NCLB: Inexorable March Toward Failure

From Monty Neill, posted to various ARN servers:

As state data has been accumulating, once again we see the inexorable march toward failing from 70 to 100 percent of each state's schools by 2014. The scores went up in KY, but the number of failing schools went up faster (see story here). Of course the articles is replete with quotes of educators promising to do more (with less, most likely). But it is a completely rigged game that cannot be won. The real solution is to ignore AYP since one is almost certain to fail, if not this year then in the next few, and focus on what can be done to actually teach well (which means scrapping most test prep, domination of tests over curriculum, and curriculum narrowing). But educators are under vast pressure...

It looks increasingly unlikely that NCLB will be reauthorized in 2010. Most insiders are saying 2011, which means there will be no relief from AYP. Meanwhile, the press is on via Race to the Top (RTTT) -- and no doubt there will be other measures forthcoming - to pressure states to sign on to the just-released, still draft new 'national' standards and then to whatever tests are produced. Those tests almost certainly will be tougher to pass than those now in place in all but a few states. (I assume based on lots of comments about them that they will be pretty equivalent to NAEP's proficient levels, which were set by an egregiously flawed process orchestrated by right-wing activist Checker Finn, then head of the National Assessment Governing Board). If those come into play before reauthorization, the speed toward 100% failure will accelerate, and the number of states that will be headed there instead of a mere 70% or so failure will greatly increase.

Finally, Duncan wants to overhaul the 'bottom' 5% of schools, under RTTT. Little doubt many of them need a good deal of help, and some may be beyond that, but RTTT is not going to do that job well, based on the draft 'requirements' issued by the Department (as is pointed out in many of the comments to those requirements). What remains unsaid is whether this will eventually become a continuous process in which the bottom X percent is always subject to privatization or 'transformation' with mass firings. That is not even hinted at by the Department, but it has been policy in Colorado (I don't know if the policy has now changed). Monty

Washinton Post Recycles Old Op-Eds to Keep NCLB Hopes Alive

The only parts of the Washington Post Co. that are making money are the Kaplan, Inc. pieces: Kaplan Kids and Schools, Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, Kaplan Higher Education and Kaplan Professional. So with Jay Mathews, the Post's test prep cheerleader reporter getting ready for his new book tour, the Post has simply chosen the cheapest route to keeping the testing mania dream alive: it is recycling old op-eds in favor of more and more testing. On Jan. 16, they put up a piece by Bill Bennett and Rod Paige from 2006 calling for national testing:

Article | 01/16/2009

Why We Need a National School Test

William J. Bennett and Rod Paige (washingtonpost.com)

...reining in Washington's impulse to micromanage our nation's schools. William J. Bennett was education secretary under...

And on the same day, they recycled this piece by Chester Finn from Feb. 2008 on the virtues of NCLB:

Article | 01/16/2009

5 Myths About the Education Law Everyone Loves to Hate

Chester E. Finn Jr. (washingtonpost.com)

...capable people who want to teach but take a less traditional route to the classroom. cefinnjr@aol.com Chester E. Finn Jr....

Now I appreciate WaPo's money-saving efforts to make money for their crumbling empire, but in the interest of full disclosure on Finn's views on NCLB, I would like to include here some chunks from a revealing piece by the same Chester Finn for National Review:

The truth is, despite all the fuss and feathers about NCLB, there’s little agreement on exactly what ails or what might cure it — which is not to say there’s a shortage of advice. A five-foot shelf of books, studies, reports, commission recommendations, etc. is rapidly accumulating. (I plead guilty to having helped contribute a few inches.) Its very amplitude attests not only to the length and complexity of the law, but also to the disputed nature of what, exactly, is awry in NCLB 1.0 and what should be the essential attributes of version 2.0. Even more important, underlying all the technical specifics are five immense dilemmas that go to the heart of the matter.

Is NCLB’s grand goal itself naïve and unrealistic? Politicians pledge that no child will be left behind, yet I don’t know a single educator who seriously thinks 100 percent of American children can become “proficient” (according to any reasonable definition of that term) by 2014 in reading and math. Exemptions have already been made for seriously disabled youngsters. In truth, raising American kids from their current proficiency level of some 30 percent to 70 or 80 percent would be a remarkable, nation-changing achievement, yet I can’t imagine a lawmaker conceding this. The first thing hurled back at him would be “which 20 percent of the kids don’t matter to you?”

. . . .

Can Washington successfully pull off anything as complex and ambitious as NCLB in so vast and loosely coupled a system as American K–12 education, one in which millions of “street-level bureaucrats” can ignore, veto, or undermine the plans of distant lawmakers and regulators? I’m no great fan of local control of schools but I’m even less a fan of bureaucratic over-reaching.

Do the likely benefits exceed the ever clearer costs? Boosting skill levels and closing learning gaps are praiseworthy societal goals. But even if we were surer that NCLB would attain them, plenty of people — parents, teachers, lawmakers, and interest groups — are alarmed by the price. I don’t refer primarily to dollars. (They’re in dispute, too, with most Democrats wrongly insisting that they’re insufficient.) I refer to things like a narrowing curriculum that sacrifices history, art, and literature on the altar of reading and math skills; to schools that spend ever more of the year prepping kids to pass tests; to gifted pupils being neglected so as to pull low achievers over the bar; and to the homogenizing of schools — including charter schools — that crave the freedom to be different and offer parents distinctive choices.

So long as these monster questions lack agreed-upon answers, I don’t see much hope for an NCLB consensus, and I don’t see much hope for NCLB 2.0 anytime soon.

— Chester E. Finn Jr. is senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.