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February 10, 2012 08:23 AM UTC
19 Comments
I hope the CEA and other parties responsible for the new plan do a great job. I wish them well. Whatever they come up with couldn’t be much worse than what it’s replacing (knock on wood).
this is a terrible thing. Got anything yet, ArapG?
First it made very public that some schools were doing a poor job. This has led to a lot of the pressure to improve schools.
Second by breaking out be SES it made public how, even in good schools, many times subsets of the kids were not being well educated.
Third, that public shaming of bad scores got school districts to step up and try hard to improve those poorly performing schools.
I have seen proof of none of it. Those were the talking points when Bush sold us the bill of goods, but I’ve seen no research to say any of it was accomplished. I’ve talked to hundreds of educators over the past ten years, and every person I have talked to said nothing good about NCLB. In fact, a number of them left the profession because they felt it had created impossible work situations.
I would seriously love to see some research backing up claims 2 and 3. As for pressure (claim number 1), where is there evidence that more pressure actually helped with long-term outcomes?
Look at the test scores. They showed that even in high performing schools, most often kids from a poor SES had low scores. And over the years we saw many schools improve their results.
NCLB had problems and needed to be improved as those problems became apparent. But it was a first good step.
that would mean you actually cite at least a couple of the “several sources”. You know, with links. Just sayin’.
Many educators, parents and students hate those tests. Many of us feel they don’t represent actually learning. I want to know where the research is that says the tests actually reflect learning. I haven’t seen any.
Widespread systemic cheating by teachers.
Also, my point was not that NCLB fixed the schools. It’s that it publicized the problem. That districts then put in a lot more effort trying to improve poorly performing schools. And that in places we did gt improvement.
If NCLB had fixed everything we wouldn’t need to improvement, we could instead celebrate a superb K-12 system.
The part about the tests not reflecting actual learning is serious, though. Everyone who has been in the schools since NCLB knows teachers are forced to teach to the tests, rather than encourage their students to follow their curiosity, develop critical thinking skills, and challenge each other interactively. I think I have asked you this before, Dave — how much time have you spent volunteering in the schools in the past ten years? I think you would find, as I have, practically every teacher, and every parent who volunteers regularly, thinks CSAPS are a giant waste of precious classroom time.
I did a lot of room mom duty when my kids were in grade school. Form what I saw the teachers saw the CSAPs about he same as he kids saw end of the year finals – something that required prep but it did not drive the school year.
And yes, I’m sure the teachers would have preferred to not be measured. Accountability is uncomfortable.
The one making the contention is the one obligated to back it up around here. If you haven’t seen any studies just say so. Even if you are basing your support entirely on scores only, not necessarily a universally agreed upon criteria, you’re the one obligated to come up with a link to them.
Sorry, very busy weekend and only have my iPad so finding and copying links is a bit more of a pain. But here’s the results – http://www.cde.state.co.us/cde…
Sometimes, in some schools, test scores go up, but how do you know the students are really learning, and not just being able to regurgitate material for the tests? Teachers spend a substantial amount of time giving the kids practice tests and practice questions. Teachers call it “teaching to the tests”. Most of them do not want to do it because the kids do not enjoy it, and because it misses the mark in many ways.
Dave, have you read any books on “Best Practices” in education? If you do, you will understand what I mean. Quality education that results in higher level thinking skills includes lessons that are hands-on, developmentally-appropriate, thematic rather than in isolation, collaborative rather than competitive, multi-sensory, and much more. There is an incredibly rich body of research that goes into teaching, and teaching well.
Teaching just the things that are known to be asked on the test is a low-level manner of educating, and gives only a superficial understanding of the material, not to mention, poor retention of what is learned.
When Barbara Bush came to Denver many years ago to sell NCLB, I was at her sales pitch. At the time, it sounded promising, but there was no additional funding to improve upon teaching methods or reduce student-teacher ratios. It wasn’t long before we learned Bush’s cronies had investments in the companies that provided the tests.
NCLB was flawed from the start. Improving education in America will require some societal sacrifices (better funding, more community involvement, teacher incentives, more time in class, lower student-teacher ratios, more team-teaching, and proven teaching methods based on pedagogical research). There are a number of countries which excel in public education and these are the things they are doing — not standardized testing with unfunded mandates.
And it should have been improved constantly as we learned what helped and what didn’t. My point was it was a start and helpful, not that it was perfect.
how our students measure up in international comparisons and how much No Child left Behind and CSAP have contributed to any improvement over the years. A better solution might be to adapt practices and priorities that have proved effective in other systems such as that of Finland.
we have comprehensive public education. There are a number of countries who only test those in the “academic” pre-college tracks. In many countries, kids are identified early as “vocational” students or pre-college, and their coursework goes off into two different directions. The vocational students are usually not tested using standardized tests. Not to mention that some countries drop-out rates are higher than ours, so the ones who make it to high school to take the tests are already pre-selected through attrition. Thus, international scores are often skewed against the US and countries like ours.
I think there would probably be value to some sort of compromise between a rigid tracking system that locks students in to one path or the other too soon and too tightly and an assumption that all students should ideally be on a university bound track.
There are vocations, some of them not easily out-sourced, that pay very favorably compared to what many university graduates find available with their degrees. Basic skills can be made meaningful to students who don’t see themselves as on the university track if they can see them as, nevertheless, relevant to a satisfying, well paying job upon high school graduation.
As long as enough flexibility is maintained to allow for late bloomers and changes in direction, as opposed to the very rigid systems we see in some countries, I do think we need to get away from the idea that the goal is to prepare every student for that college education. The high percentage of students who graduate high school needing remedial work upon entering college because they are, in fact, far from prepared, even with good grades and standing, demonstrates what a lack of success we are having in that regard in any case.
That said, Finland, so often cited for success, apparently does so without an early, rigid tracking system, and the structure, including compulsory education only to 16 isn’t so different from our system in that respect since our system isn’t compulsory beyond that point either with many dropping out. The difference is in the nature of the compulsory portion and the post-compulsory opportunities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E…
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