Explore K-12 State and National Curriculum Teaching Standards history of failed reform.
2006 REFORM
NCLB - C-SPAN - No longer works -- http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/cspan.csp?command=dprogram&record=195639523
The No Child Left Behind Act 4/13/06
American Enterprise Institute hosted a controlled, polite, dog and pony show that should have been made available as a video podcast but that is just too much to expect from education officials, examples of all the education officials left behind.
The No Child Left Behind Act by the American Enterprise Institute - Washington, District of Columbia (United States)
ID: 192042 - 04/13/2006 -www.aei.org, www.ed.gov,
Haycock, Kati Director, Education Trust
Hess, Frederick M. Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute,
Education Packer, Joel Manager, National Education Association, Elem.& Second.Educ. Policy
Hickok, Eugene W. Deputy Secretary (2004-, Department of Education
Cain, Alice Johnson Senior Aide, House Education & Workforce Committee, Education
Petrilli, Michael J. Vice President, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, National Programs and Policy
Frederick Hess and Michael Petrilli discuss their book No Child Left Behind Primer, published by Peter Lang in February 2006, and what the future holds for the No Child Left Behind Act. In this citizen's guide to a complex law they trace the origins of the act, explain how it's many provisions work, and identify the effects of-and challenges to-its implementation. They are joined in a panel discussion moderated by Frederick Hess to discuss the future of the law that is due for reauthorization in 2007. The panelists are: Kati Haycock, director of The Education Trust;
Alice Johnson Cain, senior education aide to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce;
Joel Packer, manager of NCLB policy at the National Education Association; and former Deputy Secretary of Education Eugene Hickok (originally a PA Dept. of Ed lawyer who worked for PA Gov. Ridge and that is how he got to Washington)
Facts from the show included:
1) 68 out of 100 kids graduate High School - almost 1/4 of the children drop out.
2) fewer than 1/2 of all minority read well at fourth grade.
3) 70% of children in all high school children are taught math by teachers that do not have any credentials to teach math.
4) Failing schools are getting Supplemental Services which is really stealing what money is available to schools to pay for what Hickok called "free" tutoring which isn't getting funded at all. Politics are driven by the election cycle and the emphasis on education started behind policy is the desire to OWN education policy in politics but not to do anything much about it if you can't stay in office long enough to get anything done. Hickok came to the office because of 9-11 when he went with the PA governer to the head up the dept. of Homeland Security. The "American Dream is the eradication of the Achievement Gap" ~ Hickok, but his concern is that the standards policy will erode away. Reauthorization of the standards (funding) will be up again for radication in 2007 when 58% of the local LEA's will lose title 1 funding.
September 18, 2006
To members of the Aspen Institute’s Commission on No Child Left Behind
My name is Marion Brady, and I live in Cocoa, Florida.
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I’ve spent the last seventy-four years in education as a student, high school teacher, college professor, county-level administrator, publisher consultant, writer of journal articles, textbooks, professional books and newspaper columns, and visitor to classrooms across America and abroad.
You may or may not be surprised to hear me say that No Child Left Behind is an educational train wreck..
I’m no defender of pre-NCLB public education. When the legislation took shape, although the education train was still on the track, it was barely moving. What it had going for it was mostly potential. Thoughtful educators were pointing out that General Systems Theory as it had emerged from World War II, and research clarifying how the brain organizes information, could, together, move student intellectual performance to levels not previously thought possible. The train was creeping, but it was going in the right direction.
The unduly alarmist 1983 publication of “A Nation At Risk” stopped it cold. Fearful leaders of business and industry pushed educators aside, took control of “reform” and, working through politicians, set the train in motion. Backwards. Really fast. A wreck was inevitable. Picking through the present pileup as it settles into place, questions for those now in charge arise: CONTINUE
2007
NCLB PUBLIC DEBATE Ask the Office of Communications and Outreach any questions:Director, Intergovernmental Affairs -- Rogers Johnson, (202) 401-0026, mailto:Rogers.Johnson@ed.govDeputy Director -- Marcie Ridgway, (202) 401-6359, mailto:Marcie.Ridgway@ed.gov
Program Analyst -- Adam Honeysett, (202) 401-3003, mailto:Adam.Honeysett@ed.gov
MAJORITY WOULD LIKE "NO CHILD" LAW LEFT BEHIND
Nearly two-thirds of American adults want Congress to re-write or outright abolish the landmark No Child Left Behind Act that mandates nationwide testing of elementary students to determine if public schools are performing adequately. Opposition is especially high among people most familiar with the law, according to a survey of 1,010 adults. Controversy about the law has grown in recent months as Congress begins the debate on whether to re-authorize the measure that President Bush has touted is one of the most important achievements of his administration. Dissent against reauthorization has developed within President Bushs own party. Fifty-two Republican House members and five GOP senators are calling for a repeal of the law in favor of a more flexible system of achievement standards to be negotiated between the U.S. Department of Education and individual states. Only about a third of poll respondents said they think the law has had a positive influence on public education while slightly less than half said it has had a negative impact and a fifth were undecided.
Ask the Office of Communications and Outreach with any questions:
Director, Intergovernmental Affairs -- Rogers Johnson, (202) 401-0026, mailto:Rogers.Johnson@ed.gov
Deputy Director -- Marcie Ridgway, (202) 401-6359, mailto:Marcie.Ridgway@ed.gov
Program Analyst -- Adam Honeysett, (202) 401-3003, mailto:Adam.Honeysett@ed.gov
2007 The Education Research $ Gravy Train questioned!!
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-04-10-education-science_N.htm
More than five years after President Bush's No Child Left Behind law told educators to rely on "scientifically based" methods, the science produced is often inconclusive, politically charged or less than useful for classroom teachers. And when it is useful, it often is misused or ignored altogether, reports Greg Toppo in USA TODAY. As the 88th annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) takes place this week in Chicago, critics say the USA's huge community of education researchers -- 14,000 are attending -- often studies topics that do little to help schools solve practical problems such as how to train teachers, how to raise skills, how to lower dropout rates and whether smaller classes really make a difference. Others defend AERA's work and that of researchers in general but say the patchwork system of public schools makes it hard even for relevant research to reach the classroom.
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
Alan Haskvitz writes: "Only one tenth of the 76.7 million school children attend private school which means that public school performance will continue to be a leading indicator of real estate values.
I encourage you to take a long look at NCLB and decide if you should be involved in supporting it or changing it or eliminating it. There is a lot, literally and figuratively, at stake here both for your children and your finances. And, of course, as more parents think they can avoid public school problems by going to private schools remember the supply and demand lessons from your first economics class and note that those tuitions have increased steadily. You might also seek to find out what you are getting for your money. For example, a very expensive private school in California charges $25,000 a year for day students. Despite this high fee the school's website reports that the just over 80 percent received 3 or better on their AP exams even with class sizes well under 20. As a comparison at least one public high school in the Seattle area district had 89 percent score 3 or better on AP tests and many other public schools report superior scores. In the district I teach in one school did better in the AP calculus test than any other school in the world. So it is essential that parents do no associate expensive schools with high test scores." source
About BONNIE BRACEY SUTTON See the Complete List of her Essays
America's High Schools Are Obsolete - Bill Gates 2005 By obsolete, I don't just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean that our high schools even when they're working exactly as designed cannot teach our kids what they need to know today.
WHO IS RIGHT ABOUT EDUCATION REFORM?
Stanford Alumni Magazine asked two experts for their perspectives on school reform and NCLB testing and accountability policies. Terry Moe says that a consensus of policymakers believes that public schools are not delivering the goods. Why are our public schools so difficult to improve? The answer, he says, rests with two fundamental problems that stand in the way of progress. The first is a problem of incentives. The second is a problem of power. The education system is literally not organized to be effective, yet it can only be reformed through politics, and political power is stacked in favor of employee groups that staunchly defend traditional arrangements. Gerald W. Bracey writes that Americans uncritically accept gloomy statistics about their public schools. He writes that NCLB is to education as Katrina was to New Orleans. He never believed that this law is the idealistic, well-intentioned but poorly executed program that many claim it to be. NCLB aims to shrink the public sector, transfer large sums of public money to the private sector, weaken or destroy two Democratic power bases -- the teachers unions -- and provide vouchers to let students attend private schools at public expense.
NCLB: State and Local Report Cards outline the
information and data that state education agencies are required to disseminate as required by No Child Left Behind.
Official NCLB site.
http://www.ed.gov/nclb/overview/intro/execsumm.html
Three days after taking office in January 2001 as the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush announced No Child Left Behind, his framework for bipartisan education reform that he described as
"the cornerstone of my Administration." President Bush emphasized his deep belief in our public schools, but an even greater concern that "too many of our neediest children are being left behind," despite the nearly $200 billion in Federal spending since the passage of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). The President called for bipartisan solutions based on accountability, choice, and flexibility in Federal education programs.
Less than a year later, despite the unprecedented challenges of engineering an economic recovery while leading the Nation in the war on terrorism following the events of September 11, President Bush secured passage of the landmark No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB Act). The new law reflects a remarkable consensus-first
articulated in the President's No Child Left Behind framework-on how to improve the performance of America's elementary and secondary schools while at the same time ensuring that no child is trapped in a failing school.
From Education Week [American Education's Newspaper of Record],
Wednesday, August 12, 2009, Volume 28, Issue 37, pp. 28-29. See
COMMENTARY
Replacing No Child Left Behind By Richard Rothstein is a research associate of the Economic Policy
Institute, a former national education columnist for The New York Times, and the
author of Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right (2008). He is a
member of the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education Task
While promoting health-care reform this summer in Green Bay, Wis.,
President Barack Obama took questions from the audience. One had nothing to do
with health, but is on the minds of parents and teachers everywhere: How do we
move the focus in education "away from single-day testing and test-driven
outcomes?" There was applause.
Mr. Obama responded by saying that if all we are doing is giving
standardized tests and teaching to them, "that's not improving our education
system." (Again, the audience applauded.) He repeated an aphorism he'd heard in
rural Illinois: "Just weighing a pig doesn't fatten it." (Yet more applause.)
The president then said that we need standardized testing, but that we
can't hold schools or teachers accountable for scores alone. We also must look
at the quality of students' ongoing work, and observe teachers in their
classrooms to make valid judgments about their effectiveness.
This approach undermines the basis of the federal No Child Left Behind
Act, which now holds schools accountable only for math and reading scores. But
recent Washington policy talk seems mostly concerned with improving the
accuracy of math and reading tests. One common panacea offered is to compare
scores of the same students from one year to the next, rather than
comparing students in the same grade in successive years.
Yet even if the statistical technology for such "value added" growth
models could be developed (a big "if," given student mobility, the unreliability
of a single test, and the nonrandom assignment of students to teachers),
this "improvement" would not address the more fundamental issue the
president raised: There's more to good education than math and reading scores.
Last year, candidate Obama elaborated this theme. He said that No Child
Left Behind was "intended to raise standards in local schools." But what
happened, he said, was that, "because it relied on just a single standardized
test, schools felt pressured to just teach to the test." In many districts,
Mr. Obama maintained, teachers and principals have decided that if they are
to bring their students up to the proficient level, "all they can do is
just study math and reading every day, all day long. They've eliminated
recess, they've eliminated art and music."
"So part of the solution," Mr. Obama concluded, "is changing No Child Left
Behind, so that the assessment is one that takes into account all the
factors that go into a good education."
Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, of which
NCLB is the current version, has stalled because too few policymakers have
considered how to implement the balanced approach that Mr. Obama has
consistently invoked. Instead, mention of reauthorization paralyzes lawmakers, who
fear public reaction to more testing, more narrowing of curriculum, and
unrealistic expectations that schools can raise disadvantaged children's
achievement simply by pressing them to prepare better for tests.
Soon after the president's Green Bay speech, the Broader, Bolder Approach
to Education [see] campaign issued
recommendations about how this vision-holding schools accountable for a balanced set
of learning goals-could be put into practice. The policy proposals were
drafted by a diverse committee that included, among others, former assistant
secretaries of education in the Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II
administrations.
The BBA report insists that designing better accountability will require
experimentation. States will need highly trained inspectors who look at test
data, but also visit schools to review students' written work, observe
teaching quality, evaluate student behavior and the school climate, and
determine whether schools provide appropriate social supports for children, by
coordinating with health and social service providers and striving to ensure
that appropriate early-childhood and after-school programs are available.
Along with requiring states to develop qualitative school evaluation
systems, reauthorization should also expand the National Assessment of
Educational Progress, a federal test given to a sample of U.S. students. At present,
these samples are only large enough to provide state-by-state results in
reading and math. A recent arts assessment, for example, surveyed so few
students that we can't know how arts education compares between states, or the
extent to which disadvantaged children in the various states are getting
shortchanged in the arts. Congress should increase the sample sizes to
determine how states and their subgroups compare in the arts, history, sciences,
physical fitness, and work skills.
In its early years, NAEP reported on such varied school outcomes. Since
the 1970s, however, the focus has been on getting more sophisticated math and
reading measurements, reinforcing schools' incentives to ignore other
knowledge and skills.
As part of his embrace of common standards, U.S. Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan has pledged to give states $350 million of economic-stimulus
money to improve the quality of math and reading tests. We all want better math
and reading assessments. But we should also invest in better tests of
history, sciences, and the arts, and develop tools to evaluate student
behavior, judge a school's disciplinary climate, see whether students know how to
cooperate, and measure whether schools are enhancing physical fitness and
appropriate health choices and habits.
The federal government should hold all schools accountable for such a
balanced approach-especially if the president wants continued applause when
answering questions about education improvement.