No Child Left Behind has failed--Leaving no stone unturned to discredit No Child Left Behind

By regulating at such a young age we are making schools the kind of place kids love to hate.

s an educator of 20 years, I wonder how Gov. Tim Pawlenty concludes, as he did last year, that a small increase in Minnesota students’ test scores proves “No Child Left behind is working.” His statement flies in the face of evidence that, in fact, No Child Left Behind not only is not working, but results in negative impacts up and down the educational continuum — from distorting educational experiences for our youngest to ensuring when they get to college, more students than ever will need remedial courses in reading and math.

In these cash-strapped times, it is a fact that No Child Left Behind has driven up costs in terms of administering exams, tutoring students, altering curriculum, increasing teacher dissatisfaction and turnover, as well as outsourcing education dollars to corporations that create further exams exacerbating the downward spiral.

Some states are spending additional sums seeking court judgments to force the federal government to pay these costs as unfunded mandates.

Add to this that two recent studies have put the lie to the Bush administration claim that No Child Left Behind is nonpartisan and that its principal objective — closing the achievement gap between whites and students of color — is being met.

The first study, by David Berliner at Arizona State University, establishes with exhaustive detail that poverty has a cumulative impact which so overwhelms all other interventions, that it is patently ridiculous to believe that public education alone — which occupies a mere 9 percent of a student’s yearly life-experience — should be held culpable for such pervasive social disparities.

In fact, as witnessed during Hurricane Katrina, some gaps in life circumstances are so ingrained, intractable and profound that no amount of political grandstanding or public school bashing is enough to make them go away.

The second study, by Harvard researchers Gail Sunderman and Gary Orfield, shows that agreements negotiated by the Department of Education and individual states have created important differences in enforcement of No Child Left Behind, particularly in identifying which schools have met annual yearly progress goals. Such negotiated “deals” favor affluent suburban districts over the urban poor in terms of analyzing progress and what constitutes a highly qualified teacher.

Thus, once hailed as a “bipartisan” initiative to close the achievement gap, No Child Left Behind has been subverted into just another shell game that disadvantages, once again, those with the least resources to fight back.

There are other problems engulfing No Child Left Behind: fairness and accuracy in exams, gaming of numbers by states and school districts, and access to tutoring and summer school programs by those most in need.

All this provides abundant evidence to conclude, unlike Pawlenty, that No Child Left Behind has failed and must be repealed in 2007. Yet, there is more — an even stronger basis for advocating an end to No Child Left Behind.

At its core, this and other “measurable accountability” programs believe in the quantification of learning; that a test more accurately captures what we need to know about learning and human ability than do the actual gifts of being able to speak, write, listen, self-actualize, empathize, synthesize, think, forgive, love and everything else that makes us human.

The truly fundamental problem behind No Child Left Behind is this: What is joyful about learning, and what therefore makes us want to learn as much as we possibly can, are the intangible qualities of creativity, curiosity, compassion, wonder and joy.

By reducing human effectiveness in education to paper, pencil and marking ovals, we are cheapening and even destroying the fundamental inspiration that drives learning.

In the end, we do not learn a subject to the level of excellence because someone tells us to; we learn at a deep level because we want to, because it serves an important purpose.

Humans are meaning-making animals. We love to understand, to connect, to relate. We crave a great purpose for being alive.

By taking these innate desires and relegating them at a very young age to tasks which are by their very nature disconnected, abstract, indifferent and unsatisfying, we are making school the kind of place kids love to hate — particularly those without hope at home or confidence in the existing social contract.

This is the true failure of No Child Left Behind, one that no amount of tweaking or funding or negotiating will ever repair.

We will not produce world-class thinkers or artists or scientists through threats or fear or punishment. Education is not — and has never been — a coercive act imposed by a government on its people. Nor is it, except in extremely authoritarian societies, so strictly controlled, mandated and circumscribed by bureaucrats and politicians.

What really matters — and especially for the disadvantaged — is the deep, abiding connection that learning provides. It starts with the caring ethos of adults at home, at school and in the community and naturally infects children, who are given to understand that their humanity — the same spirit found in Socrates, Shakespeare, Einstein and all great achievements of humankind — is their strongest asset in making a better world for themselves and others.

SAN DIEGO — You have to hand it to critics of No Child Left Behind. In trying to preserve the status quo, they're wrong. But at least they're persistent. In fact, they're persistently wrong.

Made up of teachers, administrators, school board members and anyone who turns a blind eye to the mediocrity of public schools, the critics are relentless in their attempts to discredit the education reform law.

They'll get another chance to blast away over the next several months as a bipartisan commission holds public hearings across the country to get an earful on what works with the law, and what doesn't. The commission will send recommendations to Congress, which is expected to renew the law in 2007.

It's easy to see why those who prefer the status quo detest No Child Left Behind. Under the law, children in every racial and demographic group in every public school must improve their scores on standardized tests in math and science. No excuses. Schools that fall short of that goal can be shut down, and their students can transfer to another public school.

The critics hate requirements like that for one reason — because good tests not only tell you if kids are learning but also if teachers and administrators are holding up their end. If the truth comes out, disgruntled parents might go from demanding accountability from schools to demanding it from the individuals who work in them.

The critics are nothing if not versatile. First, they insisted that No Child Left Behind was unfair to schools because it was a one-size-fits-all approach with no flexibility. Then they said the law was unfair to teachers because it tied them to student performance when not all children learn at the same pace.

Now they're insisting the law is unfair to some students because it benefits middle-class white kids and hurts Latinos and African Americans. At least that is the conclusion of a troubling new study by the deceptively named Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.

Troubling because the agenda it advances is dangerous and the thinking behind it is backward. Deceptively named because if this group cared about civil rights, it would push in the opposite direction.

It goes back to the flexibility the critics requested and eventually received. Now that 49 states have either amended the law or waived some of its provisions, the critics have the chutzpah to insist that the thing they wanted has produced a result they find unacceptable.

They claim that schools that educate white and middle-class students are more likely to take advantage of loopholes and dodge accountability than those that teach poor kids and Latinos and African Americans. As a result, they say, schools with poor and minority kids are more likely to report low scores on exams and are thus more likely to incur sanctions. That is, according to the critics, an education law intended to help black and brown kids is, in fact, racist.

That criticism is half-right. There is racism here, but not in the law. Rather, it is built into the educational system that the law seeks to reform.

It begins when a teaching corps that is three-fourths white approaches minority students with what President Bush calls the soft bigotry of low expectations. It continues as those teachers, at a loss to explain why these students don't do as well in school, cling to the racist assumption that minority parents don't value education. And, finally, it is compounded when those who want to preserve the status quo do everything they can to undermine testing — not to protect black and brown children but to protect the adults who are disenfranchising them.

The No Child Left Behind law didn't create racism in education. But it just might be helpful in exposing it.

I suspect that the Harvard study is right about one thing — that some schools, including those that educate white and middle-class children, have come up with creative ways to skirt the law by taking advantage of waivers and the like.

But so what? The schools that resort to such maneuvers are only hurting the kids they're supposed to be teaching. Minority students, far from being disenfranchised, are much better off for being held accountable with no exceptions and no excuses.

That can be messy. But whom are we kidding? It's nothing compared with the mess that the special interests have made of the educational system.

My brother is a teacher, my dad is a retired teacher and I have a close uncle who teaches. I also have a friend in an inner city school in Huntsville, Al who teaches.

#1 - these folks don't give a rip about the teacher's union. They teach because they love to teach and are trying to educate children.

#2 - The ALL hate NCLB. With a passion. Why? Because it is a burdensome, cumbersome beauracracy that takes teaching time out of the classroom. And they find themselves having to pend less time teaching the good students to try and drag the poor students along.

#3 - You may say that the teachers having to spend more time with the poor students is a good thing. Well, the truth of the matter is that almost all of the problems in school come back to the parents not taking an active role and interest in their child's education. It is THOSE students who are taking up all of the extra effort.

While I agree with some of what you say I disagree with two of your points. First, teachers and administrators pay lip service to the idea that parents should become involved in their child's education. The fact is that when parents do become involved in the school they are, at best, tolerated. I have found teachers and administrators look at involved parents as interfering and accuse them of second-guessing them. The fact is that teahcers would rather the parents stay away but it isn't politically correct to say that.

Second, Here in Pa. the state has mandated that IST (Instructional Support Teachers) be hired to help those students who are not special needs. In other words, those in the middle who are having difficulty in certain subjects. This was instituted long before NCLB came along. Unfortunately, I never saw any positive results from this mandate. It did, however, lead to increased costs for the school districts and added to the ranks of union members.

My brother, too, is a teacher due to retire next year. He has never joined the union and I could tell you stories about that decision. The only reason I see that NCLB will not work is because the education establishement won't allow it to work. It's funny, NCLB has been around under other names since early in the Clinton administration and noone said anything about it then. It was only when this administration finally decided to enforce the guidelines did the union and the School Board Association cry foul.

I spent 13 years on our local school board (1990-2003) doing battle with the education establishment. Believe me, it wears you down...

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