Wisconsin NCLB Protest Teacher Gets Reprimand Letter
There's been a recent lull in any real NCLB reauthorization news since Kennedy's folks put out the boring parts of their discussion draft and the rest of the Hill was focused on appropriations. But the AFTies report that Ted Kennedy is back on the march and The Hoff (how come that guy never links to me?) says that the House links have gone dead. Next thing you know, the lights will go out, a door will creak open, and Margaret Spellings -- face lit from below with a flashlight -- will cackle like a witch.
Poor and working class kids have less access to dental care than ever before, and it's showing, according to this NYT article (Boom Times for Dentists, but Not for Teeth). Sometimes the delays and lack of care are serious. Strange that I've seen vision programs at schools but never dental ones.
Bush Declares His Openness To Revising Education Law Washington Post
Under pressure from the right and the left, President Bush said yesterday that he is open to reformulating his signature No Child Left Behind education law but stressed that he remains unwilling to surrender on its core elements of testing and accountability.
Bush Pushes Congress on 'No Child' Law AP
President Bush said Tuesday that he's open to new ideas for changing the "No Child Left Behind" education law but will not accept watered-down standards or rollbacks in accountability.
Everyone says they know how to fix NCLB -- what should be done -- but no one seems to know how to get the politics right to get there. Former New York City education guy Robert Gordon's piece in Slate does much the same, unfortunately. Titled with supreme confidence (How to fix the No Child Left Behind Act), the Gordon piece rehashes the obstacles we all know about and then proposes -- yes -- national standards as a solution. Politically speaking, NCLB proponents need to do something along these lines: buy off the teachers by softening the mandatory merit pay language, win back the testing hawks by dumping local assessments, and make the multiple measures language tight enough that Spellings and the business groups can live with it. Give it a new name, let everyone say that it's not NCLB anymore, and declare victory. Pretty? No. Perfect? No. But that's not what this is really all about. Via Eduwonk.
As September's End Nears, Legislative Action Awaits
It's looking as if Rep. Miller will miss his goal, and Sen. Kennedy still has a chance to meet his.
Edwards Promises NCLB Overhaul
John Edwards' presidential campaign said today that the former senator would "totally overhaul" NCLB.
On Senate Panel, a Different Dynamic for NCLB Renewal
Senator Edward M. Kennedy is hoping to get a bill reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act through Congress before the end of this year. But if that’s going to happen, he has some big stumbling blocks to overcome.
While it's easy to look at this week's NCLB meltdown as the result of teachers union recalcitrance, Bess Keller's piece on the comparability provision (Proposed NCLB Rule on 'Salary Comparability' Draws Scrutiny) raises the possibility that the Miller draft, on the whole, tries to do too much -- not just fixing NCLB's flaws but carving out new ground that is especially difficult to reach under the current circumstances.
NCLB fails our schools USA Today
Bill Richardson: A one-point plan for No Child Left Behind: Scrap it.
Teachers attack education lawSan Mateo Times
The state's largest teachers' union on Monday launched a campaign decrying the 5-year-old No Child Left Behind Act as a failure and criticizing a proposal to renew the plan as only making the situation worse.
What's Good for Children NYT
With Congress gearing up to reauthorize the act, business leaders are rightly raising their voices in an attempt to prevent the teachers’ unions and their political allies from weakening this important law
No Race Left Behind NRO
One part of [the law] has generated surprisingly little debate, but ought to — namely the law’s requirement that schools track the scores of racial subgroups of students, and that each group hit the target pass rate on the tests.
Education Reform Goes From Bad to Worse Conservative Voice
Miller’s proposed changes to No Child Left Behind gut its school-choice provisions.
It might not make much of a difference to Congressman Miller's political calculations, but today's slew of editorial responses to the discussion draft skew against him:
Our view on education: Five ways to improve NCLB USA Today
The appropriate response, however, isn't to scrap the whole act or to water down its emphasis on reading and math.
Really Leaving No Child Behind NYT
Mr. Miller’s draft contains some important reforms that deserve to become law, but much of that good will be undermined if states, schools and teachers are not held accountable for the quality of education they provide.
English learners left behind LA Times
Congress didn't get it all right with NCLB -- but it didn't get it all wrong either. Some simple improvements can make a good law better and more fair for all our students. Via EdNews.org.
In the meantime, this article from the New York Sun reminds us what states are really like, and are likely to do more of under a more open NCLB school rating system:
State Guts Its Test of Reading
The difficulty of a reading test used to judge students across New York State dropped by as many as six grade levels between 2004 and 2005, according to an internal study by the New York City teachers union obtained by The New York Sun.
Feeling a little bit overwhelmed and bored over all this NCLB reauthorization action (already)? Me too. Plus which, I'm too lazy to read everything. So here are some handy-dandy resources to consider, with thanks for all the hard work you've done:
What You Should Think About the New Version of No Child Left Behind TQATE
"A good accountability system is a fragile thing, and making the law more complex also makes it more vulnerable to those who disagree with the principles themselves."
Miller-McKeon draft thoughts Sherman Dorn
"The first page is my attempt to cross-reference common criticisms of NCLB with pages/sections of the discussion draft that may address those criticisms."
Who's saying what about NCLB Reauthorization? ECS
"To better inform the national debate on NCLB reauthorization, ECS collected and analyzed these recommendations and created a one-stop source that allows you to easily find out who’s saying what about revising the law."
Cheat Sheet NCLB Part II
EdWeek's David Hoff dissects the MM draft in three sections (see also Part 1 and Part 2).
Thanks to the Ed Trust, here's a PDF of the Spellings letter to Miller that she promised yesterday, listing problems she and others have with the M&M discussion draft. Speaking of which, Miller said that Title II and the rest would be posted sometime today, which will help us see whether the teacher quality elements of NCLB are going to be strengthened or -- is such a thing possible? -- weakened. (There's a nod to teacher quality in the form of an attempt to close the equitability loophole in Miller's Title I proposal, according to EdWeek's David Hoff, but if they couldn't do that in 2001 they don't seem likely to take care of it now.)
The public mud-slinging between Spellings and Miller is really heating up. Makes you wonder what they say about each other behind closed doors. And, substantively, it bodes poorly for a strengthening of the current NCLB law.
Responding to Spellings' criticisms read to him by USA Today's Greg Toppo at a conference call with reporters today, Chairman Miller said that what he's trying to do with NCLB isn't just "wonkery" (as Spellings describes it) but rather much-needed changes to an imperfect law. "I know she wants to add confusion and doesn't like the debate," said Miller of Spellings. He also repeatedly mocked the "99.9 percent pure" claim Spellings once made (fire the writer who came up with that one), and called claims that multiple measures would muck up accountability "hokum."
Obviously, Miller's got to do what he's got to do, and -- this sentence is already so vague -- is going to go ahead and do it. But still it's sad to hear him denounce the current NCLB system which he created and defended for so long, now using much the same language as his detractors had (ie, a single test on a single day determining AYP). Such is politics. Somewhere, Joel Packer is smiling.
Report, lawsuit question NCLB's effect on teacher quality USA Today
A federal lawsuit and a new report challenge the Bush administration's rules on teacher credentials, saying they fail to ensure that students have a highly qualified teacher.
Coverage of the Miller Proposal:
House Committee Members Propose NCLB ChangesTitle I Monitor
Draft NCLB Bill Intensifies the Discussion Ed Week
Changes Proposed for Education LawNYT
Not that letters from academics usually make much difference, especially when they're on the other side ideologically from the folks making the decisions, but here's a letter from Hoover Institute researcher Erik Hanushek from last week that was sent along to me, in which he tells Chairman Miller what a bad idea multiple measures, writ large, are for school improvement. PDF here. Keep sending those letters and secret memos in.
Gerald Bracey points out in this Huffington Post post (Nothing Will Happen with NCLB) that adding more tests (ie, multiple measures) is no guaranteed solution because it could well overwhelm the testing infrastructure. It's an interesting argument, in part because I hadn't heard it before and mostly because it puts Bracey in the position of arguing against multiple measures.
A letter signed by dozens of civil rights groups -- but not by the Education Trust, Citizen's Commission On Civil Rights -- shows just how divided the broader civil rights community is on whether to include other tests and evidence of performance in the AYP school rating system of NCLB.
"Today's letter -- signed by many more organizations, several with large grassroots membership bases -- demonstrates, among other things, that those two groups [Ed Trust and CCCR] do not represent the views of the broader civil rights community on NCLB," says Bob Schaeffer of the FEA.
There's nothing particularly new about this divide. See below for the press release from the pro-multiple measures umbrella group known as the Forum on Education Accountability. See herefor the Ed Trust's statement, which calls these changes a giant step backwards.
Continue reading "Civil Rights Groups Divided On How To Rate School Performance" »
What happens next with NCLB won't be determined by what position editorial pages take on the issue of multiple measures, but it's interesting to note that several, including at least two more today, have decided that it's worth taking a moment to talk about what direction the law is going to go and warning against a retreat on NCLB:
A Vote for 'No Child' Washington Post
To let states wriggle out of accountability on the basics would betray the mission of No Child Left Behind.
No Retreat From No Child Dallas Morning News
The last thing that students need is for Washington to turn school accountability into the educational equivalent of mashed potatoes.
If there are editorial pages out there coming out in favor of multiple measures, I'd be happy to show them, but so far at least I haven't come across any.
Once in a while, I actually do some reporting, and today I happened to talk Prof. William Sanders, the testing guru whose recent letter to Congressman Miller was leaked to the press and seemed (according to an Ed Daily story) to put Sanders squarely against Miller's proposed use of multiple measures in AYP.
Well, it turns out that Sanders is against the use of portfolios and classroom observations that are often called multiple measures, but not against end of course tests, college entrance tests, and the like that he thinks Miller is talking about. "Those things have a place," says Sanders, who points out that they are already part of the growth model projections that he has developed and are being used in some pilot states.
His main accountability concern, however, is not so much that the current AYP relies on "a single test" (a description he says irks him and ignores the fact that there are three years of tests and hundreds if not thousands of test item responses that go into each year's AYP calculations), but rather that it encourages too much focus on lower-performing kids rather than "early high-achieving kids" who get ignored. He proposes a rating system that evaluates schools not only on reducing the achievement gap but also on helping already-proficient kids do even better -- apparently a part of the Tennessee pilot and perhaps what Nevada is trying to do here.
Over at The Quick And The Ed, Kevin Carey points out that one of the main concerns about multiple measures isn't just that it would take the focus off of core subjects like reading and math but also that it would put accountability back in the hands of schools and teachers whose performance is being measured (and who, previous to NCLB, often declined to publish achievement gaps or rate schools rigorously). Carey also asks "What's the law going to look like if there's one version for each of the nation's 14,000 school districts, or 90,000 schools? A lot like having no accountability at all."
Meanwhile over at The Gadfly, Mike Petrilli has a new post that calls Miller's speech a lurch to the left that could could delay reauthorization.
What no one's figured out -- or said out loud at least -- is how far Miller is going to go with these alternatives, or what it will take (if anything) to get new Democrats on board with a NCLB that is any better than the old one.
Reactions to the Miller speech continue to trickle in, including a story in yesterday's Ed Daily (subscription required) that reiterates Miller's intent to prevent multiple measures from turning into an "escape hatch" (as if there aren't already enough of those) and tensions with ranking member Buck McKeon, who has threatened to block the bill if necessary.
There's also mention of a letter from testing expert Bill Sanders that calls multiple measures into question: “Most of the measures usually advocated under the banner of ‘multiple measures’ have so little reliability that any attempt to use them in summative assessment is certain to provide results so untrustworthy that essentially no distinction among schools can be made."
Will multiple measures turn into a big "do-or-die issue," or will it be worked out in a way that gives the NEA credit for changing NCLB without gutting the already-loose NCLB accountability framework? I don't exactly know. But my guess is that something will get worked out that allows the reauthorization to move forward even if it doesn't really help the functionality of the law.
Not everyone's holding their tongues and waiting to see what the Miller reauthorization bill looks like. This commentary from Scripps News Service is an example: Diluting the No Child law. "As attractive as these indicators might sound, they would dilute the purpose of the law to where ultimately the standards become the usual educational mush."
Perhaps there's some way to thread the needle and come up with a bill that avoids creating mush and gives Congressional Democrats enough of the fig leaf they think they need to get re-elected. After all, many would argue that the growth model idea, which could have created just such a confusing morass, has seemed to have been just such a success. And others would observe that, with all its confidence intervals and subgroup minima and safe harbors and all the rest (attendance and graduation indicators), the current NCLB isn't as clear and simple as it seems on the outside.
But I'm not particularly hopeful, and remain somewhat dismayed and -- perhaps I'm alone -- surprised at this turn of events. After five years of defending NCLB, ducking and weaving all the way, Miller seems to be telling us that multiple measures are to be the price of a Democratic-controlled Congress.
It's easy to forget that parents and the public don't necessarily think the same things about NCLB that you do -- and that their feelings about NCLB may actually be better than their feelings about their local schools or schools nationwide.
JoanneJacobs has more evidence of this, citing a new poll showing that 57 percent of the public back reauthorizing No Child Left Behind "as is or with minimal changes." A lot higher than you thought, I bet. But don't worry, the number goes down to 41 percent for current and former teachers, says Jacobs.
That's roughly the same percentage that give their own public schools an A or B -- a figure that drops to 22 percent for public education nationally. So the public likes NCLB more than their local schools, even, and educators like NCLB about the same as their local schools.
NB: The poll was put out by the generally conservative but pro-NCLB Hoover Institute and will be in Education Next magazine sometime soon. Changes in the wording of these poll questions can often affect their outcome -- an analysis I'll leave to others.
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Here's a feisty op ed in the SF Chronicle about efforts to soften (improve?) NCLB via multiple measures:
"Expect Democrats to try to squeeze as much money as possible from federal taxpayers, while watering down accountability requirements so that schools won't have to do a better job of teaching," says the piece (Rx for failure). "And they'll do it by undermining the testing system so that illiterate students can be labeled as success stories."
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Coleman backs changes to No Child Left Behind education law AP
As Congress debates whether to reauthorize President Bush's landmark No Child Left Behind education law, Sen. Norm Coleman and two other senators proposed legislation Wednesday that they say builds on that law but in a way that gives states more flexibility.
Senator Joe Lieberman: News Release Click below for full news release.
Continue reading "Opting Out Of Highly Qualified Teachers" »
Not everyone's so sure they're going to like what House education committee chairman George Miller comes up with, according to this letter sent last week from left-leaning progressives who are concerned about Miller watering down the law too much.
What a contrast with the last time around, when Miller and the Ed Trust and others worked seamlessly on NCLB and rarely if ever had to resort to public letter-writing like this.
Continue reading "Dem Groups Concerned About Miller NCLB Bill" »
According to the attached press release, Republican Senators Gregg and Burr are today introducing a "comprehensive" NCLB reauthorization bill -- the first of will likely be several volleys from folks who want to push or promote something that's not quite the same as what the committee and leadership staff are up to.
Additional waivers/pilots to look for in the coming months while reauthorization languishes include: that "just missed" AYP designation that she talked about last week in USA Today, a blanket waiver of some kind on HQT (statutorily, it's time to declare 40-plus states out of compliance and start doing compliance agreements).
Continue reading "Growth Models Across America -- And More Pilots To Come" »
What do people really think about NCLB? ETS will attempt to answer that question a little later today with the release of their big survey on the public's attitudes towards the law. "This year’s survey titled, “Standards, Accountability and Flexibility: Americans Speak on No Child Left Behind Reauthorization,” examines the public's views on what direction the nation should take moving forward as Congress considers reauthorizing the law. The survey was conducted for ETS by the bipartisan opinion research team of Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc. and The Winston Group." If you hurry, you can make it over there on time: 11:30 a.m. -1:00 p.m.; Phoenix Park Hotel, Ballroom, 520 North Capitol Street, NW, Washington, D.C. Spellings, Miller, et al are supposed to be there. All bets point to a much more positive result than the one from a couple weeks ago.
Professor Dorn schools just about everyone in his recent post about accountability politics and national standards, focusing in particular on the issue of cut scores: "Whether one labels the tiers Expert, Proficient, Basic, and Below Basic; Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, and Blue; or Venti, Grande, and Tall, tying values to ordinal tiers doesn't tell us anything about the tiers themselves other than that someone wanted to label them. Confusing cut scores with rigor is an act of policy machismo, not common sense. "Yo Mama's so wimpy, she's satisfied with Mississippi's cut scores." Nice.
In no particular order, some of the small but important things to glean from this week's slew of NCLB-related reports: (1) Why didn't the Secretary stop the IES from trampling over all the "good" CEP coverage with its comparability report? (2) Gotta love the "I'm not judging" rhetoric from the Secretary, who's still not convinced about national standards (for good reason, (3) Anyone else notice that high standards (NC) don't necessarily translate into higher achievement (SC just as high on NAEP)?, (4) Or, that Kennedy has already bigfooted Dodd on the national standards issue?, (5) Last but not least, I must really be on the Department's shit list since no one invited me to call in about the IES report.
Coverage:
Study: ‘Proficiency’ on State Tests, NAEP Often a Mismatch Ed Week
State reading and math standards vary dramatically, federal report says AP
States Found to Vary Widely on Education NYT
Reading, math scores up since NCLB, report says AP
Students are doing better on state reading and math tests since the No Child Left Behind Act was enacted five years ago.
New Study Finds Gains Since No Child Left Behind NYT
The study cautioned that it was difficult to determine if the gains occurred because of the bill that President Bush signed into law in 2002.
Study: NCLB reform seems to be working USA Today
As Congress prepares to reauthorize the 5-year-old No Child Left Behind education reform law this year, a provocative new study shows that students seem to be improving in both math and reading — two key goals.
Scores Rise Since 'No Child' Signed Washington Post
The nation's students have performed significantly better on state reading and math tests since President Bush signed his landmark education initiative into law five years ago, according to a major independent study released yesterday.
Student test scores up since 2002 Los Angeles Times
But the improvements aren't necessarily due to the No Child Left Behind Act, researchers say. Student achievement nationwide has increased since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, but that federal law is not necessarily the reason, according to researchers who looked at results from 50 states.
Having felt burned last year by how his big annual report last year was covered by blogs and the papers, Jack Jennings' Center On Ed Policy is being especially careful in rolling out its publications this year -- most notably by putting them out in chunks rather than as one big report. The latest piece, out today, is sure to ignite a lot of conversation. It finds that student achievement in reading and math has increased since the No Child Left Behind Act was enacted in 2002, and that the number of states in which achievement gaps among groups of students have narrowed far exceeds the number of states in which gaps widened since 2002.
The report is available here and the state profiles here. According to the press release, the report includes "verified data from all 50 states – much of which is available for the first time in the report – and investigates achievement trends both before and after the passage of NCLB. The report also limits its analysis to testing data that is comparable from year-to-year."
The study identified several possible reasons for the results, including increased learning, teaching to the test, more lenient tests, scoring or data analyses, and changes in the populations tested. “Any or all of these factors in combination could be contributing to these trends,” the report indicates.
Here's some news coverage (Google News). Here's some blog coverage.
It's no secret that lots of people don't like NCLB, especially among school- and classroom-level educators, but last week's Scripps poll and story on what the public at large thinks and knows (Majority would like 'no child' law left behind) might not have been so dramatic as it seems, according to Eduwonk and others. Check out the numbers and the questions and you'll see in several places they've been combined to make things seem worse. For example, only 14 percent of those polled actually want NCLB repealed.
Over at Eduwonk, Andy says that the wrangling over an immigration reform bill may anger conservatives and scuttle chances for anything constructive on NCLB reauthorization (The Conservatives Are Revolting!), but I think that would only be the case if NCLB 2.0 was closer to being ready to go. If immigration reform gets done, its main effect will be on the families of schoolchildren whose parents aren't here legally. Either way, it seems to me that there'll be enough down time -- and enough differences when it comes to committee jurisdiction -- that NCLB reauthorization (I'm still betting '09) won't be adversely affected.
Hmmm. A big-city district (Chicago) examines a provision in NCLB that it has long detested (SES tutoring) and finds that 30-60 hours of tutoring per year (six to 12 days of school) has a minimal benefit (but won't release the study). Big surprise. Check it all out here: $50 million -- for what? (Chicago Sun-Times).
States say that they don't have the capacity to implement the school turnaround provisions of NCLB, according to a new national report based on surveys and interviews with state ed officials (link here). There's some news coverage here: Federal education mandates faulted.
As in the past with this series, I appreciate the information and respect the source, but wish that it didn't rely so much on self-reported data. What do districts, federal officials, and outside observers say about state performance in terms of implementing NCLB?
Gerald Bracey has an opinion piece in the Post (A Test Everyone Will Fail) arguing that NAEP achievement levels are not only too high, but also internally inconsistent and contradict other results. Bottom line? NAEP Bad.
For a time, Fairfax County educators were thinking about -- some would say threatening to -- give up $17 million in NCLB funds rather than give a test to ELL kids that they thought was too hard. Well, of course it is. Everyone knows that.
But threatening to give up NCLB funding -- resolutions, protests -- how 2003.
At the last minute, however, Fairfax figured out what everyone else has: take the money, comply nominally, and find a way to do what you want. In Fairfax's case, nominal compliance means making sure that teachers and ELL kids know that they can -- yes -- stop taking the test if it's too hard. All it takes is a shake of the head.
"A memo from the Virginia Department of Education on Thursday said students can "indicate to the test examiner either verbally, or non-verbally by shaking his/her head 'no'," according to the Post article (Va. Schools Yield, Yet May Shape 'No Child' Wash Post)..."that he or she is not able to complete any more items."
Sympathetic as I am to the plight of ELL kids and the anxieties of teachers about how their schools are going to be rated -- yes, that's part of this -- I can't imagine how this new policy is going to work out in practice.
In fact, all this thinking is making my head hurt even though I haven't finished this post. Teacher, I want to stop now.
What do Fairfax County (Va) schools and American Idol's Sanjaya have in common? Yesterday, they both went down:
Fairfax Schools Concede On Testing Washington Post
Sanjaya's run on "Idol" ends MTV.com
Things heated up towards the end of last night's PBS NewsHour segment on reauthorizing NCLB (here), with Philly superintendent Paul Vallas touting the benefits of the law and Nebraska state supe Doug Christiansen describing its deficiencies. It's an argument we've all heard before.
What jumped out at me, though, was the intro to the discussion, which said that 20 states had tried to roll back all or parts of the law. I'd never heard that number before, and frankly it seemed both low and somewhat misleading.
Hasn't pretty much every state tried to get out of the law's requirements? And isn't the real point that none of the states actually did withdraw from NCLB, much as that outcome was expected?
Remind you of anything? Yes, the new NCLB logo, according to one of the commenters on this design geek blog called Brand New (Logo by a Child Left Behind). Colleague Josh Benton blogs about this over at The Big D. For previous posts on this, see here.
"With Congress beginning to wade into the turbulent waters of reauthorizing No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the Title I Monitor asked five of the nation’s top education experts and policy wonks to evaluate the leading proposals submitted thus far." (Experts Weigh in on NCLB Reauthorization)
"CREDIT THE No Child Left Behind Act for this: It helped to reveal how little learning was going on in many classrooms, especially those with poor and minority students," begins this LA Times editorial (Son of No Child Left Behind). "This is no small accomplishment. Still, the law has not yet achieved its key goals...Flaws in the law have held back real educational progress and unfairly placed blame on public-school teachers for everything but the weather."
Apparently not content with being the last state in the nation to turn around its 2006 test scores (they came out at roughly the same time that kids were taking the 2007 tests), Illinois has made the news again for jimmying with student eligibility criteria in ways that generally help schools pass AYP (State uses test loophole). No, it's not the subgroup size loophole -- that's so 2006. It's the date of enrollment loophole, which Illinois moved back to May 1 of the PREVIOUS year. Nice. Result? Thirteen percent of scores not counted, or 283K kids (one in four African-American kids), 53 schools made AYP that otherwise wouldn't have. Chicago Tribune.
Having lived through the last five years of "sky is falling" news about NCLB's imminent demise -- look back and you'll see it's been about to fall apart since almost the beginning -- I'm deeply skeptical about the premise of Gail Russell Chaddock's Christian Science Monitor piece ('No Child Left Behind' losing steam).
To be sure, NCLB isn't winning any popularity contents. But it never really did. Moreover, the piece leaves out just how awkward it would for many Republicans to buck their President and explain why they voted for NCLB in the first place. There's lots of jockeying going on, which I'm sure Gail knows but doesn't get into the piece. Speaking of which, giving a prominent quote to the Fordham Foundation's Checker Finn, who's currently flopped against NCLB (and had an awkward time of it), doesn't do much for me and should have been flagged.
Morton Kondracke: No Child Left Behind deserves renewal Examiner
There’s reason to hope that Congress will reauthorize, extend and improve the landmark 2001 NCLB Act school-accountability law. But, by itself, the federal program is clearly not going to solve America’s education crisis.
NCLB Has Flunked Chicago Defender
Is the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) working? If it isn't working, will it succeed by the 2014 deadline? The answers to both of these questions, unfortunately, are no.
Outside the Beltway View of NCLBAFT Blog
It's true that failing an NCLB-mandated tests doesn't necessarily mean a student will be held back or given an F. But this impassioned, informed, unsolicited comment should put to rest the idea that NCLB's tests aren't sometimes "high-stakes tests" for children.
Then, as if to prove its critics right, there's NCLB's new, "bloody claw marks" logo. Or are those marks just meant to represent declining NAEP scores?
Ed school professor Sherman Dorn wonders why I and others might tend towards minimizing concerns about the impacts of NCLB raised in a recent Washington Post article (Some typical responses to concerns about test-prep), and suggests that there are political implications.
The answer, put simply, is that stories like this -- a favorite among education writers and their editors -- have been coming out since NCLB was enacted, with little result. At the same time, the overall amount of curriculum narrowing and teaching to the test actually caused by NCLB is disputed -- as is whether its impact is necessarily a bad thing (much as teachers dislike it). Speaking of teachers, the NCLB backlash, to the extent it's taken place, is primarily among teachers, as noted by this post from the Public Agenda blog Reality CheckED. And, if anything's clear, the views of educators are no longer the sole arbiters of what makes a good education, or a good education system. For better or worse, that day is passed.
This principal took NCLB-required disaggregation a step further and divided up students to release test score results.
School Separates Students by Race for Test Scores NPR
"When scores were released last week for academic achievement tests taken at a Northern California high school, the principal separated students into ethnic groups. Latinos, Asians, whites and blacks were each assembled together."
It wasn't the first time, not everyone thinks it's necessarily a bad idea, and the principal says she'd do it again.
For better or worse, disaggregated test scores -- which before NCLB were often treated as a hush-hush "don't tell the kids and parents" kind of issue -- have come a long way.
There are two big events taking place a week from tomorrow -- a joint House-Senate hearing on NCLB reauthorization and a higher ed Spellings Commission "what did it accomplish" event.
The NCLB event, sponsored by the big four (Miller, Kennedy, McKeon, and Enzi) includes as witnesses mostly the usual suspects. The hearing, titled “Elementary and Secondary Education Act Reauthorization: Improving NCLB to Close the Achievement Gap,” will be held in room 2175 of the Rayburn House Office Building on Tuesday, March 13, 2007, at 9:30 a.m. Click at bottom to read the members' pull quotes.
It's interesting to note that while there is no one from the USDE that is on the scheduled witness list, Spellings herself is scheduled to show up at an event later the same day called "Higher Education after the Spellings Commission: An Assessment." At the Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI, 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
A lot of folks seemed to appreciate Dave Deschryver's comparison of the seven (!) major NCLB reauthorization proposals from last week, and so he's gone back and made some additions and changes to make it even better and more complete. Check out the shiny new version below.
Continue reading "Comparing Everyone's NCLB Reauthorization Proposals, Version 2.0" »
Back in the day, there used to be a thing called a "side by side" that would compare the key provisions of different versions of legislation category by category or even sometimes provision by provision. Maybe it's still done.
In the meantime, David DeSchryver from Brustein & Manasevit has done somewhat the same thing based on seven NCLB reauthorization reports (USDE, Commission, Chiefs, NEA, AFT, NASBE, NCSL.
Common if not unanimous areas of interest and direction include: a focus on standards and cross-state comparisons, calls for more flexibility in accountability models, improved assessment quality, a better menu of sanctions and corrective action, addressing the special education system, incentives for teachers in high need schools and districts, more exemptions for ELLs, and increased funding. However, the devil is in the details.
Interestingly, he says it's the Aspen Institute Commission Report that is the real outlier in terms of size and scope (I had thought it was the USDE proposal).
UPDATE: See the full text of this section below, exclusively from This Week In Education.
UPDATE 2: See the updated version (as of March 2) here.
Continue reading "How Are These NCLB Reports Like All The Other Reports? Lotsa Ways." »
You can watch the Aspen Institute NCLB report release event "live" on your PC right now. The key players are talking. They're on stools.
Or, you can read the report here. It includes 75 recommendations. There were 12 hearings and "over 10,000 emails, submissions of written testimony, meetings and letters from those with thoughts on how to improve the law." As previously reported, the Commission is planning a series of events through 2007.
The responses are already beginning. PEN is calling for more focus on improvements not just sanctions, and more focus on parent engagement, and more resources. PEN has a complete set of NCLB informational tools available at www.PublicEducation.org.
The EdSec says she likes it.
10:30 AM UPDATE: Now they're talking about highly qualified principals.... whaa?
10:33 AM UPDATE: Voluntary national standards and assessments? Oh nooo....!
10:50 AM UPDATE: Something about changing the ELL percentages.
10:54 AM UPDATE: Governor Barnes says "We have national standards....We already know what students are supposed to know."
10:59 AM UPDATE: Zut alors!! Cut off from ze webcast!
MORE RESPONSES:
Eduwonk says that NCLB haters won't like the report cuz it's relatively tough-minded but Petrillians will criticize it for not being big enough (even though it's got national standards in there).
The AFTies say that the report's highly qualified teacher proposal is "unrealistic, arbitrary, and unworkable, and say that TAP does it better.
EdWeek's David Hoff hashes out the implications of the data systems and national testing proposals that are part of the report recommendations.
The long-awaited Aspen Institute report on NCLB is coming out tomorrow (Webcast here), but there's no telling if there' going to be anything new or interesting in it compared to everything else that's already been said and laid on the table. Will it break new ground or rehash what most of us already know? My guess is that the report will tend more towards kitchen-sink inclusiveness than depth or focus. More importantly, will it have any impact on the upcoming reauthorization debate -- speeding it up, slowing it down, nudging it this way or that? The Commission will continue to put out reports and admonish Congress through the rest of the year, but few of these reports have much shelf life. Still, there's hoping. A lot of folks have done a lot of work on NCLB, maybe something good will come out of all that thinking.
The teacher quality provisions of NCLB are some of the most important -- and least effectively implemented -- provisions of the law, and there's more than enough blame to go around for all the delays, gimmicks, and obfuscation that's taken place.
However, the Center on Education Policy has some answers, based on meetings held in the fall, about what to do the next time around. They include encouraging states to develop performance-based certification measures and more nuance in the definitions of HQT, incentives to address equity, and better data systems.
It's core, achievable stuff -- some of it too tame, but none of it unimportant. There's lots that can be done short of undoing collective bargaining agreements.
UPDATE: AFT Michele suggests that there's less consensus there than meets the eye. She sees a big divide between those who want to improve working conditions generally and those who want to focus on incentives for hard to staff schools. Working conditions? Seriously? Sometimes I think the AFTies flip a coin every day to decide whether they're going to be progressive or reactionary. Either that, or the AFT bigwigs have no idea what Michele and John et al are up to (which would be sorta great).
UPDATE 2: Apparently it's working conditions in hard to staff schools that Michele is talking about, not in general. OK, that helps. But I still don't see such a big disagreement as she does.
What seems clear already, just hours after the President's budget has been released, is that the funding levels for NCLB and other much-watched programs aren't nearly high enough to win over much Democratic support. On this, the basic go/no go issue, the reaction is "no go."
Not that the Dems really expected anything else. They've been setting it up to slam the President on the budget (and, by extension, NCLB reauthorization) for a couple of weeks now, at least.
Knowing this, the Administration probably figured it couldn't appease the Dems, so why try? It's a Democratic problem now, and the Dems probably won't be able to do much better, funding-wise, given the spending box we're in (now, suddenly, when it's convenient).
What's left is lots of little stuff -- proposed eliminations of medium and small programs that nearly never get eliminated, slightly more fleshed out ideas from the NCLB reauthorization proposal, boutique ideas. (Speaking of which, the TIF funding issue isn't resolved yet. Yikes.)
Over at Eduwonk, Andy bemoans the lack of big ideas (It's Not That It Is Small, It's That It Thinks Small).
Over at the Republican House ed committee site, Buck McKeon reminds everyone how much money has gone into NCLB in the past six years.
UPDATE: Miller and Kildee press release (theme = "not enough") is below.You saw this coming. Senate staff response was posted earlier this AM.
I was one of the first guesstimators on the block to predicat that NCLB reauthorization would get delayed, and if anything the situation seems worse now than ever.
What makes me say that? Most of all, it's that the Administration decided to roll out its reauthorization proposal now, on the heels of the State Of The Union, instead of waiting for the budget proposal next week, or waiting for the Baker Plan Aspen Institute Commission report next month, or -- God forbid -- developing a joint plan with Congressional Democrats.
Maybe they wanted to do one of these things, but were rebuffed or their hand was forced. Maybe there were other imperatives, or distractions. And, to be sure, rolling their plan out now allows them to do what they did for many months on the Iraq War -- say "we've got a plan, where's yours?"
But it also means that they get beat up on, since they're the only ones out there. It's not a very bipartisan way of going about things, and some of the provisions are pretty inflammatory (ie, over-riding charter caps and teacher transfer provisions). All this could slow things down and make things more contentious, though it may affect the outcome very little.
State passing rates on AYP (the percentage of schools that meet state testing requirements and thus federal ones) varies widely, as you can see from the great chart to the right (courtesy of Stateline.org).
But, of course, this doesn't mean that the students in high percentage states are smarter than the rest, or that their schools are better. It probably just means that their tests are easier, or that the cutoff score is lower.
Some states like North Carolina have low AYP pass rates AND their state test cutoffs seem low, according to Pauline Vu's Stateline story. In NC, students had to answer correctly fewer than half the questions to pass [the middle school algebra test]. In some grades, they can flub two-thirds of the questions and still be marked “proficient.”
But not all states have lowered their requirements or rigor, Vu points out. There are lots of different things going on. Check it out: Where All the Children Are Above Average
PS -- Remember just a few years ago when it was hard to get state passing rates for AYP and folks didn't want state-by-state comparisons because they were thought to be misleading? Someone tried to retrieve a report listing state rates, but it lived on.
UPDATE: Sherman Dorn thinks Vu and I don't understand that it's rigor, as well as cutoffs, that affect state pass rates, and that we don't deserve a cookie. But he's wrong. Bad Dorn.
You have to love EdSec Spellings’ use of the phrase “kit and kaboodle” to describe the Administration’s desire to win approval of their whole NCLB reauthorization package, though so far only NPR seems to have used it in a segment. So fun, so quaint. So Spellings.
But that's not the only rhetorical flourish up Spellings' sleeve. She defends the new tough restructuring requirements for persistently failing schools in saying, “I think we all have to answer…what are we going to do about that?'" Meaning: if you don’t like my ideas, come up with something better, but you can't say the status quo is OK.
Not surprisingly, the NEA’s Reg Weaver goes nuclear about the Bush proposals, declaring “This is war," according to Stephanie Banchero’s piece in the Chicago Tribune.
In that same piece, however, Banchero or her editors make what seems to me a mis-step in describing the Bush proposal as “subverting” state laws and local collective bargaining agreements, which seems unnecessarily ominous.
There are hundreds of provisions in federal law that require states and districts to do things as a condition of receiving federal funds -- highway speed limits are the most common example. Plus which, you've already got Weaver declaring war, so no need to reiterate that some folks don't like the proposal. I think it’s more fair to say that the law “strong-arms” states and districts into changing their policies.
I can already anticipate Banchero's response, in which she will undoubtedly paraphrase the Vice President's recent use of colorful if quaint language: "hogwash."
UPDATE: Banchero can't catch a break -- over at District 299, which focuses on Chicago schools, a reader berates her for saying that the Bush provisions would "benefit" CPS, which is operating under a 30-school charter cap.
Riffing off of a Washington Post story about the upcoming struggles Speaker Pelosi faces within her own ranks, Eduwonk posts on how challenging it is going to be for NCLB to get reauthorized (NCLB'ed) -- and whether that falls in Pelosi's lap or the President's. "The line about Pelosi feeling she needs to deliver for new members and what they ran on is a down arrow on NCLB in some cases," writes Eduwonk. "But, isn't the President's forthcoming budget request (and any private signals he might be sending) pretty key here in terms of whether we get to an NCLB deal?"
