football team’s coach telling his team before the game, “Okay, all we need is to get the ball and carry it in the direction of the goalposts.” I don’t think it’ll work on a national level as currently stated. However, I’m hopeful that as success stories begin to materialize from problem districts grasping at any solution they can find, other districts will emulate their methods. I’m not confident about it, but I’m hopeful.

49

Humanist, congratulations on a job well done! Think of the permanent difference you have made in the lives of those six students. That’s a very important job.

That is one of the problems with the NCLB. It doesn’t matter if the student speaks English. Maybe he just enrolled in the school yesterday after immigrating with a group from another country last week. That child must still take the test in English along with everyone else.

There are certain neighborhoods where the immigrants settle. The schools in those neighborhoods have a high need for classes that teach English as a second language – and that takes time. If a large number of students fail the standardized tests because they cannot read the test, does that mean that school should be closed?

And what about schools that are specifically for special needs children? They are not allowed to have special equipment to take the test. Should a school that teaches autistic children be closed while a school for the gifted remains open?

Within the schools themselves, how can the students’ successes on standardized tests be used to evaluate the skills of the teachers when some teachers have all honors classes and other teachers have all fundamental classes?

As for “unions,” the NEA is not a union, but it does protect teachers who might be fired for refusing to promote students socially just to make the principal’s records look better. (That’s just one example.)

monstro, I’ve answered all the wrong things. I do believe that students should have to pass various levels of standardized testing along the way. They should be given several chances at each level. And I believe in giving their teachers feedback from these tests so that they may help the students with concepts that they are having difficulty with.

I also believe in raising the standards for teachers. They should also have to pass standardized tests in their subject areas, educational psychology, reading comprehension, and writing skills. No more chime heads.

As the standards are raised, increase the salaries substantially to attract the gifted teachers. “Throw more money” at lowering classroom sizes. Throw still more money at paying people to do the clerical work that takes up valuable teaching time.

I’m wondering how many actual professional educators were involved in designing the NCLB program? Would non-medical people design a similar No Patient Left Behind program for hospitals across the United States? Hospitals that do cosmetic surgery would be more likely to remain open and hospitals for the terminally ill would be closed. :dubious:

It is late and my eyes are blurry. Please tell me spelling doesn’t count in this post.

50

So “Trust those in authority; they are experts, do not question them?” Interesting concept.

51

No, it’s more of “give the trained professionals some room to practice their profession.” The public doesn’t vote on how the computer programmers at my work do their trade. They don’t vote directly on how tax collectors take their cases. Nobody wants to crack down on the sanitation workers. I don’t think it’s useful to micromanage teachers through state or national level elections. All we can do that way is separate them from their ability to do their job to the best of their ability. It’s funny how people who normally argue against excess government regulation suddenly support it when teachers are mentioned.

There are very real problems in schools. Maybe more funding is not the answer, but it’s pretty damn clear that massively unequal funding is somewhere near the heart of the problem. I’ll take you on a short walk and I’ll show you one school where kids can take at least 4 honors/AP classes each year, and a school where there are two honors classes in the entire school. What school do you think is going to send more kids to college? The kids from school 2 can’t even compete…but thats okay because chances are they don’t have enough councilors to distribute important information like financial aid info and SAT dates. These inequalities are literally within a mile of each other, in public schools. While this shit goes on, our schools are gonna have problems.

52

It is true in my state, where I have one child in special ed, and my mother’s a teacher. I get to hear her complain about NCLB all the time, thanks. Given that it’s one of the most common complaints aired about NCLB, I’m confident it happens in other states as well. Does it happen in every state? I’ll take your word that it doesn’t, but that still doesn’t mean the practice is OK or useful.

No, nor did I mean to intimate so. Our state uses several standardized tests, all regional in nature. But subsets (ESL, Special Ed) still have to take the same test (in English) as every other student, and score in the same range to pass, and each subset must have over 90% of its members pass to satisfy NCLB.

53

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/02/16/bush.education.reut/index.html

54

Pretty much what I was going to say, so thank you.

I’ll just add that allowing professionals do their job is good advice elsewhere too. Look at the political appointees who mucked things up at FEMA. There is apparently evidence that if the advice of in-house professionals had been followed, the response to Hurricane Katrina might have been better.

Oversight is a good thing, but so is listening to people who have been practicing their craft for many years.