Obama vs. No Child Left Behind

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He's taking on Bush's school reform! I imagine this will be a hotly, or at least a tepidly, debated topic. Though I think it will be much less divisive than the health care debate.

From Boston.com

Quote:

Obama proposes extensive overhaul of No Child law
Plan would set new targets for student growth

By Sam Dillon, New York Times | March 14, 2010

NEW YORK " The Obama administration yesterday called for a broad overhaul of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, proposing to reshape divisive provisions that encouraged instructors to teach to tests, narrowed the curriculum, and labeled 1 in 3 American schools as failing.

By announcing that he would send his education blueprint to Congress tomorrow, President Obama returned to a campaign promise to change the sprawling federal law that affects each of the nation’s 100,000 public schools. His plan strikes a careful balance, retaining some key features of the Bush-era law, including its requirement for annual reading and math tests, while proposing far-reaching changes.

The administration would replace the law’s pass-fail school grading system with one that would measure individual students’ academic growth, and judge schools based not on test scores alone but also using indicators like attendance, graduation rates, and learning climate.

While the proposal calls for more vigorous interventions in failing schools, it would also reward top performers and lessen federal interference in tens of thousands of reasonably well-run schools in the middle.

In addition, Obama would replace the law’s requirement that every American child reach proficiency in reading and math, which administration officials have called utopian, with a new national target that could prove equally elusive: that all students should graduate from high school prepared for college and a career.

“Under these guidelines, schools that achieve excellence or show real progress will be rewarded,’’ the president said in his weekly radio address, “and local districts will be encouraged to commit to change in schools that are clearly letting their students down.’’

Administration officials said their plan would urge the states to achieve the college-ready goal by 2020.

The No Child law, passed in 2001 by bipartisan majorities, focused the nation’s attention on closing achievement gaps between minority and white students, but included many provisions that created what Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Friday called “perverse incentives.’’

In their effort to meet the law’s requirements for passing grades, many states began dumbing down standards and teachers began focusing on test preparation rather than on engaging class work.

“We’ve got to get accountability right this time,’’ Duncan told reporters. “For the mass of schools, we want to get rid of prescriptive interventions. We’ll leave it up to them to figure out how to make progress.’’

The administration’s turn toward education signaled that the president hopes to get beyond health care and broaden the agenda before the midterm elections make progress on legislative issues more difficult.

Duncan has been working behind the scenes on rewriting the No Child law with a bipartisan group of senior lawmakers in both chambers, and administration officials say they hope to complete work on a new bill by August, when the elections will dominate the congressional agenda. Many skeptics question that timetable.

And while leading congressional Democrats praised the plan, the nation’s two major teachers unions did not. “We are disappointed,’’ said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said of the proposal, “This doesn’t make sense.’’

“From everything that we’ve seen, this blueprint places 100 percent of the responsibility on teachers, and gives them zero percent of the authority,’’ Weingarten said. Representative John Kline of Minnesota, the top Republican on the House education committee, was also skeptical.

“From 30,000 feet the blueprint seems to set a lot of right goals,’’ Kline said. “Yet when we drill down to the details, we are looking at a heavier federal hand than many of us wish to see.’’

Under the law, testing focuses on measuring the number of students who are proficient at each grade level. The administration instead wants to measure each student’s academic growth, regardless of the performance level at which they start.

Under the proposals, schools would also be judged on whether they are closing achievement gaps between poor and affluent students. No sanctions exist now for schools that fail in this area. Under the new proposals, states would be required to intervene even in seemingly high-performing schools in affluent school districts where test scores and other indicators identify groups of students that are languishing, administration officials said.

The proposals would require states to use annual tests and other indicators to divide the nation’s nearly 100,000 public schools into several groups: some 10,000 to 15,000 high-performing schools that could receive rewards or recognition, some 10,000 failing or struggling schools requiring varying degrees of vigorous state intervention, about 5,000 schools that would be required to narrow unacceptably wide achievement gaps, and perhaps 70,000 or so schools in the middle that would be encouraged to figure out on their own how to improve.

The administration’s proposals also would rework the law’s teacher quality provisions, by requiring states to develop evaluation procedures to distinguish effective instructors, partly based on whether their students are learning. These would replace the law’s current emphasis on certifying that all teachers have valid credentials, which has produced little except red tape for state officials, officials said.

The law required states to adopt “challenging academic standards’’ to receive money for poor students under section known as Title I. But states were allowed to define “challenging,’’ and many set standards at mediocre levels. Last month, Obama proposed requiring states to adopt “college- and career-ready standards’’ to qualify for the $14 billion Title I program.

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@littlek,

yippy skippy

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@littlek,

Judging by this article, Obama is continuing his pattern of splitting the difference between what the Right Thing(TM) would be and what the Bush administration actually did. It's progress on the one hand, but still frustrating on the other.

The Right Thing, of course, would be for the federal government to butt out of K-12 education altogether. The states already have all the information and power that Washington has. Unlike Washington, they are more familiar with local cultures and local problems that shape the performance of public schools. So what value does Washington have to add to the solution? I don't see it. To the extent that American education suffers from "sprawling federal law", this initiative is as likely to make things worse as better.

Accepting federal involvement for the sake of discussion, I still don't like that the new legislation appears to grade schools on a scale:

The Boston Globe wrote:

The proposals would require states to use annual tests and other indicators to divide the nation’s nearly 100,000 public schools into several groups: some 10,000 to 15,000 high-performing schools that could receive rewards or recognition, some 10,000 failing or struggling schools requiring varying degrees of vigorous state intervention, about 5,000 schools that would be required to narrow unacceptably wide achievement gaps, and perhaps 70,000 or so schools in the middle that would be encouraged to figure out on their own how to improve.

If the problem is that schools as a whole are performing too badly, how is it a solution to introduce carrot-and-stick incentives based on the relative performance of schools? And, how is this all supposed to address the problem of the old law "encouraging instructors to teach to tests [and] narrowing the curriculum"?

Because the Obama administration, unlike the Bush administration, is run by non-evil and reasonably competent people, I trust them to develop better tests for schools to teach to, better curriculums to narrow theirs down to, and better-engineered incentive schemes. But as Obama himself once noticed, you can't put lipstick on a pig. And I think that's exactly what he'll end up doing in trying to fix No Child Left Behind. He should just strike it off the books instead.

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@littlek,

I always thought that 'leave no child behind' nonsense had been designed by a child molester and should properly read 'leave no child's behind.' If anything, it stifles and inhibits creative and meaningful teaching.

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If he can eliminate NCLB he'll have earned my vote for the next election despite nearly anything else he could do in the intervening years.

1 Reply

@boomerang,

I agree here with boomer, NCLB has helped the least the ones it was initiated
for to begin with.

1 Reply

@CalamityJane,

Do you guys disagree with the premise behind NCLB? Or just the implementation?

I mean, shouldn't schools be held to some standard regarding what they are teaching?

4 Replies

@maporsche,

maporche - your question is not easy to answer. There should be accountability. But, one set of rules for all the schools in our nation just isn't working. Teachers don't even agree on what the accountability should look like.

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I have heard exactly one teacher support NCLB. Granted, most of the teachers with whom I have spoken or overheard think (make that know) that NCLB is garbage, I wonder about those who have been silent.

Are they afraid, exhausted, seeking to remain anonymous?

The mania for testing began nearly 20 years ago. At that time . . . as I explained over and over on these boards . . . publishing houses and educational consultants simply starting making tests up, using unemployed recent college grads to compose the exams. Massachusetts was one of the first states to take control of the testing process and to try to put some sort of accountability into the tests themselves. To do that, the state removed (voluntarily and paid them for it) many of the best classroom teachers for two years.

Heavy price to pay, agreed? No, the right thinks that's terrific! Yeah! accountability!

It wasn't the blind leading the blind, but goofballs making up exams by pulling stuff out of their a$$e$ until Massachusetts pushed the rest of the nation toward some responsibility, but, at the cost of (temporarily) eliminating some teachers who should have been in the classroom teaching and supervising student teachers.

Let's hope that their two-year hiatus refreshed them so that when the teachers returned to the classroom, they did so with renewed vigor.

Let's put testing in prospective. In a state like MA where so many students at least begin college, something like 85% of the students already take the SATs.

The 15% who don't never wanted to go to college, were probably not capable of going to college and so do not need to be tested.

ALL THAT MONEY . . . AND TIME . . . WERE WASTED DUPLICATING THE EFFORT OF TESTING THE SAME STUDENTS TO OBTAIN THE SAME RESULTS.

Can you say stupidity, boys and girls?

In the meantime, the entrepreneurs who stirred up the testing mania made money. The teachers did not, with the exception of those on the MA committee to write the exams. Students wasted their time taking yet another test.

I helped administer the tests for one suburban Boston school system. All the teachers were paid their regular salaries, including me. No learning went on for about two weeks in total. Money was spent printing the tests and paper was wasted. Money was also spent shipping the tests from whatever office administered them to the schools and then back.

As a parent and as a teacher, I would have preferred that the money be spent on healthy breakfast food for kids or to pay one teacher in each building across the state.

But Republicans fear a learned class.

Several years later, I find myself teaching remedial English at a community college. Too bad teachers had to teach to the test instead of teaching students grammar, sentence structure and how to prove a point.

0 Replies

@maporsche,

maporsche wrote:

Do you guys disagree with the premise behind NCLB? Or just the implementation?

I mean, shouldn't schools be held to some standard regarding what they are teaching?

See Thomas's post above. He has hit the nail very squarely on its head.

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@maporsche,

maporsche wrote:

Do you guys disagree with the premise behind NCLB? Or just the implementation?

Speaking only for me, not the other "guys": I disagree with the entire idea of NCLB. The same criticism Obama applied to Bush policies in general also applies to this particular one: "That's not change. That's just calling something the same thing something different. You know you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. You know you can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, it's still going to stink after eight years. We've had enough of the same old thing."

maporsche wrote:

I mean, shouldn't schools be held to some standard regarding what they are teaching?

Of course schools should be held accountable. That's not the NCLB premise I'm disagreeing with. I am disagreeing with the premise that the federal government ought to do the holding. Accountability should happen at the state level, or at the school district level, maybe even on the individual level through vouchers. (Don't like what your school does to your kids? Put them in a different school!) Anyone who's familiar with the particular problems at that particular school.

One consequence of holding schools accountable is that you actually have to let them decide things. I won't say too much about that because littlek knows it better. But just to give you an idea: Five years ago or so, I had a discussion with Sozobe about the wisdom of fighting child obesity by banning soda machines from school premises. I didn't understand why schools couldn't decide this question by experiment. Let principles individually make their own decision for their schools, compare notes after a few years, and see how it works. After a number of fruitless back-and-forths, I learned that this generally wouldn't work, because principals don't get to make even trivial policy decisions like this. It's all made centrally by the school district. This is crazy! But the fix certainly isn't to centralize decision-making even more by outsourcing it to Washington.

2 Replies

This will not be a debate.....I cant think of a single person who believes in NCLB. The argument for it was intellectually weak from the get go, and the implementation has been a disaster. Reality proves that the theory had no legs.

Time to dump this turkey

2 Replies

@Thomas,

Then I think the solution would be to stop accepting federal funding right? I'm sure there's a provision that these NCLB policies apply only to schools that accept federal funds. If a community wants out of NCLB, they can votto raisetheir taxes enough to stop receiving federal funding.

If the government is going to spend my money on stuff, I want people to be accountable. I don't know how you do that without testing for results.

This thought process for me applies everywhere; Iraq, healthcare, TARP, etc.

IF a school is going to accept federal funds, and you (or others) think that they should be held accountable, and you agree that money from CA going to students in Wyoming should only be done if there's a measurable result to be acheived, what do you think schools should be held accountable to?

2 Replies

@hawkeye10,

Quote:

The argument for it was intellectually weak from the get go

,

The argument for it was right on the money:

Quote:

The undersigned education, civil rights, religious, children's, disability, civic, and labor organizations are committed to the No Child Left Behind Act's objectives of strong academic achievement for all children and closing the achievement gap. We believe that the federal government has a critical role to play in attaining these goals. We endorse the use of an accountability system that helps ensure all children, including children of color, from low-income families, with disabilities, and of limited English proficiency, are prepared to be successful, participating members of our democracy.[/[/b]

I still believe in the argument and reasoning for the need for it.

The implementation has been a disaster though...but that doesn't mean the need for reform doesn't still exist. Here are some suggestions for reform.

Quote:

Some of them really make sense. I wonder if Obama's crew will look at these:

While we all have different positions on various aspects of the law, based on concerns raised during the implementation of NCLB, we believe the following significant, constructive corrections are among those necessary to make the Act fair and effective. Among these concerns are: over-emphasizing standardized testing, narrowing curriculum and instruction to focus on test preparation rather than richer academic learning; over-identifying schools in need of improvement; using sanctions that do not help improve schools; inappropriately excluding low-scoring children in order to boost test results; and inadequate funding. Overall, the law's emphasis needs to shift from applying sanctions for failing to raise test scores to holding states and localities accountable for making the systemic changes that improve student achievement.

Recommended Changes in NCLB

Progress Measurement

1. Replace the law's arbitrary proficiency targets with ambitious achievement targets based on rates of success actually achieved by the most effective public schools.

2. Allow states to measure progress by using students' growth in achievement as well as their performance in relation to pre-determined levels of academic proficiency.

3. Ensure that states and school districts regularly report to the government and the public their progress in implementing systemic changes to enhance educator, family, and community capacity to improve student learning.

4. Provide a comprehensive picture of students' and schools' performance by moving from an overwhelming reliance on standardized tests to using multiple indicators of student achievement in addition to these tests.

5. Fund research and development of more effective accountability systems that better meet the goal of high academic achievement for all children
Assessments

6. Help states develop assessment systems that include district and school-based measures in order to provide better, more timely information about student learning.

7. Strengthen enforcement of NCLB provisions requiring that assessments must:

Be aligned with state content and achievement standards;
Be used for purposes for which they are valid and reliable;
Be consistent with nationally recognized professional and technical standards;
Be of adequate technical quality for each purpose required under the Act;
Provide multiple, up-to-date measures of student performance including measures that assess higher order thinking skills and understanding; and
Provide useful diagnostic information to improve teaching and learning.
8. Decrease the testing burden on states, schools and districts by allowing states to assess students annually in selected grades in elementary, middle schools, and high schools.

Building Capacity

9. Ensure changes in teacher and administrator preparation and continuing professional development that research evidence and experience indicate improve educational quality and student achievement.

10. Enhance state and local capacity to effectively implement the comprehensive changes required to increase the knowledge and skills of administrators, teachers, families, and communities to support high student achievement.

Sanctions

11. Ensure that improvement plans are allowed sufficient time to take hold before applying sanctions; sanctions should not be applied if they undermine existing effective reform efforts.

12. Replace sanctions that do not have a consistent record of success with interventions that enable schools to make changes that result in improved student achievement.

Funding

13. Raise authorized levels of NCLB funding to cover a substantial percentage of the costs that states and districts will incur to carry out these recommendations, and fully fund the law at those levels without reducing expenditures for other education programs.

14. Fully fund Title I to ensure that 100 percent of eligible children are served.

The organizations who are behind the idea for NCLB but would like to see it reformed somewhat instead of thrown out can be found here:
http://www.edaccountability.org/Joint_Statement.html

As you will see - the vast majority are people who actually work in schools, have some idea of what the needs are, and are unwilling to back down from the concept of the right every child has to an education.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

Let principles individually make their own decision for their schools, compare notes after a few years, and see how it works.

As someone who works in schools and has children who attend schools - no thank you. I think I'd rather go with a more organized and democratically decided approach.

Quote:

It's all made centrally by the school district. This is crazy!

Why? The school board members are elected by the community of parents (whose children have to attend those schools) and teachers and staff (who work in those schools), etc. It's called democracy. I think I like that idea a lot better than a monarchy (the principal makes lone decisions).

Quote:

(Don't like what your school does to your kids? Put them in a different school!)

That sounds really reasonable and simple unless you're a single mom who can't afford the transportation to and from or childcare afterward because your child can't go to his or her neighborhood school.

No - the answer is that all schools should provide a relatively equal and appropriate education- not that if your child's school doesn't you have to uproot them, find another school that does and somehow manage the time and financial constraints that will be created by trying to get your child there and back every day.

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@maporsche,

I'm not in education and only see the effects of NCLB through the local schools where I live. My opinion is not as informed as those who are teachers and live with this everyday. That said, my take is...

I think there should be testing to monitor children's progress as they move through the school system. This is nothing new - I remember taking standardized tests all through my school years. What you do with the test results is a local decision. I think there should be a national standard for what a high school diploma represents. I would implement this as a national test (much like the ACT or SAT) that high school seniors would take that would award a national completion certificate. The topics on the test wouldn't be a secret and people could take the test multiple times if necessary. This would be in addition to the local school board diploma. The idea would not be to usurp local control, but to allow employers and colleges to have a common standard of achievement. Someone who passed the national high school test would have a certain level of proficiency in math, science, language, etc so that he would have a foundation for success in college or the workplace. My belief is that school systems with low standards would eventually start raising the bar to meet the national standard to ensure that a local high school diploma meant something. I think there is a strong relationship between socio-economic factors and school performance and that an effective use of money would be to offset the disadvantages of being poor that impact student performance. For example, if schools serving poor areas offered free after school care so that children could get tutoring and playtime in a safe environment, I think that would improve school performance and child health at a reasonably low cost. Those schools could be open enrollment so that any parent who wants to take advantage of free afterschool care would be able to. In the long run, I think the cost of this particular idea would be offset by reduced juvenile crime and gang activity.

I think NCLB has focused effort in local school systems and made them more results oriented which is not a bad thing. It has made a lot more information available to parents and voters and that is also a positive. The problem with NCLB is that it observes an effect then dicates a response without understanding the cause. When you only have a hammer, every problem is a nail.

1 Reply

@engineer,

Thanks engineer. I don't disagree with a lot of what you posted.

I guess I just don't understand HOW NCLB keeps schools from doing these creative things or having turtoring programs.

Doesn't NCLB simply direct federal funding to schools that meet national standards?

Can't the schools do whatever they want to acheive those standards?

Maybe I'm missing something.

1 Reply

@maporsche,

No they can't. Their hands are tied by many other factors weighing in.
I give you an example from my daughter's school: We live in a great school
district, therefore roughly 40 % of the kids are bussed in from socio-economic
challenged neighborhoods. NCLB policies drain an abundance of time and
money towards the majority of bussed in kids. SAT scores and school ranking are of utmost importance here, so the emphasis is on drilling these kids towards the SATs to the point that a NCLB group will get a different test package that practically gives them the answers. Will those kids advance academically?
Probably not, but the school's scores and ranking will remain the same or improve and thus state funding is provided.

Our elementary/middle/high school have now decided to form cluster/charter
schools in order to have more deciding power over their schools.

1 Reply

@maporsche,

maporsche wrote:

Then I think the solution would be to stop accepting federal funding right? I'm sure there's a provision that these NCLB policies apply only to schools that accept federal funds. If a community wants out of NCLB, they can votto raisetheir taxes enough to stop receiving federal funding.

You can't do that. Not every state sets education as a top priority thus if
federal funding would be withheld, certain states would fall below the average
level - I believe some states (Arkansas, South Carolina?) are already below
average in their teachings.

1 Reply

@CalamityJane,

Do you know if your school could refuse federal funding and your community could then develop any school system they like?

I don't even know if that's possible, but seems like a solution.

It's like the banks that took TARP money. If the bank is going to be supported by the feds, they should have to meet some standards imposed by the feds (to protect the taxpayers). If they don't like those standards, they can refuse TARP money (well, some of them could have, but that's another topic).

I am just trying to learn here though; I really don't know how NCLB works. I am inclined to support standards imposed by the acceptance of federal funds though (to protect the taxpayers); not sure if it's just a problem with implementation.

1 Reply

Obama vs. No Child Left Behind

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