What good does No Child Left Behind do?

Great Debates
41

Dogzilla pointed out that it must have been a state or district test since NCLB is only grades 3-10, but my wife taught kindergarten and it was on the test she had to give her students.

I will admit that I don’t have a copy of the test with me to give you the title or anything like that. (I think the answer they were looking for was something like “It reflects sunlight” which is quite simple when you think of it that way.)

Overall NCLB is one of those things that looks really good on paper and has great intentions, but just has other faults that show up when practiced. For example, the denied resources Left Hand of Dorkness mentioned. In the process of trying to leave no kid behind, you involuntarily prevent other kids from getting too far ahead. The district I’m in recently closed a building that housed their Able and Talented program that I went to part time (many, many years ago) where we did cool things like build bridges out of toothpicks and test them, write radio programs including sound effects, study science fiction and horror stories, and lots more. Oh well.

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Discussions of NCLB always bring Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” to mind. :wink:

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That may be but under Federal law a student on an IEP can stay in school until graduation or until they turn 22. In fact, in my special education concentration for my master’s we studied this specifically since usually it is transition specialists that handle the 18-22 year old students.

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One of the other bad things about NCLB is that it has no allowance for assholes. I know that when I was in high school, if you told me I had to take a series of tests that the school would be graded on, and that there was absolutely zero impact on me or my life if I tanked the tests…well, you can guess what my compatriots and I would have done. That’s why the Common Core is so much better. We can directly link it to grades, we can remediate and retest, and it is geared to determining where the kid is educationally, not just whether or not she has passed a benchmark.

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OK, I’ll take your word for it since your wife taught that specific grade level and you relayed what she said. Seems to be a high level of thought expected from that age group considering how poorly high school students are doing.

I understand that they made a project out of a simple idea which was to certify the kids actually learned something. It should have been a function of doing away with grading curve and not advancing students who didn’t master the skills of each grade level. Who’d a thunk the gubment could screw up something so simple.

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Here’s a thought, about that kindergarten test item.

On Florida’s test, the test developers are careful to include an even mix of item difficulty and cognitive complexity within the items.

Item difficulty is based on past field-test statistics. An item is thought to be difficult if, statistically, fewer than 40 of all students can answer correctly. It’s moderate if between 40 and 70% can answer correctly and considered “easy” if more than 70 percent of students answer correctly. So, on any given test, 1/3 are easy, 1/3 are moderate, and 1/3 are difficult items.

Cognitive complexity is a little different–it refers to the cognitive demand associated with an item. Low cognitive complexity items are those where the student only has to solve a one-step problem. (“Add 2 + 2.”) Moderate complexity may require several steps (“Solve this equation for X and then plot it on a graph.”) High complexity items may require students to analyze and synthesize information and possibly even draw a conclusion that is not immediately apparent. (“Tom is laying tile in his kitchen, which is laid out like this [graphic of kitchen floor plan]. The tiles come from the store 12 to a box and are 18” by 18". The dimensions of sides Y and Z of the room are 12’ and 14’. What is the dimension for side X, in inches and how many boxes of tiles will Tom need to cover the entire floor with tiles? How many tiles will Tom have left over?") Same as item difficulty, the tests in FL will be comprised of about 1/3 high complexity, 1/3 moderate, and 1/3 low complexity.

So if the school district in question was using Norman Webb’s Cognitive Complexity theory, and/or the district was trying to collect data on item difficulty, it’s possible this item was categorized as both high cognitive complexity and as a difficult item and should not be construed as indicative of the complexity and difficulty for all items on the same test. And again, it’s possible the item assesses a benchmark for which kindergarten students are indeed taught the concept, on their level, using words and ideas they could understand.

TL: DR, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because one item on one test sounds like it’s too hard for students at that grade level, doesn’t mean it is and that doesn’t mean all the items are like that.

Silenus: Your post made me :smiley: because I was like that too. Fortunately, the state put teeth into the high school test: If students can’t pass the Grade 10 Reading or Algebra tests, they don’t get to graduate. All the other tests, however, are not reported to the feds and would therefore be free game for screwing over your Biology teacher, especially if you hated that teacher and her pay or bonus was based on her student’s scores.

Standard Disclaimer: Not all states run the same show, so YMMV, etc.

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Ha. For the last ten years in Texas, graduation has been dependent on eleventh grade scores, but NCLB looks at tenth. It’s amazing how a cohort grows when they suddenly give a damn.

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:smiley:

:: like ::

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On the kindergarten sun moon test thing:
Was this a kindergarten only test, or was the same test used for many grades.

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+1
Where is the “like” button?

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I think just kindergarten. IIRC there’s testing for every grade. They were probably supposed to teach about the sun and moon and all that stuff, but they wanted to be sure all the kids knew the alphabet, could write their name, and could count to 100 first.

I asked my wife what she though about NCLB and she said one of the good thing to come of it was it created a way to follow performance and changes in performance over time. She said they just need to toss out everything else and keep the framework of “have the kids take a test to see where they are;” having those results linked to so many things is a bad idea.

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Isn’t it common in testing to throw in a few questions you don’t expect most people to be able to answer, in order to catch people who go above and beyond? Sure, in the NCLB benchmarks, it wouldn’t make much sense, but the Kindergarten test might also have assessment as a goal.

Plus, while the question is asked in an odd way, is it really that uncommon not to know in kindergarten that the moon reflects light from the sun? I’m pretty sure that was in our basic spiel about the planets and the solar system. Then again, I went to a private school.

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It may be common in testing, but it is not common in high-stakes testing. Throwing in questions like that would skew the psychometric data that are collected post-administration. If you follow the link I posted on the previous page for item specifications, things like that are clearly spelled out as off-limits for Florida’s NCLB-satisfying tests. We don’t even allow “all of the above” or “none of the above” as possible answer choices.

Furthermore, there’s an economic issue at stake as well. Florida’s tests cost something like a couple million per test administered. That’s four content areas, at nine grade levels, with separate tests created for accommodations (braille, large print, computer-based, etc.) It takes about two years and eleventy thousands of dollars just to get items through committee before they even see a test. It would not make economic sense to waste space and time on a test item that’s really a throwaway question.

I’m pretty sure this sun-moon Kindergarten test was a district- or local school-level assessment, which has exactly fuckall to do with NCLB, so I don’t even think discussion of that particular item is terribly relevant to this thread.

54

Obviously a test like the NCLB would not need such questions, since it is not testing individuals but groups in aggregate. I was proposing that this other, non-NCLB test was intended to place individuals and not to see how well kindergarten was being taught.

Thus the relevance was in pointing out how this test could be different than any NCLB test. The other arguments of this nature were just saying it was a poorly designed test, with the implication being that only tests like the NCLB are any good. My goal was to point out that this may be a falsehood, and that they may just be working at different purposes.