NSBA Calls for Universal Relief from AYP, NCLB's IED

As Bryant points out, public schools cannot wait for Gates stooge, Arne Duncan, to figure out a massive extortion plan to insert the BRT's agenda.  From HuffPo:

. . . .With so many delays in Congress to introduced and pass the ESEA reauthorization, the National School Boards Association is calling on Duncan and the Department of Education for flexibility now in NCLB to allow more financial resources to be used for the critical purpose of teaching and learning.

We need the regulatory relief this summer before school starts, instead of a new bureaucratic process that the Department of Education is purposing that could take many months to create. And as we need this as a matter of policy -- not state or school district case-by-case waivers. We specifically support suspension of additional sanctions under current AYP requirements, effective for the 2011-12 school year, so that schools currently facing sanctions would remain frozen; no new schools would be labeled as 'In Need of Improvement' or subject to new or additional sanctions.

In the past two years, budget pressures have forced school districts to make significant cuts, some that directly hit classrooms, including teacher and staff layoffs. A recent study by the American Association of School Administrators predicts further teacher and staff cuts of 227,000 school personnel in the coming school year. This comes as NCLB's increases costly reports, data collection, and program mandates forces school districts to take their attention off their core mission and spend time and money to comply with unnecessary regulations.

In essence, schools for the upcoming school year are being forced to lay off teachers and hire data collectors. Does anyone really think that is the best way to run our public schools?

Follow Anne L. Bryant on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@NSBAComm

New York Times's Front Page Coverage Hides the Story of "Nearly 100 Percent Failure of All Schools"

Yesterday's story by Sam Dillon in the Times offered an exemplary case for education historians and policy people to use in examining how the corporate media cover education issues that they would prefer to ignore. Three weeks after Science published a study by Dr. Rich Cardullo and his colleagues at UC Riverside on the effects of NCLB's AYP testing demands and the "nearly 100 percent failure of all schools by 2014," the NYTimes finally became the first prominent paper to grudgingly notice. Their front-page coverage (cont'd on A14), in fact, misses the primary finding of the Cardullo study that most people would find shocking if the New York Times or the L. A. Times could leave their unwavering "take names, kick ass" editorial support for NCLB on the shelf long enough to report the news. None of the following information from Science Daily found its way into the Dillon's NYTimes piece (and I cannot believe the printed story is the one that the reporter filed):

"For most schools, the greatest risk of failing AYP lies with ELA proficiency," said Cardullo, a professor of biology. "It is the Socioeconomically Disadvantaged and English Language Learner subgroups within the schools that are most likely going to fail to meet AYP in California. Given the weakness of ELA progress, no doubt more emphasis needs to be placed on ELA. But what we emphasize in our paper is that schools are also in need of support in mathematics since the current data trends, if not altered, predict nearly 100 percent failure of all schools by 2014 in meeting AYP."

Not that there was anything really new about this Cardullo peer-reviewed finding of 100 percent failure rate. Dr. Bob Linn, former President of AERA, presented and published the same predictions five years ago based on his own analysis. I know because I was at CREATE in Memphis in 2004 when he brought his well-traveled slides (pdf) there. In fact, Dr. Bob Linn appears in yesterday's story near the end of the piece on A14, but the 100 percent failure rate that he has talked about for five years is conspicuously missing from the Dillon story. Not a word.

Instead of reporting on the guaranteed failure rate of public schools and the accompanying erosion of public support by a manipulated and unsuspecting public (hey, hockey moms and Joe Sixpacks!), the Times yesterday chose to focus on the states' various lengths for their testing fuses as we move toward the 2014 explosion that is never mentioned in the Times story. After all, the Times Editorial Board is in the tweek-and-repeat NCLB camp, and their support for cheap charter chain gangs in urban centers is not to be compromised by too much of the harsh truth. The Times graphics department is even called upon to show which states are taking the slow fuse route and which ones have decided to instill heartbreak, demoralizaton, and nervous breakdowns in their children and teachers before 2014. Four big charts!! with the underlying message that the long fuse states are cheating themselves from the quick suicide that they deserve.

Here is the chart from the Cardullo study (Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image) that the New York Times refused to publish, the one that tells all the truth that the Times refused to print. The Times did not even offer a link to it. Pathetic.

Had the Times chosen to report the indisputable fact that NCLB was designed to show school failure, they would have been forced to acknowledge their own continuing complicity in the child and teacher abuse that business, government, and media have agreed upon "to make the U. S. competitive in the world economy." If there has ever been a bigger bunch of idiots in charge of our future, I have not found it yet in all my study. That reminds me--I will have a Olbermanesque Special Comment on Margaret Spellings this evening, I hope.

Last updated 10:40 AM