"No Child Left Behind" Issues in Tucker - Page 2

JW · 08-25-2005, 06:53 AM

I'm currently working in a high-performing school in a high-performing district that has been deluged with transfers from a low-performing school in our district and 'illegal' transfers from a couple of neighboring districts. There are only two-low performing schools in our district. The district has put a greal deal of resources into those schools and has a commitment, but school choice kicked in this year, creating havoc in the district. The cost of additional teachers for my school and other schools affected by choice, and the cost of bus transportation for the kids opting for choice will cost the district hundreds of thousands of dollars it cannot afford. My own classes are overcrowded right now as the district scrounges to find four new teachers for my high school. School choice will not help the low-performing schools because, as has been pointed out, it is often the best kids who are leaving and going to the higher-performing schools. At the same time the overcrowding and disruption in the other schools will also have an effect. The result will be lower performance, not higher performance. I also agree with the comments about unfunded mandates. The bureaucracy needed to handle all the NCLB requirements creates little empires at state and district level to cope with all the accountability requirements. This will only grow in time as education becomes more and more federalized. Ronald Reagan would not be proud of today's Republicans.

flere-imsaho · 08-25-2005, 09:52 AM

Jon's latest post is interesting in the sense that it's a direct reaction to the "liberal" education movement that grew up in the 60s. This movement stressed bringing everyone along, but working especially hard on the low performers to turn them into high performers or at least not leave them behind.

Both views are extremes. If you spend an inordinate amount of resources on low performers, you fail to develop the potential of the high performers. If you ignore the low performers, you'll be left with legions of uneducated adults.

-----

NCLB has nothing to do with education. What it is, is legislation which sets in place a program by which politicians can create two illusions: the illusion of improvement in schools, and the illusion of politicians demanding "accountability" from schools.

The Illusion of Improvement

Let's say you have 100 bushels of apples. Let's say two of those bushels are rotten. What happens when you remove those two bushels? The overall quality of your apples improves. This is the conceit upon which NCLB is based: "Very Bad Schools Cannot Be Improved."

Unfortunately, children aren't apples and bushels aren't schools. You can't simply get rid of bad schools and expect the overall situation to improve, unless, of course, you intend to also get rid of the problem children at these schools.

But supporters of NCLB don't care about making bad schools better, they just care about improvement. Two bushels of bad apples stacked in front of 98 bushels of good apples will invariably have the customer looking for other suppliers. However, if those two bushels are spread amongst the 100, the customer may overlook the occasional problem apple.

In real life, of course, it doesn't work that way. Partly because NCLB is bad legislation and partly because NCLB is an unfunded mandate, all that is done is that the problems are moved to other schools. The problem of difficult children. The problem of uninterested parents. The problem of unsupportive communities. The problem of underfunded schools. The problem of high student/teacher ratios.

This is akin to your boss saying to you "You've done such a good job covering Ellen's job since she left that we're going to fire Fred & Larry and have you do their jobs as well. We're also going to have you start supporting the Sales team as well, even though you've never worked with them before and no one in the company's been able to work with them successfully. Oh, and no, we won't be giving you any more money."

In spite of this, NCLB creates the illusion of improvement, which is key for politicians seeking to win elections. They can point to bad schools which were shut down. No longer will the lack of performance from these schools drag down the system as a whole. Meanwhile, as they've found out in Texas, school administrators at the remaining schools will do everything they can to make sure students do well on the standardized tests, to the exclusion, if necessary, of actual "learning."

Even there, the metric used to judge improvement is flawed. I'm sure, as Jon notes, that it is theoretically possible to create standardized tests that accurately measure the improvement in the education of students. In the meantime, however, these tests don't exist and certainly aren't being administered as part of NCLB.

But NCLB doesn't care about the efficacy of the tests, it just wants a metric by which it can measure improvement or the lack thereof. Standardized tests produce these metrics, and do them easily. No more hard questions about how to improve education. No more hard work spent on developing good long-term strategies for education within particular communities. No more time spent encouraging people in problem communities to take an interest in their children's education.

No, it's quite simple: Either the test scores improve, or they don't. And you can fit that in a 10-second sound bite.

The Illusion of Accountability

Politicians like to campaign on the promise to "run government more like a business". The Park District blows its budget by $2 million? Questions will be asked and people will be fired. The Road Maintenance division saves $100,000 in the fiscal year? Promote that manager!

NCLB brings this mentality to the schools. NCLB says to administrators & teachers "Look, we've got this metric we can use to determine if your students are improving or not. If they aren't, we're going to assume it's your fault."

NCLB places the accountability directly on the shoulders of the teachers & administrators. But is that where it should lie? As others have noted, success in education comes from a joint effort that includes teachers, administrators, students, parents and the community as a whole. Even the politicians themselves have a role to playing, seeing as its them who provide the money for operations & long-term improvements.

But politicians don't want this responsibility. It doesn't help them get re-elected. And they don't want the parents of community to feel that it's their responsibility either, because angry or embarassed people don't tend to vote you back into office.

So what does NCLB do? It places a barrier between the community & politicians on one side, and the schools on the other. The electorate and the politicians say "Here's your money, here's your resources. Succeed or else" and then go on their merry way to bigger (and more interesting) things.

That's the illusion of accountability.

-----

So what do I think NCLB is? I think NCLB does two things:

1. Allows politicians and uninterested communities to ignore the real problems in their schools and convince themselves that things are getting better by using flawed metrics.

This is the short-term result. What it does is allow communities to justify the closing of bad schools, and then, when other schools can't handle the load and turn bad themselves, justify the closing of them as well.

2. Creates a great case for, and market for, Charter Schools.

It should come as no surprise that many of those involved in NCLB from the beginning either came from the Charter School industry or went to it afterwards. Since NCLB itself demands "accountability" in a business-like sense, the obvious next logical step, after NCLB has imploded a district's schools, is simply to privatize the whole operation, and the journey from community-supported education to privatized education will be complete.

You can see this starting in major urban areas already. Systems like, say, Chicago's, have no hope of surviving NCLB. Schools close and the problems move to other schools, which then fail and also close. Eventually few public schools will be left, but the Charter industry will be there (already is there) to say "Give us these kids, and pay us X, and we'll meet your standards." Of course, what the Charter schools don't tell you is that they'll simply not accept the students who can't make the grade, and so you'll end up with JIMG's intended "for-now" plan.

JonInMiddleGA · 08-25-2005, 09:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

... the journey from community-supported education to privatized education will be complete.

That's very nice & neat. If you could only turn out to be right about it, I'd be a fairly happy man, get the government out of the education business entirely.

Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic about seeing it happen, but this is one time I'd sure be thrilled to be wrong & happy to have you be right.

flere-imsaho · 08-25-2005, 10:49 AM

JIMG:

Two responses to that:

1. Despite my loony-left persona, I'm not totally against the idea of privatized K-12 education. Of course, I believe such decisions should be made on the local level. Some communities, perhaps even some states, can and do provide public education which is both successful and cost-effective. On the other hand, I could be persuaded, if I saw a decent feasability study, that it would be a good idea to, for instance, do away with the Chicago Public School system and privatize it instead. I'm not totally for the concept, but I'm open to being convinced.

2. I hope you can agree with me on this point. If it was in fact the intention of the framers of NCLB to push systems to the Charter System, I would have appreciated it if they (and the legislators who pushed it through, including Bush) were at least honest about it. As it stands, they've merely set up a considerable number of people to fail, and fail spectacularly.

albionmoonlight · 08-25-2005, 10:54 AM

The idea of fully privatizing education is not really as radical as most people think (most people would be suprised at how recent the idea of free public education for all is in American society).

I wonder, though, whether it is such a good idea. We tend to think of free education as for the benefit of the kids. In some ways, it is. For me, though, I see it as a good way for the State to do its best to try to create productive, non-criminal citizens. I wonder if we eliminate public schools, truancy laws, etc., if we will end up spending more money on jails and cops and social workers than we do now on schools.

ISiddiqui · 08-25-2005, 11:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

The idea of fully privatizing education is not really as radical as most people think (most people would be suprised at how recent the idea of free public education for all is in American society).

I wonder, though, whether it is such a good idea. We tend to think of free education as for the benefit of the kids. In some ways, it is. For me, though, I see it as a good way for the State to do its best to try to create productive, non-criminal citizens. I wonder if we eliminate public schools, truancy laws, etc., if we will end up spending more money on jails and cops and social workers than we do now on schools.

Great point. There are unintended economic consequences (or benefits) to every decision and that may indeed be one of them. Without the State creating public schools, there really isn't that much of a justification for truancy laws. I mean who really knows what schedule every school works on if everything is free for all private. You could be creating a criminal underclass which would have been somewhat productive members of society otherwise with a public education.

Another problem may be that those that can't afford private schools (ANY private school) will turn to non-socially acceptable persuits and we may have to pay more in welfare benefits because they don't have a job.

flere-imsaho · 08-25-2005, 12:34 PM

Sorry, by "privatize" I was suggesting that school districts would pay private corporations to run schools (or pay to have the district's children attend the private school).

JW · 08-25-2005, 06:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Jon's latest post is interesting in the sense that it's a direct reaction to the "liberal" education movement that grew up in the 60s. This movement stressed bringing everyone along, but working especially hard on the low performers to turn them into high performers or at least not leave them behind.

Both views are extremes. If you spend an inordinate amount of resources on low performers, you fail to develop the potential of the high performers. If you ignore the low performers, you'll be left with legions of uneducated adults.

I think that was a very good analysis of NCLB. I actually think accountability has helped improve public education in Louisiana (which consists of a disastrous school system in New Orleans and the rest of the state which is really performing pretty well on average), but I think NCLB has tremendous problems as has been pointed out. I think you are right on target in saying it creates the illusion of accountability.

HomerJSimpson · 08-26-2005, 11:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JW

I think that was a very good analysis of NCLB. I actually think accountability has helped improve public education in Louisiana (which consists of a disastrous school system in New Orleans and the rest of the state which is really performing pretty well on average), but I think NCLB has tremendous problems as has been pointed out. I think you are right on target in saying it creates the illusion of accountability.

What would be a better metric than standardized testing to measure success/failure in the education system? I'm asking this because I agree that standardized test is far from a perfect measuring tool, but I cannot think of another system of measurement that would be affective/realistic/not fraught with dishonesty.

Klinglerware · 08-26-2005, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HomerJSimpson

What would be a better metric than standardized testing to measure success/failure in the education system? I'm asking this because I agree that standardized test is far from a perfect measuring tool, but I cannot think of another system of measurement that would be affective/realistic/not fraught with dishonesty.

Standardized testing is fine, but not in the form that NCLB mandates. As I mentioned earlier, achievement testing in Connecticut includes a writing component that NCLB proponents consider extravagant (i.e. the feds won't fund it). Multiple choice tests are adequate for measuring reading comprehension, logical/mathematical ability, and general knowledge, but are not very good in assessing a student's writing ability. That is why the SAT is moving to include a writing sample as well.

An ability to express ones' self via written communication is just as important as, if not more than, reading comprehension and mathematical ability. If NCLB is going to mandate standardized testing, they ought to design tests in a way that makes them complete and valid as comprehensive assessment tools. It's disheartening, but not surprising, that a cornerstone of the NCLB policy is being implemented as cheaply as possible.

08-25-2005, 09:52 AM	#52
flere-imsaho Coordinator Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Chicagoland	Jon's latest post is interesting in the sense that it's a direct reaction to the "liberal" education movement that grew up in the 60s. This movement stressed bringing everyone along, but working especially hard on the low performers to turn them into high performers or at least not leave them behind. Both views are extremes. If you spend an inordinate amount of resources on low performers, you fail to develop the potential of the high performers. If you ignore the low performers, you'll be left with legions of uneducated adults. ----- NCLB has nothing to do with education. What it is, is legislation which sets in place a program by which politicians can create two illusions: the illusion of improvement in schools, and the illusion of politicians demanding "accountability" from schools. The Illusion of Improvement Let's say you have 100 bushels of apples. Let's say two of those bushels are rotten. What happens when you remove those two bushels? The overall quality of your apples improves. This is the conceit upon which NCLB is based: "Very Bad Schools Cannot Be Improved." Unfortunately, children aren't apples and bushels aren't schools. You can't simply get rid of bad schools and expect the overall situation to improve, unless, of course, you intend to also get rid of the problem children at these schools. But supporters of NCLB don't care about making bad schools better, they just care about improvement. Two bushels of bad apples stacked in front of 98 bushels of good apples will invariably have the customer looking for other suppliers. However, if those two bushels are spread amongst the 100, the customer may overlook the occasional problem apple. In real life, of course, it doesn't work that way. Partly because NCLB is bad legislation and partly because NCLB is an unfunded mandate, all that is done is that the problems are moved to other schools. The problem of difficult children. The problem of uninterested parents. The problem of unsupportive communities. The problem of underfunded schools. The problem of high student/teacher ratios. This is akin to your boss saying to you "You've done such a good job covering Ellen's job since she left that we're going to fire Fred & Larry and have you do their jobs as well. We're also going to have you start supporting the Sales team as well, even though you've never worked with them before and no one in the company's been able to work with them successfully. Oh, and no, we won't be giving you any more money." In spite of this, NCLB creates the illusion of improvement, which is key for politicians seeking to win elections. They can point to bad schools which were shut down. No longer will the lack of performance from these schools drag down the system as a whole. Meanwhile, as they've found out in Texas, school administrators at the remaining schools will do everything they can to make sure students do well on the standardized tests, to the exclusion, if necessary, of actual "learning." Even there, the metric used to judge improvement is flawed. I'm sure, as Jon notes, that it is theoretically possible to create standardized tests that accurately measure the improvement in the education of students. In the meantime, however, these tests don't exist and certainly aren't being administered as part of NCLB. But NCLB doesn't care about the efficacy of the tests, it just wants a metric by which it can measure improvement or the lack thereof. Standardized tests produce these metrics, and do them easily. No more hard questions about how to improve education. No more hard work spent on developing good long-term strategies for education within particular communities. No more time spent encouraging people in problem communities to take an interest in their children's education. No, it's quite simple: Either the test scores improve, or they don't. And you can fit that in a 10-second sound bite. The Illusion of Accountability Politicians like to campaign on the promise to "run government more like a business". The Park District blows its budget by $2 million? Questions will be asked and people will be fired. The Road Maintenance division saves $100,000 in the fiscal year? Promote that manager! NCLB brings this mentality to the schools. NCLB says to administrators & teachers "Look, we've got this metric we can use to determine if your students are improving or not. If they aren't, we're going to assume it's your fault." NCLB places the accountability directly on the shoulders of the teachers & administrators. But is that where it should lie? As others have noted, success in education comes from a joint effort that includes teachers, administrators, students, parents and the community as a whole. Even the politicians themselves have a role to playing, seeing as its them who provide the money for operations & long-term improvements. But politicians don't want this responsibility. It doesn't help them get re-elected. And they don't want the parents of community to feel that it's their responsibility either, because angry or embarassed people don't tend to vote you back into office. So what does NCLB do? It places a barrier between the community & politicians on one side, and the schools on the other. The electorate and the politicians say "Here's your money, here's your resources. Succeed or else" and then go on their merry way to bigger (and more interesting) things. That's the illusion of accountability. ----- So what do I think NCLB is? I think NCLB does two things: 1. Allows politicians and uninterested communities to ignore the real problems in their schools and convince themselves that things are getting better by using flawed metrics. This is the short-term result. What it does is allow communities to justify the closing of bad schools, and then, when other schools can't handle the load and turn bad themselves, justify the closing of them as well. 2. Creates a great case for, and market for, Charter Schools. It should come as no surprise that many of those involved in NCLB from the beginning either came from the Charter School industry or went to it afterwards. Since NCLB itself demands "accountability" in a business-like sense, the obvious next logical step, after NCLB has imploded a district's schools, is simply to privatize the whole operation, and the journey from community-supported education to privatized education will be complete. You can see this starting in major urban areas already. Systems like, say, Chicago's, have no hope of surviving NCLB. Schools close and the problems move to other schools, which then fail and also close. Eventually few public schools will be left, but the Charter industry will be there (already is there) to say "Give us these kids, and pay us X, and we'll meet your standards." Of course, what the Charter schools don't tell you is that they'll simply not accept the students who can't make the grade, and so you'll end up with JIMG's intended "for-now" plan.

08-25-2005, 10:49 AM	#54
flere-imsaho Coordinator Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Chicagoland	JIMG: Two responses to that: 1. Despite my loony-left persona, I'm not totally against the idea of privatized K-12 education. Of course, I believe such decisions should be made on the local level. Some communities, perhaps even some states, can and do provide public education which is both successful and cost-effective. On the other hand, I could be persuaded, if I saw a decent feasability study, that it would be a good idea to, for instance, do away with the Chicago Public School system and privatize it instead. I'm not totally for the concept, but I'm open to being convinced. 2. I hope you can agree with me on this point. If it was in fact the intention of the framers of NCLB to push systems to the Charter System, I would have appreciated it if they (and the legislators who pushed it through, including Bush) were at least honest about it. As it stands, they've merely set up a considerable number of people to fail, and fail spectacularly.

08-25-2005, 10:54 AM	#55
albionmoonlight Head Coach Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: North Carolina	The idea of fully privatizing education is not really as radical as most people think (most people would be suprised at how recent the idea of free public education for all is in American society). I wonder, though, whether it is such a good idea. We tend to think of free education as for the benefit of the kids. In some ways, it is. For me, though, I see it as a good way for the State to do its best to try to create productive, non-criminal citizens. I wonder if we eliminate public schools, truancy laws, etc., if we will end up spending more money on jails and cops and social workers than we do now on schools.

08-25-2005, 12:34 PM	#57
flere-imsaho Coordinator Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Chicagoland	Sorry, by "privatize" I was suggesting that school districts would pay private corporations to run schools (or pay to have the district's children attend the private school).

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