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Wed 23 Feb, 2005 05:30 pm
Bipartisan Study Assails No Child Left Behind Act
By SAM DILLON
Published: February 23, 2005
A bipartisan panel of state lawmakers that studied the effectiveness of President Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative assailed it today as a flawed, convoluted and unconstitutional education reform effort that had usurped state and local control of public schools.
While the report, based on hearings in several cities, praised the legislation's goal of ending the gap in scholastic achievement between white and minority students, most of its 77 pages was devoted to a detailed inventory and discussion of the initiative's flaws.
It found that the law undermined other school improvement efforts already under way in many states, and it said that the law's accountability system, which punishes schools whose students fail to improve steadily on standardized tests, relied on the wrong indicators.
"Under N.C.L.B., the federal government's role has become excessively intrusive in the day-to-day operations of public education," the National Conference of State Legislatures said in its panel's report. "The task force does not believe that N.C.L.B. is constitutional."
Several educational experts said the task force had accurately captured the views of thousands of state lawmakers and local educators. If so, then the Bush administration may face a growing chorus of challenges to the law and to the Department of Education's implementation of it over the coming months.
Nine state legislatures are currently considering various challenges to the law, and the Utah Senate is poised to vote on a bill already passed by its House that would require Utah education officials to give higher priority to state education laws than to the federal law.
Several business and other groups that strongly support the federal No Child Left Behind legislation took issue with the report, saying that the report's authors had overstated the quality of the state programs that they said the federal government had hampered.
In preparing their report, task force members worked for 10 months and held a series of public hearings in Washington, Chicago, Salt Lake City, New York, Santa Fe and Portland. The panel also met for deliberations in Savannah, Ga.
"They went out and heard lots of things from different people around the country, and this report reflects the breadth and depth of what they heard," said Patricia Sullivan, director of the Washington-based Center on Education Policy, who attended hearings in two cities.
An assistant secretary of education, Ray Simon, met with members of the task force in Washington today to discuss the report.
"The department will continue to work with every state to address their concerns and make this law work for their children," the Education Department said in a statement. "But the report could be interpreted as wanting to reverse the progress we've made."
It added, "No Child Left Behind is bringing new hope and new opportunity to families throughout America, and we will not reverse course."
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I'm no big fan, but mostly because of the ultra liberal school administrators who have allowed children with no business in public school to be allowed in under this pretense. I believe they are intentionally flaunting the potential failures of the intent of LNCB, simply because they can't stand President Bush.
I've seen it firsthand, and I think they can KMA.
I just stared reading the entire report but it is already apparent that they people that sat on this board started with an agenda.
From Chapter 3 of the report:
"Including students with disabilities and limited English proficiency in the testing requirements of No Child Left Behind is an admirable goal. Yet, it presents considerable challenges for states, districts and schools, most glaring of which are the conflicts between NCLB and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). NCLB requires
students with disabilities to be tested by grade level, while IDEA mandates that students
be taught according to ability."
Where exactly is the conflict between NCLB nad IDEA here? The only conflict is that the education establishment has been promoting people with disabilites based on social promotion instead of ability.
If a kid with disabilities is in 5th grade and doesn't have the ability to complete the work like their classmates to move to the 6th grade then you keep them in the 5th grade where their grade level and abilities match until such time as they are capable of completeing the work.
Your accusations stink of partisan vitriol, cjhsa, which leads me to believe you don't seem to know much else other than the need to throw blame where blame isn't due.
Perhaps you can explain why bussinesses are against this report, while people who actually have expertise in education agree with it.
Then maybe you'll think twice next time regarding any participation in these threads. Foxfyre started one recently regarding draconian sentencing practices that easily crosses party lines in just about total agreement. It's rather civil.
Do you think YOU can be civil?
Quote:If a kid with disabilities is in 5th grade and doesn't have the ability to complete the work like their classmates to move to the 6th grade then you keep them in the 5th grade where their grade level and abilities match until such time as they are capable of completeing the work.
I agree!
My daughter is in 3rd grade and every student falling
behind curriculum will be asked to get outside tutoring.
If the student still has trouble keeping up, then the parents
will need to choose between having the child repeat the
class or seek other options in a different school.
\
There's an interesting article in today's San Jose Mercury News about percentages of California high school seniors who were eligible for admission to the CSU and UC system in 2003, by race and ethnicity. Eligibility is based on grades, required course work and standardized test scores. Asian CSU 47.5%, UC 31.4%; White CSU 34.3%, UC 16.2%; American Indian CSU 19.7%, UC 6.6%; Black CSU 18.6%, UC 6.2%; and Hispanic CSU 16.0%, UC 6.5%. Don't ask me how this relates to LNCB, but there doesn't seem to be too much improvement for "minoritie's" equality of education in California. Using 2000 census data for California natives aged 25-29, it was found that only 13 percent of Hispanics and 15 percent of blacks had earned a bachelor's degree, compared with 31 percent of whites and 62 percent of Asians.
cicerone, taking these numbers from the 2000 census,
why do you think the percentage of hispanics and blacks
is so low compared to asians and whites?
Do you think they truly would benefit from the "no child
is left behind" initiative, or is it, that the percentage would
be lower despite the initiative, or is the low number a
result of abolishing affirmative action in CA?
CJ, As far back as I can remember the eligibility of students to attend the CSU and UC system in California has not changed that much. I'm not drawing any conclusions about how effective or not effective LNCB is, but it's my personal opinion that it's not restricted to the "school environment" that will improve the education of our minority students. LNCB fails on many levels. The primary one that I see is the underfunding of LNCB. Federal mandates must be sufficiently funded, or we will continue to close our schools as we have seen during the past several years.
Was the purpose of "NCLB" to slowly, systematically dismantle the federal school system? Why the name Leaving No Child Behind then? It would have been much more accurate and less prone to criticism to call it "School privatization act".
As it is called, it fuels the fire for those who see a program that allows/demands 3rd graders not passing the grade be left (behind) to fend for themselves with outside tutoring with no funding, or 5th graders with disabilities be held (behind), because no fund is to be set aside for helping them along. Not to mention punitive measures for schools having any failing scores in form of truncation of federal funds, and thus leaving all their attending children behind.
gravy, You've summarized it pretty well. Not all children learn at the same speed or skill level, and testing for grade level will always fail in most school environments. What I find interesting is the fact that certain school districts in Northern California always seem to test high relative to all California schools such as can be found in Palo Alto and Saratoga, but to live in those communities requires it's parents to earn enough to pay the high premium for homes. Generally speaking, the parents are also college grads.
Fremont Union High School in our community also rates amongst the top schools in California, and many students from outside our community are using false residence addresses to attend. The FUHSD is now investigating outside students and denying enrollment in our schools, and if caught are "thrown out."
cicerone imposter wrote:Fremont Union High School in our community also rates amongst the top schools in California, and many students from outside our community are using false residence addresses to attend. The FUHSD is now investigating outside students and denying enrollment in our schools, and if caught are "thrown out."
Cicerone, the same is true for our Highschool in my town (La Jolla High).
Down here, we have quite a few charter schools popping up as an
alternative to public schools, and they seem to gain on popularity.
Dookiestix wrote:Your accusations stink of partisan vitriol, cjhsa, which leads me to believe you don't seem to know much else other than the need to throw blame where blame isn't due.
...
Do you think YOU can be civil?
You don't want me to be civil. You want me to be politically correct. So, no.
No, cjhsa, this was all about civility, not about being politically correct. So, you don't get it.
Dookiestix speaking of civility.... What's next? Daniel Shorr speaking about a good Bush policy?
Don't need Daniel Shorr to speak about a good Bush policy. Here's a one-liner from today's editorial page of the San Jose Mercury News, "In his battle to "save" social security, President Bush has armed himself with his own WMDs - Weapons of Math Deception."
personally I love the whole leave no child behind issue, finally the repubs realize that the Feds should dictate policy once reserved for local school boards. No more of this silly nonsense about local control keeping big brother feds out of the perogitive of the local community. What's next on the conservative agenda, enormous deficit spending?
dys, "Enormous deficit spending?" Don't you know there's a war on? It's costing between four and five billion every month for the American tax-payers; cheap when considered from the perspective of the peace and freedom the Iraqi's now enjoy - while the US infrastructure continues to deteriate, schools and hospitals close, and social programs are reduced.
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