Back to Leave No Child Behind

c.i.

It is just special pleading propaganda isn't it?

One could write a similar piece from the point of view of a kid wondering whether it was worth being born when you were going to be compulsorily recruited into a sodding school for 15 years and have to sit on a hard chair being bored out of your mind by a bunch of incompetents whose minds were focussed on salary scales,holidays,marking,working conditions,legal risks,promotion prospects and other suchlike nonsenses associated with their own comforts and conveniences with your own needs at the very bottom of the priority list.

I could write one of those.Easy.I could get vitriolic with it too.

NYTimes.com > Opinion



EVERYBODY who is anybody seems to have decided that the American high school is responsible for the failings of American students. The Bush administration, many governors and even Bill Gates have now called for radical reforms. Reflecting this growing consensus that the high school is, in Mr. Gates's words, an "obsolete" institution, the governors of 13 states have pledged an overhaul of the high school system, and more are expected to jump on the bandwagon of reform.

Let's slow down here. American education is famous for inspiring crusades, and the history of the 20th century is littered with the remains of of failed reform movements. This 21st century campaign will fall flat, too, unless the proponents are clear-headed about the nature of the problem and willing to rethink their proposed solutions.

It is true that American student performance is appalling. Only a minority of students - whether in 4th, 8th or 12th grade - reach proficiency as measured by the Education Department's National Assessment of Educational Progress. On a scale that has three levels - basic, proficient and advanced - most students score at the basic level or even below basic in every subject. American students also perform poorly when compared with their peers in other developed countries on tests of mathematics and science, and many other nations now have a higher proportion of their students completing high school.

While the problems of low achievement and poor high-school graduation rates are clear, however, their solutions are not. The reformist governors, for example, want to require all students to take a college-preparatory curriculum and to meet more rigorous standards for graduation. These steps will very likely increase the dropout rate, not reduce it.

To understand why, you have to consider what the high schools are dealing with. When American students arrive as freshmen, nearly 70 percent are reading below grade level. Equally large numbers are ill prepared in mathematics, science and history.

It is hardly fair to blame high schools for the poor skills of their entering students. If students start high school without the basic skills needed to read, write and solve mathematics problems, then the governors should focus on strengthening the standards of their states' junior high schools.

And that first year of high school is often the most important one - many students who eventually drop out do so after becoming discouraged when they can't earn the credits to advance beyond ninth grade. Ninth grade is often referred to by educators as a "parking lot." This is because social promotion - the endemic practice of moving students up to the next grade whether they have earned it or not - comes to a crashing halt in high school.

It makes no sense to blame the high schools for their ill-prepared incoming students. To really get at the problem, we have to make changes across our educational system. The most important is to stress the importance of academic achievement. Sorry to say, we have a long history of reforms by pedagogues to de-emphasize academic achievement and to make school more "relevant," "fun" and like "real life." These efforts have produced whole-language instruction, where phonics, grammar and spelling are abandoned in favor of "creativity," and fuzzy math, where students are supposed to "construct" their own solutions to math problems instead of finding the right answers.

Besides, in many ways our high schools are better than our primary system. They are the part of our educational system where students are most likely to have teachers who have a degree in the subject they are teaching. In the lower grades, most teachers are likely to have majored in education, not in mathematics or science or history; some even have both a major and a minor in pedagogy, yet end up teaching core academic subjects.

This does not mean, of course, that our high schools are ideal. To some extent, the present-day comprehensive high school, in which most American students are enrolled, tries and fails to be all things to all students. It does not adequately challenge high-performing students, who get low scores when compared with their peers in other nations. It does a poor job preparing average students, nearly half of whom need remedial courses when they enter college. And it loses low-performing students, who are likely to drop out while still lacking the skills they need for gainful employment.

NOTE: There are three more pages to this article. If interested, I can post them. Otherwise, I think the above is self-explanatory.

deleted duplicate post

NYTimes.com > Opinion





OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Failing the Wrong Grades
By DIANE RAVITCH

Published: March 15, 2005



Grady White



ARTICLE TOOLS



Printer-Friendly Format
Most E-Mailed Articles
Single-Page Format







READERS' OPINIONS


Forum: Join a Discussion on Op-Ed Contributors






1. No Need to Stew: A Few Tips to Cope With Life's Annoyances
2. Does the Affordable Paris Bistro Still Exist? Oui.
3. Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News
4. Op-Ed Contributor: A Family Tree in Every Gene
5. Ante Up at Dear Old Princeton: Online Poker Is a Campus Draw
Go to Complete List




VERYBODY who is anybody seems to have decided that the American high school is responsible for the failings of American students. The Bush administration, many governors and even Bill Gates have now called for radical reforms. Reflecting this growing consensus that the high school is, in Mr. Gates's words, an "obsolete" institution, the governors of 13 states have pledged an overhaul of the high school system, and more are expected to jump on the bandwagon of reform.

Let's slow down here. American education is famous for inspiring crusades, and the history of the 20th century is littered with the remains of of failed reform movements. This 21st century campaign will fall flat, too, unless the proponents are clear-headed about the nature of the problem and willing to rethink their proposed solutions.

It is true that American student performance is appalling. Only a minority of students - whether in 4th, 8th or 12th grade - reach proficiency as measured by the Education Department's National Assessment of Educational Progress. On a scale that has three levels - basic, proficient and advanced - most students score at the basic level or even below basic in every subject. American students also perform poorly when compared with their peers in other developed countries on tests of mathematics and science, and many other nations now have a higher proportion of their students completing high school.

While the problems of low achievement and poor high-school graduation rates are clear, however, their solutions are not. The reformist governors, for example, want to require all students to take a college-preparatory curriculum and to meet more rigorous standards for graduation. These steps will very likely increase the dropout rate, not reduce it.

To understand why, you have to consider what the high schools are dealing with. When American students arrive as freshmen, nearly 70 percent are reading below grade level. Equally large numbers are ill prepared in mathematics, science and history.

It is hardly fair to blame high schools for the poor skills of their entering students. If students start high school without the basic skills needed to read, write and solve mathematics problems, then the governors should focus on strengthening the standards of their states' junior high schools.

And that first year of high school is often the most important one - many students who eventually drop out do so after becoming discouraged when they can't earn the credits to advance beyond ninth grade. Ninth grade is often referred to by educators as a "parking lot." This is because social promotion - the endemic practice of moving students up to the next grade whether they have earned it or not - comes to a crashing halt in high school.

It makes no sense to blame the high schools for their ill-prepared incoming students. To really get at the problem, we have to make changes across our educational system. The most important is to stress the importance of academic achievement. Sorry to say, we have a long history of reforms by pedagogues to de-emphasize academic achievement and to make school more "relevant," "fun" and like "real life." These efforts have produced whole-language instruction, where phonics, grammar and spelling are abandoned in favor of "creativity," and fuzzy math, where students are supposed to "construct" their own solutions to math problems instead of finding the right answers.

Besides, in many ways our high schools are better than our primary system. They are the part of our educational system where students are most likely to have teachers who have a degree in the subject they are teaching. In the lower grades, most teachers are likely to have majored in education, not in mathematics or science or history; some even have both a major and a minor in pedagogy, yet end up teaching core academic subjects.

This does not mean, of course, that our high schools are ideal. To some extent, the present-day comprehensive high school, in which most American students are enrolled, tries and fails to be all things to all students. It does not adequately challenge high-performing students, who get low scores when compared with their peers in other nations. It does a poor job preparing average students, nearly half of whom need remedial courses when they enter college. And it loses low-performing students, who are likely to drop out while still lacking the skills they need for gainful employment.

NOTE: There are three more pages to this article. If interested, I can post them. Otherwise, I think the above is self-explanatory.

I'd like to see a universal curriculum with associated text books approved by an intelligent panel of educators from every level.

The state level curriculum fails to address many of the issues present in todays schools. The states are failing to overcome this issue and we should privatize the whole institution. Get education in the hands of the educators and out of the hands of the legislators...

I don't know about privatization, but a universal curriculum makes some sense -- at least in basics.

I'd also like to see equal funding. I'm sure this was mentioned before but it would make sense to me to stop funding education with property taxes. Every school should be getting the same dollar amount per student, period.

I think you'd find the results of that to be extremely unsatisfying. Schools that are screaming the loudest for additional $$ are almost entirely urban schools and they currently spend significantly more per student than their suburban neighbors while doing significantly worse in educating their students.

There are several reasons why urban schools cost more per pupil to operate but the end result of this idea would be to either cripple urban schools or excessively over-fund suburban schools. Many states have already gone to a funding formula where property taxes are pooled at the state level and then re-apportioned back out to each community. That seems to equealize the property tax issue to some extent.

Teachers would love to just focus on students, especially the responsive ones, but much of our focus is forced to be on paperwork, meetings, and discipline issues. Ironically, in the classroom we are forced to pay the most attention to the students who don't want to be there because they (the one's who don't just lay their heads down and nap) are finding new and interesting ways to disrupt the learning of those who actually do want to be there. It's a catch-22.



Certainly a good tip. Some teachers try to keep up changing societal/technological trends. Unfortunately, not all do. An administrator last year was trying to get teachers to greatly reduce their use of overhead projectors during lessons because, according to her, college professors don't use them. Over half of the professors I had during nine years as a full-time student (yes, I have several very official-looking pieces of paper to show for those nine years) used overhead projectors. We won't go into the strict dress code which is also supposed to help prepare students for a collegiate atmosphere (the dress code at most US universities require only that students obey the local public decency ordinances).



Unfortunately, most of them are bad. However, I wouldn't oppose such a system if it made all families equally able to send their children to the schools of their choice. This, however, would require strict government regulation of the admission policies of any institution accepting vouchers, which is something most supporters of vouchers are opposed to.



My point exactly and you don't have to distinguish--they are pretty much the same thing.



Ahhhh...that's not evidence of teacher expertise, that's proof positive.

Nope, never played Conkers or anything like that. The US is also very litigious. Schools have do that sort of stuff--one heavy law suit can bankrupt an entire district. Though to a large degree, this has to do the quality of child we're seeing nowadays--their much clumsier and more fragile than in previous generations. Just look at the evidence: children have to wear helmets when riding bicycles, playground slides and swings have to be much shorter now, jungle gyms all across the country have been torn out and scrapped because they're too dangerous, and now British boys have to wear eye protection and be supervised when playing Conkers! I tell, kids must just break more easily now! That, or parents have become much more paranoid and overly protective then when we grew up...

Mills, Your observations are pretty accurate, and agrees with my observations. When we add all them together, 1) more litigious, 2) more fragile, 3) more protective, 4) more clumsier, 5) more helmets, 6) more languages used from kindergarten, and 7) English not required makes it all too easy to criticize the teachers compared to when we attended grade school.

Of course I was being facetious about kids being clumsier and more fragile (they just think they are because their parents coddle them) :wink: . The English language question is certainly a touchy one--school districts are too hesitant to add a year or two to a student's schooling in order to help that student achieve English language competency and the ELL (English Language Learners) programs are notoriously underfunded.

Mills, Unfortunately, I'm not being facetious; our colleges are now more involved than ever teaching bonehead English grammar which should have been taught before they graduated high school. I agree it's a touch subject, but my observations tell me that there is too much coddling done in grade school which hurts our students more than helps. I also intentionally added "clumsier" and "fragile," because teacher's are afraid to discipline their students for fear of repercussions from both the administration and parents.

I know that I don't speak for most of the country, but I graduated last year from a great public school system. While I know that a lot of high schools weren't as good as mine because of meeting new people from across the country, I just thought that you would like to know that not all school districts coddle their children. At least not if you take the accelerated classes. No Child Left Behind is only making things worse. One of my teachers was to lose his debate class because he wasn't 'highly qualified'. You can't have a degree in debate! NCLB needs to die a quick and painful death.

littlefairy, There are always exceptions to "general rules." I'm not sure whether you had the time to read the whole thread, but I made a post on some interesting consequence as a result of NCLB. The Palo Alto (California) school district is one of the best in California and scores in the highest percentile, but because their district also includes some of the worst, Palo Alto High was criticized for not showing a higher improvement during the school year, and as a consequence will receive less money next year.

Fair enough. But how far down the rabbit hole do we go? I would argue (and have argued) that NCLB is smoke and mirrors, but to what end? To keep people complacent with a sense of false security that the problem can be solved without a good hard look at the fabric of society? (This would be my contention.)

Hate to do this, but this is part and parcel of Bush's rhetoric and his actions. He approved legislation in Texas to deny health services to people who are unable to pay, but as president has approved legislation to get the feds approve legislation to keep Terri Schiavo alive, because "every life is precious." People just can't seem to put two and two together when it concerns this president and the conflicts of his actions vs his rhetoric.

And yet, when asked why they voted for Bush in the 2004 election, voters overwhelmingly answered "morals." There's a great quote from Douglas Adam's The Restaurant at the End of the Universe that seems sadly appropriate:

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

I have read this thread carefully. It has a great deal in it that is insightful but it does not address three very important topics which must be examined before any real consensus can be reached on NCLB.

First of all, there ,must be an understanding about test scores and their meaning. A child who scores at grade level on a fifth grade reading test, for example, is at or near the median score for that test. By definition, 50% of the readers score below that median score and 50% score aboved that median score country wide.

Secondly, Extra funding for schools has shown, in some circumstances, to have little or no effect on Student Achievement. The Kansas City School System, at one time, massively funded by court order, made little or no improvements in Student Achievement despite large amounts of extra funding.

Thirdly, the voucher system has not been given a chance to work under circumstances in which it may indeed do quite well. Those familiar with education in our public schools know that Students with Special Needs( mentally and emotionally handicapped) and Students who are severely disruptive( those who are suspended over and over and still return to the school again and again) must be placed in schools that speak to their special needs. Since Political Correctness makes this impossible, it appears that 5% of the Student body will continue to severely dilute the experiences for the rest of the students.

Not until the Special 5% are removed and placed in schools that meet their special needs will the first step be taken to improve the education of our children.

Here's another dynamics of NCLB or maybe inspite of.
****************************
Posted on Thu, Mar. 24, 2005



Study: State urban schools are `dropout factories'

By Dana Hull and Larry Slonaker
Mercury News

A new study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University warns that California's high school graduation rate is routinely underestimated -- and that African-American and Latino students are earning high school diplomas at alarmingly low rates.

California's overall graduation rate -- or the percentage of freshman who earn a regular diploma four years later -- is about 71 percent, according to both state officials and the researchers.

But the state does not compute statewide graduation rates by race or ethnicity, and when the researchers did that with a new formula, they found that only 57 percent of African-American students and 60 percent of Latino students graduated on time in 2002.

It's even worse for male students: 50 percent for African-Americans and 54 percent for Latinos.

But most troubling, the researchers said, was the graduation rate they computed for Latino and African-American students in the state's 10 largest school districts. The researchers did not examine other districts, including those in Santa Clara County.

``Large urban school districts in California have become dropout factories,'' said Gary Orfield, director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, who called for more accurate reporting. ``The economic and social impacts of this dropout crisis are too enormous for Californians to ignore.''

State education officials said the study's conclusion, which computes graduation rates using enrollment data tracked through grade levels, is not surprising. And while they report a graduation rate of almost 87 percent to the federal government for the 2001-02 school year using a federal formula, they also report on the Department of Education Web site that the rate is probably closer to 71 percent.

To resolve that conflict -- and get a much clearer picture of how many students start and then finish high school -- they want to implement a system that would track individual students as they move from grade to grade and even school to school in California or out of state. At the moment, for example, if a student leaves San Jose Unified and moves to Arizona or Mexico, there's no way to determine if the student is still in school.

But while that tracking program has been approved by the Legislature, the state's budget crisis has delayed implementation for at least another year.

``The reality is that no one knows the exact figure,'' said Jack O'Connell, California's superintendent of public instruction.

Students leave school for a number of reasons. Academic struggles, teen pregnancy, poverty, and the need to care for younger siblings are all factors. Others are expelled, in jail, leave the country, move to other states or go straight into community college programs before their graduation date.

``There's clearly a problem,'' said Donna Rothenbaum of the California Department of Education. ``Our graduation rate has been around 70 percent, and it's alarming. It's a number that we want to see go higher. More than 70 percent of our kids should be graduating high school after four years.''

Santa Clara County files an annual dropout report with the state, but officials say the figures are considered to be unreliable because individual students are not tracked.

In that report, the county listed its 2002-03 dropout rate as 6.4 percent. The figure is an estimate of students who would drop out over a four-year period, based on information collected in a single year. The statewide dropout rate for the same period is 12.6 percent. For San Jose Unified, the figure is 4.2 percent.

There is no official countywide graduation rate. However, districts are required to file their own rates -- as well as that of their individual high schools -- to conform with federal No Child Left Behind requirements.

In that report, San Jose Unified lists its graduation rate for the class of 2002-03 as 93.8 percent, but officials say that figure is almost certainly overstated. For the same year, the district said the dropout rate among Latinos in the district was 6.1 percent, among Asians it was 0.3 percent and among whites it was 3.3 percent.

Cicerone Imposter_ I do believe that you are. like most of the people who have written on this thread, ignoring the problems which contributed to the formation of NCLB. My previous post indicated that the basic problems relating to a. test scores b. funding c. voucher plans must be addressed before any real critique can be made of NCLB.

The article you quote gives evidence that many high schools are "dropout factories" and that many African-mericans and Latino students are among the drop outs.

Is this surprising? As I noted, there is a median score. Half of the students fall below the median. Most people know which students will make up a large part of the group below the median.

We have been involved for years trying to find a solution which will put many more hard working African-Americans and Latinos in the top half of the medians.
We have not, alas, fully examined the possiblities inherent in vouchers or the voucher system.

chic, Scores are meaningless when NCLB is supposed to help all children, and most minorities are dropping out of school. If you are really interested in an in depth discussion on scores, you should refer to other forums on a2k which addresses 1) affirmative action, 2) test scores including the SAT, and 3) the US ranking in education. Your attempts to talk about averages have no meaning in this kind of environment. We must solve the socio-economic problems that face us today and tomorrow, and forget about "average scores."