By Corey Murray, Senior Editor, eSchool News
April 24, 2007As Congress sets about the difficult task of revamping the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the six-year-old education law once considered a hallmark of President Bush's presidency, several school superintendents are calling for wholesale changes to the bill.
Speaking at the American Association of School Administrators' annual Legislative Advocacy Conference in Washington, D.C., on April 20, members of Public Schools for Tomorrow (PSFT), a group of current and former school administrators in favor of educational reform, said NCLB, though well-intentioned, has failed to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students and has not delivered on its promise of measurable academic gains for all children.
"In fact, we are convinced that NCLB is harming the education of many of the children it is intended to help," wrote the group in a statement.
Like many of the law's critics, members of PSFT--led by Columbia Teachers College President Tom Sobol--say NCLB places too great an emphasis on standardized testing, while doing little to measure students' progress effectively over time.
Rather than continue along a path they deem destructive, reformers have identified six core problems with the law and, in each case, have offered potential remedies.
Their suggestions come about two months after a high-profile bipartisan commission co-chaired by former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, a Republican, who served for 14 years as the governor of Wisconsin, and former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat, released a report outlining some 75 recommendations for lawmakers to consider as they reform the legislation. (See story: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showstory.cfm?ArticleID=6871.)
Though many Washington insiders believe it's unlikely Congress will vote on a new education bill before the 2008 presidential election, members of PSFT say now is the time for educators in favor of change to voice their concerns.
"The goal really is to marshal a bully pulpit of superintendents everywhere to make sure NCLB represents what it means to be an effective citizen," said PSFT member Judith Johnson, superintendent of the Peekskill City Schools in Peekskill, N.Y.
Among the problems identified by the group are standards, testing, teachers and teaching, sanctions for struggling schools, community involvement, and funding.
"We believe in standards, but the existing system does not work," declares the PSFT statement handed out during the April 20 event. "In many places, standards are not aligned with testing and accountability, thus frustrating their purpose. Further, standards vary from state to state, making comparisons useless."
To better align existing federal testing and accountability rules with state benchmarks, the group suggests that a commission be established to craft a set of national standards for learning. Set by leaders representing various educational groups, with participation from state and local governments, these national standards "should be broad and challenging enough to encourage a wide variety of curricular and instructional practice," PSFT says.
Unlike past proposals, the group says, this is not something the federal government should have a hand in. "Nothing in what we say suggests that this should be turned over to the federal government to create these things," said Robert Rochelle, superintendent of the Ossining Union Free School District in Ossining, N.Y.
Testing is another prominent aspect of the law the superintendents' group takes issue with.
"Too much testing is corrupting the educational process and is driving the curriculum downward, especially in middle and high school grades," it said.
Rather than rely almost exclusively on students' standardized test scores, as is the case with NCLB, these superintendents suggest that states employ new and different means of assessing educational progress, looking at students' success on a longitudinal basis as well as through grade-by-grade comparisons.
An outspoken critic of the law--and the federal Education Department in general--writer and independent researcher Gerald Bracey told attendees during a morning presentation that there is little scientific evidence to suggest students' performance on standardized test scores is an effective indicator of future success.
Though U.S. students often test in the middle of the pack when compared with students in other industrialized nations on standardized tests for such core subjects as reading and mathematics, he says, a host of other factors contributes to a student's ability to succeed in life--few of which can be accurately predicted by existing forms of academic measurement.
"A lot of what we value in this society is difficult to measure in the form of a standardized test," noted Bracey, who said students in other countries often are not encouraged to develop certain intangible traits such as creativity, diplomacy, and entrepreneurship--even though these attributes are known to be just as, if not more, critical to their ability to live and work in the 21st century.
Bracey chided U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings for encouraging American educators to teach to the test. He said much of what sets U.S. schools apart from their counterparts in other nations is the inquisitive nature of their classrooms. It is teachers encouraging students to speak out, to voice their opinions and engage in a form of two-way dialogue that fosters higher-order thinking, he said, adding: "Taking a test is almost the exact opposite of asking a question."
As a supporter of NCLB and one of the legislation's founding architects, Danica Petroshius, senior vice president of Collaborative Communications Group in Washington and former chief of staff to Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., was scheduled to refute Bracey's argument that the law is ineffective. But a scheduling conflict reportedly kept her from presenting.
PSFT also criticized NCLB for failing to train and promote a larger number of high-quality instructors.
"The quality of students' achievement is closely related to the quality of their teachers, but we lack the number of well-trained teachers that we need, especially in difficult teaching situations," explained the group's report.
Despite an increased effort to train and retain high-quality teachers, critics say, schools must do more to ensure the best teachers are up to the challenge of working in America's toughest classrooms.
As part of its movement, PSFT is asking Congress to fund a nationwide campaign "to recruit, train, support, and retain" a larger crop of experienced, committed, high-impact instructors.
The group also came out strong against the law's current policy of leveling sanctions-- including withholding federal funds--on schools that fail to meet its stringent requirements for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), a controversial stipulation that sets national benchmarks for students in reading, math, and more recently, science.
"The sanctions for not achieving AYP are flawed and unfair … No serious person believes that all children will be proficient in reading and math by 2014," wrote the group in its outline.
Presenters went on to criticize the federal government for singling out and "embarrassing" struggling schools and said a better approach would be to revise AYP to reward schools for "substantial progress," as opposed to punishing them for perceived failures.
Whereas schools are the "chief instruments" of any student's formal education, PSFT said, local communities also have a responsibility to help students become better learners. As part of its reform effort, the group is encouraging schools to work with health and social services to better meet students' needs and, in turn, improve the mental and physical conditions under which they are expected to learn.
As a final condition of its report, PSFT says Congress should work to fund NCLB at the level originally intended. Since the law's inception in 2001, educators have criticized NCLB for saddling historically cash-strapped schools with what amounts to a bevy of unfunded mandates, arguing that the amount of money schools receive to implement NCLB programs still is billions of dollars less than what originally had been promised.
"Money alone will not reform the schools, but the schools will not be reformed without it," said the report.
Links:
Public Schools for Tomorrow
http://www.publicschoolsfortomorrow.orgAmerican Association of School Administrators
http://www.aasa.org
In an interview with New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, the "no-nonsense" police chief of a small town in Florida defended the arrest of a six-year-old African American girl who had a tantrum in her kindergarten class.How do we know what college students really learn? A commission on higher education headed by US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has raised the issue of whether national standardized tests, such as the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), can answer that question. Our research suggests they can't.
The University of Washington's Study of Undergraduate Learning (UW SOUL) and the book about the study, "Inside the Undergraduate Experience," provide evidence that national exams will not be able to measure college learning. What they show is that studies that track the same students over time, departmental assessment of learning in the major, and student self-assessment are better measures.
UW began its study in 1999 with 304 students. During the next four years, we investigated what undergraduates learned, where they learned it, and how we might improve their experience. We used interviews, focus groups, surveys, e-mail, and portfolios to track their learning.
A few details about the paths of two study participants illustrate what standardized testing would miss.
"Joe" came to UW having taken college courses in high school. He was questioning a future in aerospace engineering after a trip to a regional Shakespeare festival convinced him there were pleasures in life he had missed. In his first month at UW, he wrote: "I consider my time here ... my one big chance in life to really learn something. This is the main reasoning behind my wanting to come to this university and embrace a broader range of studies.... I am very uncertain of what I want to do with my life, but I think that my time here ... will help me grow into the person I want to be."
In the course of four years, Joe explored a number of fields, including astronomy, finally settling on anthropology and the comparative history of ideas as majors. He joined an archaeological dig; learned to write poetry; studied Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jack Kerouac, differential equations, and retaliatory violence; and tutored high school kids in math. He worked hard to pay his way through school. Joe wrote arguments for his anthropology major on the "Eve" model of human ancestry and on seasonal transhumance in the late Stone Age. After he graduated, Joe overcame his fear of travel and went to Japan and China where he learned Chinese and wrote beautiful e-mails about his life there.
"Sarah" entered UW with a love of science and a research background. When she arrived, she said: "I want to learn about life in the city, about science. I want to pick a field and become knowledgeable about it. I want to learn about the community, how it works.... I want to learn how to compromise, how to work together, how to be a better leader, how to ride the Metro bus system ... how it feels to work with a professor who is on the cutting edge of knowledge and is passionate about what he is doing. I want to become more passionate about things."
Between 1999 and 2003, Sarah chose a forest management major; joined the log-rolling team; and took courses in statistics, history, and political science. At the end of her sophomore year, feeling as though she "had no friends and no direction," Sarah transferred to a smaller public university. There she took courses in communication but soon felt that communication was not for her. She returned to UW to finish her forestry degree, which required her to analyze and critique a conflict in fire management and to develop a highly quantitative management plan for a natural resource area.
Of her "two turning points – the decision to leave UW and the decision to come back" – Sarah said, "This has given me a new belief in myself, to persevere, to make the best choice for myself even if it is the most difficult." Before graduation, she was thinking about her next steps – to keep her current job or apply to graduate school.
How should we measure what Joe and Sarah learned in college?
Their accounts and samples of their work in critical thinking, writing, and quantitative reasoning showed learning gains in all areas. But what they learned was filtered through the lens of each student's major. A standardized test, such as the CLA, with its focus on generic skills and knowledge, could not detect the specialized information and skills each student had worked hard to master. Perhaps more important, both students showed profound growth in self-awareness and acceptance. Standardized tests would ignore these achievements.
We are using the findings of UW SOUL to work with UW departments on their plans for assessing students' learning. Meanwhile, studies of college students over time can track complex learning that is connected to, but not necessarily part of, academic classrooms. Together, these approaches can generate important information about how students are transformed by college and how colleges can improve the learning experiences they offer.
• Catherine Hoffman Beyer is a research scientist and director of the UW SOUL. She is coauthor of "Inside the Undergraduate Experience."
