NCLB

Commenter Dave asked yesterday if my post on the boy crisis myth was "some kind of odd way of admitting that you think No Child Left Behind is a great idea?" As I've written in the past, I don't think NCLB was a great idea, but I agree with Ted Kennedy and George Miller that it was a good idea that made federal education policy better than it was before. In particular, I think that while relying on standardized test scores to measure educational outcomes clearly doesn't meet some kind of God-like standard of clairvoyance it's superior to the available alternatives.

I think the specific standards provisions of NCLB were, in a concession to the realities of American political culture, rendered somewhat silly and potentially meaningless by offering essentially endless deference to state authorities in setting standards. I support moves toward national standards and in general toward less local control of schools in terms of funding and expectations for students. There are many flaws with the NCLB framework, and people are good at pointing them out, but people who just want to point to shortcomings without offering any better ideas about how to get schools to better serve poor students aren't being very responsible in their attitude.

Comments

NCLB is nothing more than an attempt by conservatives to break the Teacher's Unions and the system of public education in America and Kennedy fucked up by going along with it.

It fits in with the conservative philosophy of "we have no interest in running a government because government is evil and we're going to prove it".

Posted by calipygian | May 21, 2008 9:21 AM

Did you even watch season four of The Wire?

Posted by eriks | May 21, 2008 9:23 AM

I know too many educators who say that NCLB is terrible. It's not just that it's underfunded it's completely unrealistic and even though it's virtually impossible to meet the standards (which constantly increase) they're still punished for failing to meet them. The long term effect of NCLB, if followed by public schools, would be that they'd all fail and would all shut down. Bad schools are better than no schools at all.

Posted by Jay | May 21, 2008 9:25 AM

Matt, let Sara write her own posts, ok? And don't lecture people on responsibility either, it's just odious. Especially since the accusation of irresponsibility depends on your half-assed judgment. I am not irresponsible if I point out that NCLB has made things demonstrably worse, because my "better idea" at this point is to shut the damn thing down and use every cent of it on, say, teacher support. Really, you pick. Just make it stop.

The way the system is gamed is atrocious. And smart kids get bored out of their mind while their education grinds to a halt to prepare. And states have their own "practice" runs the year before...so it's months out of almost every grade past the second. And my Teach for Americs in the inner city just watched almost everyone fail...and she's pissed that they didn't get to learn anything either.

Posted by nolaboyd | May 21, 2008 9:34 AM

While I'll readily admit that NCLB has had many good results, where it may hurt as much as help is in the schools that are already very good. As a result of all this testing, my child's classes spend 20 to 30 percent of the year specifically studying for the tests. Is that really a net gain?

More importantly, the inspired teachers feel that all the standardized curriculum saps creativity from the teaching experience and turns it into a more rote activity. You don't want your more creative teachers to leave.

I'd like to see stringent minimum standards set. but once met, the reward isn't better pay. The reward should be the freedom to teach in one's own manner. Few teachers are in it for the money, but all teachers need to have their spirits replenished, and allowing them a greater range of teaching avenues will help fill that need.

btw - I'm a contractor, not a teacher.

Posted by berkeley C | May 21, 2008 9:37 AM

Testing is not the problem; it's yoking school funding, graduation, teacher salaries, everything, to the outcomes of one test.

National standards are fine as a measure, but states are far better positioned to know what their students are capable of achieving and should be allowed to continue writing their own standards. The problem is that once NCLB demanded AYP, that's when you saw states dramatically revising their standards down to make sure all their kids didn't foul up revenue streams.

Posted by Trevor J | May 21, 2008 9:38 AM

As a teacher, I can tell you that NCLB has been a mixed bag. While anyone who has studied education policy & practice can tell you that standardized tests are rarely the best way to assess a student, the movement itself has shone spotlight on groups and populations that were egregiously under served.

Unfortunately, the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about is Special Education. These are the students who traditionally score the lowest on these types of tests, and drop out of high school at a rate substantially higher than their non-disabled peers. The federal government HAS NEVER funded states special education costs to the level that they are required to BY LAW. As a result, we have our neediest students being underfunded trying to maneuver through an assessment system that is also underfunded.

Posted by tedmcc1 | May 21, 2008 9:41 AM

As a teacher, I can tell you that NCLB has been a mixed bag. While anyone who has studied education policy & practice can tell you that standardized tests are rarely the best way to assess a student, the movement itself has shone spotlight on groups and populations that were egregiously under served.

Unfortunately, the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about is Special Education. These are the students who traditionally score the lowest on these types of tests, and drop out of high school at a rate substantially higher than their non-disabled peers. The federal government HAS NEVER funded states special education costs to the level that they are required to BY LAW. As a result, we have our neediest students being underfunded trying to maneuver through an assessment system that is also underfunded.

Posted by tedmcc1 | May 21, 2008 9:41 AM

The attached link to a thread on the denialism blog provides a counterpoise to Mr. Yglesias' inane comment.

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/06/the_testing_myth_and_nclb.php

In fact, the conservatives behind NCLB have only one goal in mind, which is to destroy the public school system in the United States.

Posted by SLC | May 21, 2008 9:43 AM

My parents are both good, well-liked teachers with over three decades of experience. They see NCLB for what it is: another attempt to place the blame for America's declining educational prestige anywhere but where it really belongs; with the parents. For the last 10-15 years, parents have increasingly begun to take the view that their kids are entitled to B's or A's and that their failure to achieve said grades is the fault of the teachers. Parenting is the problem, period.

Posted by Rock On | May 21, 2008 9:44 AM

people who just want to point to shortcomings without offering any better ideas about how to get schools to better serve poor students aren't being very responsible in their attitude.

Might some of those "people" be named Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton?

Posted by right | May 21, 2008 9:46 AM

As I understand it, NCLB allows schools to effectively fudge their numbers, raising their average scores by attending to people performing just below the mean and neglecting worse-performing students more in need of attention. Emphasis on a poorly designed accountability measure can obscure more than it reveals about student learning.

I think school systems might do well to provide opportunties for teachers to work with the same students over the course of at least a couple years, building relationships and motivation as well as providing opportunities for relevant, longer-scale interventions with students at risk. While reducing class size may not have been a panacea, the attention to structural components of the learning environment seems to me to offer a lot of potential for constructive reform.

Posted by jason | May 21, 2008 9:51 AM

My wife, a high school guidance counselor, tells me that she is seeing an increase in kids who are dropping out because they can't pass the latest round of NCLB mandated tests.

I'd be interested in seeing actual data on this. Seems to me that putting kids in a situation where they feel the best option is dropping out is the opposite of not leaving them behind.

Posted by Spike | May 21, 2008 9:55 AM

Before you praise NCLB as half-full, take a look at what it's doing for dropout rates. And then think about where high-school dropouts rank in the modern economy. Doing nothing would have done a lot more for poor students.

See:

http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v16n3/v16n3.pdf

Posted by Jim Naureckas | May 21, 2008 10:00 AM

"...people who just want to point to shortcomings without offering any better ideas about how to get schools to better serve poor students aren't being very responsible in their attitude."

This is one of those arguments you can toss in juat about anywhere. "If you're so smart, what's your policy?" is about as weak as "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" It works as a way of shutting people out of debate, and flies in the face of economics. Yup, economics. Some people have a comparative advantage in identifying problems. Some people may prove lame in identifying problems but be able to come up with perfectly workable solutions.

If what you mean to say is "I think critics of national standards have a hidden political agenda" you might want to say that, instead of mouthing silly put-up-or-shut-up arguments. They don't hold water.

Posted by kharris | May 21, 2008 10:03 AM

Before you praise NCLB as half-full, take a look at what it's doing for dropout rates. And then think about where high-school dropouts rank in the modern economy. Doing nothing would have done a lot more for poor students.

See:

http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v16n3/v16n3.pdf

Posted by Jim Naureckas | May 21, 2008 10:04 AM

The widening education gap directly parallels the growing gap between rich and poor. Many of the problems that are contributing to the poor performance of low-income students aren't ones that can be addressed by the educational system alone. Poverty, and what accompanies it -poor nutrition, violence, drugs, family instability,etc. - is the major factor in play here. Continual slashing at the welfare state over the last few decades is netting some terrible results. Already underfunded schools that serve poor populations have to devote more of their time, money, and energy to make up for this.

Posted by dan | May 21, 2008 10:13 AM

National education standards based on standardized tests are a nice enough idea in theory, but there is far too much institutionalized disparity in our public school systems for it to be even remotely successful in practice. And much like the Iraq War, anyone with a modicum of common sense ought to have known better than to buy into this nonsense.

We've allowed our schools to become locally-controlled enclaves divided into haves and have-nots. And now, without fixing the root problems of inequality in wealth, pay, administrative quality, student preparation, and parental involvement, we're trying to mandate that all schools be above average. This is crazy. At best, we'll end up rewarding teachers that help students cheat and schools that fudge their numbers. More likely, we'll end up closing a bunch of schools, busing those children to other schools and bringing down THEIR test scores, repeated ad nauseam.

I don't know how to fix the root problems in our school systems without fixing the cultural and economic inequality in the rest of society. But I do know that the one model most likely to help the least fortunate -- eliminating local school districts and running school systems more like higher education, with open application for enrollment at any school -- is going to go over like a lead balloon with the very same suburban parents who insist that we need more "accountability" in our inner-city schools.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | May 21, 2008 10:17 AM

dan | May 21, 2008 10:13 AM is right about poverty. One thing my wife encounters in her school is kids who got kicked out of their housing twice or more in a school year and then end up switching schools. Anyone who's switched schools knows how hard it can be under the best of circumstances. Doing it when you're also living in a shelter or something makes learning pretty tough.

jason | May 21, 2008 9:51 AM has a good idea there. If you can manage to keep at-risk/impoverished kids at the same school, then keeping them with the same teacher and cohorts can potentially give them the grounding and feelings of stability/security they need to learn. Godd idea, Jason!

Posted by Kurzbein | May 21, 2008 10:27 AM

well, try asking someone who is an expert on educational policy! a general push to make sure that young children are properly progressing with regard to literacy and critical faculties and problem solving skills is good on the whole, but the fact is that standardized tests don't really illustrate any of these things to a satisfactory degree, on their own. and having so many of them, making them so important, is something which hampers and hinders teachers, doesn't help them. these tests should almost be extra-educational (meaning they take place outside of the educational system), they should be a measure, but they should not measure rote memorization. you don't discovery an illiterate student just getting by that way. the more standardized tests which are put into place, the more diluted they are, and worse and worse performance on them is seen as acceptable, the whole thing is a downward spiral of expectations. NCLB pumped demands but not money into schools, offered teachers no support (and on a basic level, these tests are a big government thumb pinning schools and teachers down, telling them what to do and how without really knowing what its talking about) and offered schools no real support. it isn't really 'better' than the 'alternatives', because there is no serious discussion of proper alternatives. and there are certainly numerous possible alternatives.

Posted by onceler | May 21, 2008 10:30 AM

"...people who just want to point to shortcomings without offering any better ideas about how to get schools to better serve poor students aren't being very responsible in their attitude."

Oh, absolutely. That's almost as irresponsible as the people who opposed the Iraq ear but didn't offer any better ideas for dealing with Saddam Hussein!

Posted by tomemos | May 21, 2008 10:36 AM

The Iraq WAR, obviously. I could kick myself.

Posted by tomemos | May 21, 2008 10:41 AM

Among the many problems with NCLB and the various state testing mandates are the perverse incentives they give schools to produce non-optimal outcomes for their students. In North Carolina, for instance, the optimal financial outcome for a school used to be to fail miserably one year, then slowly produce gradual improvements on that failure for subsequent years until further gains were implausible, then to fail miserably again and repeat the cycle. Obviously no superintendent would intentionally sanction such a plan, but given that the system didn't reward continued excellence, no one would risk anything in pursuit of it either.

Posted by dob | May 21, 2008 10:48 AM

Actually, standardized testing may be the worst part of NCLB. Here is what I said at McCardles blog:

I support the notion that we should make an effort to make it easier to fire teachers that deserve to be fired, and in exchange better remunerate them for their work. The problem with the Mickey Kaus plan, just make it easy to fire teachers, is that we're already trying to make teaching a more attractive profession to talented, intelligent people. How does merely eliminating perhaps the biggest benefit of the profession help us do that? If you do a little digging, by the way, you'll see the NEA is actually tentatively open to certain changes in tenure and the process through which teachers are terminated.

Here's the problem: you still have a conception of education that largely is founded on the notion that students output is dependent on the job of the teachers teaching them. And that distorts the dialog almost unsalvageably. One of the aspects of teaching that is well understood within the profession but not know by many people commenting on it is that, if you simply went by metrics of standardized testing (you couldn't, for obvious reasons, rely on grades), there are not consistently "good" teachers anywhere. What do I mean by that? It's a phenomenon that's seen in school after school, both public and private. The standardized tests for an individual teacher's classes vary wildly from year to year. A teacher who has seen the best growth in her school, or even in her district, may the next year see the worst. Happens all the time. What's more, teachers who are more organically identified as the best by their peers and their administration-- probably a better way of measuring a teacher's worth-- can have classes with very poor test scores or poorly improving test scores. This is a simple thing to understand, once you realize that the vast majority of a particular student's performance is the product of the student, and not the teacher.

When people talk about eliminating teachers based on performance, then, the unions become understandably nervous. If you went around every year firing the teacher from each school who had the worst improvement in test scores, or firing teachers who failed to meet certain testing benchmarks over a 3 or 5 year period, you'd wind up eliminating a lot of talented and dedicated teachers and sparing some ones who deserve firing. And, again, this is because individual students and individual classes have wildly divergent levels of inherent ability, social and familial support, etc.

Again, I support making it easier to fire teachers who really deserve it. But I think that you're assuming that there's more teachers who are incompetent than there really are, based on no data. I think if we had a sweep of the entire nation, eliminating the really bad teachers, we wouldn't come close to having the effect you and Mickey Kaus and similar seem to think it would have. Because, once again, the problems of academic performance in this country are endemic and tied to larger problems of poverty, family breakdown and disenfranchisement-- problems people of your political persuasion, by the way, are deeply opposed to government addressing.

Posted by Freddie | May 21, 2008 11:42 AM

I work in the 3rd largest school district in the country.
My solution:
Double a teacher's pay if they allow a video camera in their room to watch them.

Posted by judson | May 21, 2008 11:59 AM

Yglesias vs. Kozol! Debate at the National Press Club!

Posted by Another Chris | May 21, 2008 12:38 PM

In particular, I think that while relying on standardized test scores to measure educational outcomes clearly doesn't meet some kind of God-like standard of clairvoyance it's superior to the available alternatives.

The essential problem with NCLB is that it precisely turns test scores into a "god-like standard of clairvoyance" with regard to student performance. When used in such a fashion, standardized test scores are anything but superior to available alternatives. Really, this is similar to the argument that Colin Powell's presentation to the UN on Iraq contained the best intelligence we had so we had no alternative but to trust it.

If the best metric you have is fatally flawed then relying on that metric is worse than useless.

Posted by Rob Mac | May 21, 2008 12:46 PM

What if you kept the testing, but made the tests secret? The teachers know what the general content of the tests is - literacy, addition, whatever - but they don't know the exact types of questions on the test. Then you get a more accurate measure of kids' abilities, as opposed to their mastery of a specific test, and teachers don't have to spend a quarter of the year doing test prep.

Posted by Asher | May 21, 2008 5:18 PM

The comments say it all; MY, you need to consider the fact that the problem is not with schools, it is with parents. I'll admit there are a few lousy teachers, but the teacher doesn't make the kid educable, the parents (or DNA) do (or not).

To the commenter that said teachers aren't in it for the money: WRONG! We have families, mortgages, all the rest, and we would like some damn money for trying to teach this country's apathetic kids while you go on blaming schools and teachers for the failure of parents!

http://thefrustratedteacher.blogspot.com/2006/08/stop-blaming-teachers-and-schools.html

Posted by tft | May 21, 2008 8:56 PM

Asher, the test is secret. At least in elementary school, where I teach.

Posted by tft | May 21, 2008 9:00 PM

Asher, the test is secret. At least in elementary school, where I teach.

Posted by tft | May 21, 2008 9:06 PM

Hey onceler (cool name) give us some of your unmentioned numerous alternatives.

Posted by tft | May 21, 2008 9:14 PM

National standards make sense to people outside of education, but we teachers have a lot of legitimate concerns, and they're not about dodging "accountability"...

Read more here...

Posted by Michael Ayers | May 21, 2008 11:13 PM

So if the test is secret, then why are teachers always complaining about being forced to teach to the test? How can you teach to a test that's secret?

Posted by Asher | May 22, 2008 12:36 AM

So if the test is secret, then why are teachers always complaining about being forced to teach to the test? How can you teach to a test that's secret?

Wow, that's pretty inane. How does anyone study for the SAT?

Posted by tomemos | May 22, 2008 1:58 AM

What the hell is wrong with you people? Since 1965 and the passing of ESEA, the Feds have been sending money to states at taxpayer expense, to help offset what the states can't afford to help EDUCATE our kids. And the education system had only been getting worse. ?

So in 2001, luckily, we had a President with balls who demanded states show that our money was being spent appropriately to educate EVERY child. And EVERY state agreed that if they took the Feds money they would abide by the law.

NCLB is a civil rights law, people! It makes sure the inner city students and economically disadvanged kids gets highly qualified teachers, too. In addition, it requires that a school can't just stick a student who has ADD into a special ed class for the rest of his school years and assumed he can't learn.

There are schools who are achieveing and succeeding everyday under NCLB. It can be done. It takes good teachers and principals who want to work hard and believe that every child has a right to an education. And if teachers were actually teaching the curriculum outlined by the state, then this whole "teaching to the test" wouldn't be an issue. It's ONE test a year people. REALLY???????? Come on! I had to take tests every year growing up, too. It's was part of my job as a student!

You think you're traumatizing kids by making them take a test. How the hell do you think our kids will get through life if we keep protecting them from this evil called testing. They have to test to get their license. They have to test to get into college. We need to quit coddling these kids.

NCLB may not be perfect. The implementation needed to be better. But at least it made the education community notice that we have a problem in this country and something needs to be done. Which one of you say your child can wait until 2014 to be on grade level? Which one of you think it's ok that your child was passed from grade to grade and got of high school only reading on a 2nd grade level?

All you complainers need to spend as much time helping your kids learn, get on grade level, figure out a way to keep the GOOD teachers and get rid of the bad ones. It's not about YOU. It's all about the kids!

Posted by EdAbsurdity | May 22, 2008 12:41 PM

What the hell is wrong with you people? Since 1965 and the passing of ESEA, the Feds have been sending money to states at taxpayer expense, to help offset what the states can't afford to help EDUCATE our kids. And the education system had only been getting worse. ?

So in 2001, luckily, we had a President with balls who demanded states show that our money was being spent appropriately to educate EVERY child. And EVERY state agreed that if they took the Feds money they would abide by the law.

NCLB is a civil rights law, people! It makes sure the inner city students and economically disadvanged kids gets highly qualified teachers, too. In addition, it requires that a school can't just stick a student who has ADD into a special ed class for the rest of his school years and assumed he can't learn.

There are schools who are achieveing and succeeding everyday under NCLB. It can be done. It takes good teachers and principals who want to work hard and believe that every child has a right to an education. And if teachers were actually teaching the curriculum outlined by the state, then this whole "teaching to the test" wouldn't be an issue. It's ONE test a year people. REALLY???????? Come on! I had to take tests every year growing up, too. It's was part of my job as a student!

You think you're traumatizing kids by making them take a test. How the hell do you think our kids will get through life if we keep protecting them from this evil called testing. They have to test to get their license. They have to test to get into college. We need to quit coddling these kids.

NCLB may not be perfect. The implementation needed to be better. But at least it made the education community notice that we have a problem in this country and something needs to be done. Which one of you say your child can wait until 2014 to be on grade level? Which one of you think it's ok that your child was passed from grade to grade and got of high school only reading on a 2nd grade level?

All you complainers need to spend as much time helping your kids learn, get on grade level, figure out a way to keep the GOOD teachers and get rid of the bad ones. It's not about YOU. It's all about the kids!

Posted by EdAbsurdity | May 22, 2008 12:42 PM