The NCLB Exception

Responding to my contention that there turned out to be no there there to Bush's "compassionate conservatism," Ross adduces a few examples:

Bush did have a pseudo-Christian Democratic policy agenda: It consisted of the faith-based initiatives, No Child Left Behind, the prescription drugs bill, and immigration reform. The first was small potatoes, but the rest weren't small at all.

My rejoinder to this, as Ross anticipates, is that the prescription drug bill and the immigration reform proposal are really both just business conservatism dressed up as "compassion." Ross says that's "what you'd expect from an administration where both Gerson and Dick Cheney had the President's ear," but it's also what I'd expect from an administration that just likes lying.

It really does all come down to NCLB, a policy that obviously has some low-partisan rationales in terms of dividing the Democratic coalition, but that also represents some meaningful dissent from the right's typical voucher-mania in a reality-based way. In particular, NCLB is founded on recognition that absent some really unimaginable injection of new money the majority of kids — especially disadvantaged ones — are going to be in public schools, and also on the reality that plenty of "good" schools in the suburbs still manage to do a bad job of educating poor children. The proposition that NCLB actually helps achieve its goals on those measure is, needless to say, controversial in left-of-center circles (my view on this is more Robert Gordon than Richard Rothstein) but the whole idea of a policy debate over how to make public schools work better is a refreshing alternative to the usual contemporary dynamic where you have Republicans trying to destroy some public service.

Comments

You know up until this past September I worked at a program for kids with severe emotional disturbance. It was in a regular public elementary school but it was separate population with a secure facility, we had an isolation room with padded walls, we had to restrain the students constantly to keep them from hurting themselves, etc. These kids had shorter days, regular social and psychological counseling, designated "cool down" periods-- their education was very different from the regular ed kids, and it was out of necessity.

And yet one thing that wasn't different was the standardized testing. Kids that couldn't watch an hour long video were forced to sit and try and complete a two hour plus test. It was cruel. It was abuse! But that's the system, right now. Most of them used to be checklisted out. But since No Child Left Behind, that is no longer an option.

Now that just makes me angry. What really is enraging is the fact that, if these kids (who must meet the same exact standards as any other kids at their grade level) fail, funding can get cut. And not just for them, but for the regular ed students too.

And besides, forget the special ed part. What about a regular ed school that fails? They need the most help, and you cut funding? What sense does that make?

NCLB is the opposite of compassionate governance.

Posted by Freddie | November 1, 2007 6:11 PM

the whole idea of a policy debate over how to make public schools work better is a refreshing alternative to the usual contemporary dynamic where you have Republicans trying to destroy some public service.

Hmm.

Option 1) NCLB represents a unique alternative to the way Republicans usually do business
Option 2) NCLB represents an attempt to destroy the public service of education, the way Republicans usually do business

Occam's Razor says that #2 is the way to bet.

Posted by neil | November 1, 2007 6:12 PM

A very credible argument could be made that the long-term goal of NCLB is, if not destroy, at least undermine support of the public schools. This is accomplished by establishing a system that virtually guarantees that almost every school in the country will be labeled failing. Less remarked upon, but every bit as insidious, is NCLB's distortion of funding priorities. Because math, reading and, soon, science, are the only tested areas, schools are increasingly redirecting scarce resources to those subjects at the expense of art, music, social studies, etc. This has the effect of infuriating many middle-class parents who value these offerings are part of a well-rounded education. These are, not coincidentally, the families most able to move their kids to private school.

This is not to say that NCLB has not had some positive effect. The disaggregation of test scores has rightly focused attention on underserved kids. But this could have been accomplished in a much less destructive way.

Posted by mert7878 | November 1, 2007 6:13 PM

And the disaggregation of test scores - which is an entirely good thing, but plugged into the NCLB framework in a way that ranges from questionable to ferociously bad - only got in due to a great deal of effort by advocates for disadvantaged kids, iirc.

Posted by Dan S. | November 1, 2007 6:23 PM

A very credible argument could be made that the long-term goal of NCLB is, if not destroy, at least undermine support of the public schools. This is accomplished by establishing a system that virtually guarantees that almost every school in the country will be labeled failing.

This is some reality-based community we've got here. Is there any possibility that they are, in fact, failing? Is that question not subject to empirical evidence, like, say, testing the students these schools produce to see how skilled they are?

I have not known many parents who would consider the (admittedly important) well-rounded nature of their child's curriculum to excuse widespread failures on math, reading, and science tests.

Posted by southpaw | November 1, 2007 6:43 PM

"This is some reality-based community we've got here. Is there any possibility that they are, in fact, failing? Is that question not subject to empirical evidence, like, say, testing the students these schools produce to see how skilled they are?"

This is a complete non sequitir. Of course there is a possibility that schools may be failing. And of course there are probably empirical ways to measure that. But NCLB ain't it. What it does is measure "success" or "failure" based on whether test scores have improved or not. The problem with that, obviously, is that you can't get any higher than 100% -- in other words, there is a upper bound above which it is mathematically impossible to improve. And thus, the smartest and most rigorous school in the world will eventually "fail," when in year X, every single one of their students get every single question on the tests correct, and then in year X+1, they fail to improve on that result. Then that school will be labeled "failing."

You either don't understand what NCLB does, or you do and you're being dishonest about it. Which is it?

Posted by Joe | November 1, 2007 7:26 PM

NCLB requires literal 100 percent student compliance by 2014, or else the schools will be labeled "failing." This means that every single student must be passing the tests by that time. It's flat-out impossible. Even the best school is going to have a small handful of students who are either unable or unwilling to learn.

Posted by Josh G. | November 1, 2007 8:15 PM

An interesting personal anecdote in regards to testing:

My best friend from high school received her graduate degree this past spring and began teaching 4th grade this fall. As the school year was approaching, I asked her what fun things she had planned, how she was going to get her kids excited to learn and to read, etc. She replied, "Nothing." Her ENTIRE curriculum, almost to the minute, had been already planned by the school. Everything, I repeat, EVERYTHING had to focus on the tests the kids were to take throughout the year. There simply was no time for her to diverge. If the kids weren't going to be tested on it, she couldn't do it.

I'm all for improving public schools - they're (for 85% of the kids at least) failing miserably. But it blows my mind that the way we think to improve them is by classifying a set of ideas for testing, and then proceeding to spend every minute prior to that test drilling that set of ideas into the minds of students. That's not learning - and its certainly not teaching them how to think, to process and to engage.

From this end, it looks like the systematic destruction of the education system. Or at least a system that actually "educates."

Posted by Mac | November 1, 2007 8:15 PM

I'm sorry, Matt, but you are absolutely wrong about NCLB being a break from the conservatives' voucher-mania.

NCLB creates unrealistic math and english goals (100% proficiency by 2014) and, for any carrot provisions built in, the stick elements are far more threatening. The reality is that even schools that were doing well before are cancelling science, history, and recess in order to schedule more math and english, all driving towards meeting NCLB requirements. There are even high schools taking students off of a graduation track, just because making "proficient or above" is so important to the school, if not the student.

It is designed to break schools, exactly like vouchers are. But where it is obvious with vouchers (taking money away from public schools), NCLB is more insidious, enough to get well-meaning idiots like Ted Kennedy on board.

Talk to parents. Their kids come home pissed off more than any generation before, hating school more than any generation before. And as for 100% proficiency, do you realize that 10% of California students qualify for special education? How does that even make sense?

It is all designed to make schools fail.

Just like the entire Bush administration has been oriented towards breaking government... out of control spending, politicized (and incompetent) appointments throughout the bureaucracy, and the first tax break during war time in human history.

The problem with NCLB is NOT that it is underfunded. The country must be made to realize this.

Posted by humanadverb | November 1, 2007 8:33 PM

Of course some schools could be failing, but NCLB defines a school as "in need of improvement," i.e., failing, if it does not meet as few as 1 of 41 different categories. In my state, the majority of schools "in need of improvement" failed to meet the test score threshold for special ed students, an incredibly difficult proposition even in most middle-class districts. Yet, the local headlines screamed "FAILURE."

I re-read the Gordon-Rothstein debate Matt linked to. Gordon is a respected educator, but his argument reads like an education policy version of Broderism. It's bi-partisan, therefore it must be good and all the problems can be fixed by bi-partisan solutions.

Posted by mert7878 | November 1, 2007 9:15 PM

There was an article in Salon (sorry, don't recall the ish) that detailed the machinations of pro-voucher business interests waiting for the well-nigh inevitable failure of post-Katrina schools, which would lead to the imposition of charter schools as a replacement. Would it be too cynical to conjecture that similar motives lie behind the 'pass-fail' metric of NCLB?

Posted by EpicureanQuaker | November 1, 2007 9:57 PM

Sorry, not Salon - I meant Harper's.

Posted by EpicureanQuaker | November 1, 2007 9:59 PM

NCLB is a disaster. First of all, it IS designed so all schools fail. For the first year, Fairfax County schools have failed to meet AYP goals. I've worked for FCPS as a substitute teacher and an IT support guy. My mother (who has a masters' degree in early childhood ed) was a special education teacher there. Fairfax County is the Bugati of education systems. I would challenge any private organization to create a school system that sent more kids to college and achieved more success (even in less-advantaged schools, FCPS gets the job done). For Fairfax County schools to fail suggests the whole system doesn't work.

If you don't know -- Fairfax County is the richest county in the nation. Our schools are a matter of considerable pride, and considerable community effort. I cannot believe realistic AYP goals would have Fairfax County schools failing.

Secondly, it has a terrible effect on the classroom and students. Instead of learning, the students and teachers are focused on meaningless test scores.

Test scores are a measure of the test's accuracy and the environment it is administered in--NOT student success. As an example-- when I was in second grade I took a standardized test to determine my eligibility for the gifted and talented program in the Fairfax County schools. I did not do particularly well. Two weeks later at the insistence of my teacher, my parents paid to have me retake the test privately. I scored over 20 points better and was accepted into the GT program. I took the same test; however, the environment the second time was more conducive to my success.

My daughter is now attending a Maryland school and having some difficulty because the relentless focus on testing has killed most of the enrichment programs that existed for me when I was a student. When I was bored in class, my teacher set it up so I could read a book as soon as I finished my work. Thanks to NCLB and various other failed educational policies, it seems that kind of arrangement is no longer even possible.

No Child Left Behind leaves all children. It exists solely to destroy the public schools. My folks are educators at both ends of the spectrum. My mother is a special education teacher for 2-4 grade students. I've met her students. She teaches "non-categorized" special education students who may have one or more profound disabilities. She has to force her students to take tests that are totally inappropriate for their level of ability.

My father is a college administrator, after being a college professor for 18 years. He has not seen some magical increase in quality of the education students in Montgomery County, MD are receiving because of NCLB. Instead, they still come in with less-than-adequate grammar skills and need for some real polishing.

"Accountability" is a great buzzword when you want to attack public schools. "Bad teachers" are a wonderful hobgoblin to bring up when you want to attack the public schools. Neither really mean anything. We have so many different public school systems in this country that it is pretty much impossible to grade them all on the same standards.

"Bad teachers" really bothers me. Why exactly would someone choose to be a teacher and forfeit respect ("those who can do, and those who can't teach") and financial security to do a job badly? My folks left lucrative careers as computer professionals in the late 80s to take up teaching because it was what they had always wanted to do. That required sacrifices -- it still does to some extent. In their 50s they have finally been able to buy a condo -- their first home.

And they're supposed to choose that to do it half-assed? Whatever. I went to Longwood University, pretty much the premier teacher's college in Virginia. Our education department was not full of women trying to get their MRS. It was full of women who were dedicated to teaching. They cared about kids and education and wanted to do their part. The rhetoric around the debate about public education is one of the worst parts of it all.

Teachers' Unions are not the enemy. They have very little power. They can't strike. Is collective bargaining wrong? Beyond that, they provide important benefits to teachers. They provide legal support when teachers face legal problems. My mother has been lucky so far, but parents often disagree with the diagnosis of professionals for their kids' learning disabilities. Those cases have gone to court many times. Given their limited means, my folks could not fight very hard in court with just what they have. Thankfully the Montgomery County Educators' Association will help to defend my mother should that ever become necessary.

NCLB is just like every other bit of Bush's presidency: built to weaken our public institutions and destroy the works of liberals. Nothing more.

Posted by James Hare | November 1, 2007 10:13 PM

Somebody pointed out to me in an email today that the standardized testing industry is worth two billion dollars today because of the the NCLB.

And 90% of the test materials market is owned by five companies.

The largest of which is McGraw-Hill.

And the McGraw family allegedly goes back eighty years with the Bush family.

Another beneficiary of NCLB is the educational software firm run by Neil Bush and funded by the United Arab Emirates.

In other words, the whole thing was a scam for some more of the Bush family and their cronies to make money.

Now, I don't know if that is all true - but it fits everything else the Bush crowd has done since day one.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 1, 2007 11:48 PM

I like the photo much more than the post. Although I like the post, too.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | November 2, 2007 12:29 AM

NCLB is one of the consequences of PC in conflict with the truth.

Groups do not have equal average IQ (as Watson said) so that it is impossible that groups can have equal intellectual achievement. Hence NCLB is pouring, and hence wasting, money in pursuit of an impossible goal.

In the meantime, the 6 million blacks with IQs above the white average are being short-changed, and those with lower IQs are not being guided to professions in which they can be successful and have a happy life.

The right and moral way is to give everyone IQ tests and guide them into classes in which they can succeed. Those who test out at the top should be reconsidered, and all can pursue adult classes in the best US, upwardly mobile, tradition.

For scientific backup on IQ see the gnxp blog:

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php

Posted by Robert Hume | November 2, 2007 1:01 PM

NCLB was a joint production of Ted Kennedy and George W. Bush, so it's Lake Wobegon idiocies of mandating that all students be "proficient" (i.e. above average) by 2014 are representative of the politically correct conventional wisdom that we recently saw on display in the James Watson Witch Hunt.

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 2, 2007 4:54 PM

NCLB is what you get when America's elites all systematically lie to each other in public about fundamental facts about things like race and IQ. (Meanwhile, in private, they are all choosing neighborhoods and schools for their kids based on much more realistic ideas -- but those are Not for Public Consumption.)

You can't build effective public policy on a foundation of lies and of persecuting the rare truth teller like Dr. Watson.

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 2, 2007 5:01 PM

A report prepared for the Campaign for Educational Equity by Richard Rothstein, Rebecca Jacobsen, and Tamara Wilder sums up the absurdity of NCLB in its title: "'Proficiency for All' – An Oxymoron." They point out:

"In its administration of NCLB, the U.S. Department of Education barely acknowledges this human variability. … Under NCLB, children with I.Q.s as low as 65 must achieve a standard of proficiency in math which is higher than that achieved by 60 percent of students in Taiwan, the highest scoring country in the world (in math), and a standard of proficiency in reading which is higher than that achieved by 65 percent of students in Sweden, the highest scoring country in the world (in reading)."

http://hub.mspnet.org/index.cfm/13743

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 2, 2007 5:15 PM

Bush's original intent with the NCLB was to use the promise of more government money to get support for the market-based reform of school choice. Instead, he got the money, without market-based reform (though a limited form of choice among public schools made it into the NCLB).

This is similar to what happened with Bush's other big domestic program, Medicare Part D. Again more government money offered in the hopes of getting a market-based reform of Medicare. Again, he gave up the government money without getting the main market-based reform. Not my idea of conservatism.

Posted by Fred | November 2, 2007 5:41 PM

"Kids that couldn't watch an hour long video were forced to sit and try and complete a two hour plus test. It was cruel. It was abuse!"

Freddie,

Have you considered that you may be too emotional to effectively teach? Sometimes what appears cruel to the faint of heart is what helps people improve.

Also, have you considered the possibility that, if these kids didn't have to take standardized tests, schools would dump some of their lower-IQ kids in the padded room to boost their standardized test scores?

Posted by Fred | November 2, 2007 5:47 PM