Teacher's heartbreak and anger at No Child Left Behind

National Education Association Vice President Lily Eskelsen's essay "The Science of Making Up Stuff," talks about the disastrous "No Child Left Behind" program that has dominated US education since the first part of the Bush administration, the toll it's taken on teachers, the damage it's done to education. As the child of two teachers and the brother of a teacher, this kind of thing breaks my heart.

There is a lucrative science that undergirds No Child Left known in academic circles as: Making Things Up. It makes up that a standardized test is actually designed to measure "proficiency" or whether a school is actually failing or succeeding in making "adequate progress".

America's most dedicated educators have been praying mightily for an end to the hell of false labels and the testing tail wagging the dog-and-pony show that now passes as teaching and learning in schools where administrators are forced to bundle toxic testing strategies worthy of Lehman Brothers in their efforts to be accountable-not to the kids, but to hitting their numbers.

Good Teachers know the difference. We have continued to teach in spite of No Child Left.

The Science of Making Up Stuff (Thanks, Kevin!)

(Image: No Child Left Behind, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from aflcio's photostream)

• [wylkyn]

  It is frustrating that it is so difficult to get rid of the ineffective teachers. But consider that the very factors that protect the burn-outs are the same factors that protect the inspired teachers, the ones who challenge the students and the parents. Every teacher who really teaches is going to run into a parent who takes umbrage or gets ruffled feathers over some issue. The typical reaction of a school district office is to do whatever it takes to placate such a parent and make the problem go away. Without the protections that unions and tenure provide, teachers would be more focused on protecting their jobs – on doing everything they can not to rock the boat. You would be weeding out both the bad and the good, and all that would be left are the cautious and the mediocre. Do those things need modification? Sure. But let’s try to keep the whole picture in perspective and not get all emotional about it.

  I’m not a teacher, but my wife was one. Now she is a principal, and there are some burn-out teachers she would love to fire, but she can’t. It is frustrating to have to let good teachers go and keep the poor ones. But every coin has a flip-side, and there are no easy answers. Most of the politicians who try to make you think there are easy answers have never been in a classroom as anything but a student. I don’t believe they are malicious in their intentions…just that they don’t see the whole picture.

  I am also a bit annoyed at the people who sneer at teachers who try to explain why these simplistic solutions aren’t the answer. It should occur to you that a teacher, as someone with experience and education in the field, would perhaps have a more educated perspective on the situation. It is illustrative of the basic scorn Americans have toward the profession that they think so little of the average teacher’s opinion. So, if you have a real factual base for your argument, please do share. If, however, it is simply based on an emotional knee-jerk reaction to the NEA or whatever, you’ll have to pardon me if I take it with a grain or two of salt.

  Here is one last thing to consider: any real solution is going to take money and time. You would have to wait quite a while for any results to show to justify the money spent. That is no motivation for a career politician to act on a real solution when the quick but ineffective “fixes” are much flashier and have more crowd appeal. It’s bizarre to me that many conservatives claim to have so little trust in government, and yet they make an exception when it comes to education – then they will take any Republican politician’s word over that of a teacher.

  • [gillda]

    Thank you, wylkyn, for your thoughtful and reasonable remarks. You’ve touched on one of the many reasons the issue of tenure is much more complicated than some people want to recognize.

• [Camolai]

  As a student who had to experience NCLB firsthand, I can only summarize it as disastrous. By the end of my high school years, we had so many testing sessions that it took entire months out of our curriculum. And then even more time was taken out because the teachers had to spend weeks prepping us for the tests. Actual learning was forcefully forgotten as our classrooms became MAP strategizing workshops, spending more time analyzing how the test itself works (so that we could score better) than actually learning about history, language, science, and the arts. It was ridiculous! And then the students who scored poorly on the tests got all of the district’s attention because so much focus was placed on “raising our numbers” rather than teaching all the kids. Many children were DEFINITELY left behind with this idiotic program.

• [wiredfool]

  You can curve the scores on an irrelevant test and give the impression that some have learned and some have not.

• [Anonymous]

  I went through Minnesota Public Schools during the notorious “Profiles of Learning” years. Program very similar to NCLB. It was a joke, it made picking classes incredibly difficult as a gifted student. I spent valuable time taking classes teaching me how to balance a checkbook or take middle school level art classes instead of taking more Advanced Placement courses. The teachers taught to the placement tests, the few that refused to do so were the best teachers I had and they mostly retired after a few years.

  I never, in all my life learned anything from a standardized test, nor from studying for them. We need to look at teaching as something we pull students into by grabbing their attention, teaching them the value of what they are learning and focusing curriculum to the students. Move children ahead who excel and focus on the basics for those who fall behind. Education cannot be one size fits all if it is to be successful. Lets face it, not all students need to know algebra. We need accelerated courses to prepare the college bound and more skill based classes and tech school placements for those who are more interested in learning a skill than reading up on history.

  The current cookie cutter system is bound to fail because people do not all learn the same way, have the same interest nor do they have the same needs. Canada has an educational system that makes a lot more sense.

• [pjcamp]

  aj @ #1 is upset that a teacher is complaining, and it made him cry.

  So ok, here’s a complaint from someone who has to consume the product of public schools — a college professor. I pre and post test all my intro physics classes on Newtonian reasoning using the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation. In the almost decade since No Child Left Behind, the gain that my students experience has declined from around 60% to around 20%. Now either I am getting worse as a professor as I gain experience, or they are becoming less and less capable of reasoning on an abstract level.

  I find it telling that the decline tracks pretty well with the number of years that particular class spent laboring under NCLB.

  • [joeposts]

    perhaps if we subject your students to a battery of standardized tests developed by Neil Bush we could find out if you are actually getting worse as a professor.

    No Undergraduate Left Behind!

• [Anonymous]

  I really resent how some politicians painted our pre-NCLB educational system as some kind of awful failure. The USA is the most powerful, wealthy, productive and free nation on earth. I guess our teachers must have been doing something right all those years. When I went to school we had lots of art, science, music and gym. My son gets a only a tiny bit of each and spends much time taking exams instead of learning new material or learing to think.

• [Anonymous]

  I teach 8th grade science in the US Virgin Islands; I taught high school science in Baltimore a few years ago. Both school systems are awful.

  I worked in IT at a small wireless company in MD for a year in between teaching. It was awesome: great leadership, incentives for hard work and overtime, and peers that valued excellence and constructive criticism.

  Three things make public schools suck: poor leadership, culture that accepts and even values delinquency, and bad parenting.

  A good leader can get a group of people to accomplish anything within reason, even inspiring a group of burned out teachers to get passionate again. A bad leader allows employees to feel undervalued and overworked.

  I picked up a student’s Black History Month project from my floor at the end of a day back in Feb. She had pasted 4 images of Lil Wayne on the cover. He is in prison for (I believe) possession of an illegal firearm and narcotics. Why is he a role model for young people?

  There are a lot of dumb people in the world, many of them have children. Most dumb people don’t read to their kids. Bad parents generate bad kids. It is a fact, please do not get offended.

  NCLB is not a solution. NCLB generates a lot of paperwork, hand waving, and stress. American culture needs to change, not the soup of the day.

• [hawkd_sf]

  My wife and I have a disabled son, just out of high school. His entire education (pre/kinder/elementary/ middle/high school) was a battle and a nightmare. In the middle of one of our (many) legal battles with our school district I figured out it was a punctuation problem. What they REALLY meant was, “NO. Child left behind.”

• [Anonymous]

  A refresher course in history is important here, as liberals and teachers in general (is there a difference?) are quick to blame ‘Bush’ for NCLB, when in fact it was Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) that crafted the bill and pushed it through the Senate.

  The measure ‘promised liberals increased spending and focus on minority-student achievement; it offered conservatives enhanced school choice and tougher standards.’

  As a *BI-partisan* initiative, it’s correct that it was signed by then President Bush.
  When it cleared the house 381-41 it had MORE Democrat votes then Republican.

  A good teacher will consult PRIMARY sources to get facts:

  see:
  House vote: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll497.xml

  Democrats- For: 198 Against: 4
  Republicans-For: 183 Against: 33

  With Kennedy’s push the Senate voted:
  Democrats- For: 47 Against: 2
  Republicans-For: 43 Against: 6

  I will agree that it is a failure because–as the Republican opponents at the time pointed out it was an unfunded mandate (much like the recent Health Care Bill), but IF you’re going to call yourself a teacher, get history and your facts straight.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    when in fact it was Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) that crafted the bill and pushed it through the Senate

    Kennedy was a cosponsor but, oooops, it was initially proposed by the Bush White House and, oooops, it was introduced in the House by John “No We Can’t” Boehner (R-OH). You have a really unusual view of what constitutes a refresher course in history. More like remodeling history than refreshing it.

    • [Anonymous]

      As mentioned it was *BI-partisan*– you may or may not remember a time–the “old days”, when differing parties worked together? (not like the division going on today)

      My point, not “remodeling”, is that both a House and Senate–with overwhelming Democrat support AND overwhelming ayes on BOTH sides, passed the Bill. THAT is a “refreshing” view that isn’t acknowledged.

      I agree it didn’t/doesn’t work AND it wasn’t something that Bush rammed through on his own.

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  It is quite simply one school dumping it’s disruptive students on another school to bump up their numbers.

  Texas, home state of the Buddha of NCLB, claimed to have the country’s lowest drop-out rate under this system. It turned out that they were systematically recording drop-outs as transfers or early graduations. Texas’s drop-out rate is one of the highest.

• [Anonymous]

  “But the constant complaining from the teachers who can’t bear to be held accountable for taxpayer-funded results.”

  Obviously you haven’t been in school since you were a student.

  First of all, blaming the teachers in one big bunch is just stupid. There are good teachers and bad teachers. The good teachers will tell you that evaluating the education of a child and the progress they have made is not as simple as NCLB testing would have you believe.

  It’s ironic that the Administrators and School Boards and Departments of Education are not holding themselves responsible. Because it is THEY not the teachers who decide exactly what the teacher will be doing EVERY MINUTE OF THE DAY. Teachers now have ZERO control over how they run their classes. But yea “LETS BLAME THE TEACHERS!”

  You want to know what has always been old. Stupid people who have zero background in education telling TEACHERS how to do their job. You know what else is old? Blaming teachers for the failure of children who live in families who are WAY BEYOND disfunctional. Yea, never blame the parents, blame the teachers.

  You know what would be great? Is if the entire education system would break down and the children are left to be schooled by their idiot parents. I bet you’ll shut up real quick when your free daycare disappears.

• [Anonymous]

  If teachers’ unions are to blame, then explain Texas. I teach in an urban district in TX, where we don’t have unions, we have “professional organizations.” It’s illegal for teachers to strike. The “union” basically helps us find legal services if we should be sued, and gets us low-cost tickets to the rodeo. We don’t have tenure and are on year-to-year contracts. It isn’t hard to fire a teacher in Texas at all. Yet we still have all the same problems as any other urban district.

• [Anonymous]

  I started attending California schools right after prop 13 passed. Lack of funding coupled with the baby bust meant I lived: closing schools, crowded classrooms, combination classes, elimination of sports art and music, and decaying schools and fields. By middle school (’86) I was the first class to have middle school sports reinstated since the 70s (track because it was the cheapest). Now the perfect storm has blown away any remaining funding and I now get to again witness my community’s schools close, mass teacher layoffs, crowded classrooms, combination classes and again decaying schools. It’s amazing children have so much less than I did and folks are still not satisfied because public schools simply exist. De fund, neglect, layoff, break the union, privatize education so only the wealthy get educated.

• [blueelm]

  I grew up in Texas when they were working through their idiotic standardized tests. I can honestly tell you this is making education worthless. There is no teaching, no learning, just memorizing test strategy.

  It’s a joke and if they’re going to do it that way then they should let some of us test out of the waste pile called high school, take an exit test at 14 write a three paragraph formulaic essay no college professor would accept as an essay, do some algebra, and move on with our life.

• [blueelm]

  Haha. That post had some horrible syntax! Perhaps I should rest my case on that then. Yay Texas :D

• [Anonymous]

  As a future educator, I’d love to see NCLB scrapped or at least re-worked. Testing down to the lowest denominator isn’t going to work. It makes students who already achieve higher than their peers get bored and disenfranchised with school. I’d like to see where students are grouped in classrooms based on their abilities and what they already know. Sure, we may not pass someone onto the next grade level because they didn’t get the concepts thrown at them, but we then give the student another shot.

  Social advancement in education is not THE answer, but I think we need to be allowed to hold back students who aren’t getting the material. You provide a disservice to those who already do by holding them back to the slowest student. As for evaluating teacher’s performances based solely on scores, you can’t tell just what type of class they were given. They may have had a large group of students who didn’t care, or had parents who didn’t care. Going in, and observing them in the classroom makes for a better of idea as for where to place them. It may be that one is better suited (or has more patience) to work with students who are falling behind. One may be better at getting through much more material faster than others and would fit better with students on a faster track.

  I have seen the transition of NCLB in the college ranks as mine was the last high school class to not deal with NCLB. Students aren’t thinking critically, they aren’t retaining any information (and for those ed administrators, if the students have no schema, they can’t go any further), and they aren’t following abstract concepts any better than they are concrete concepts.

  Not everyone is cut out for college. And this belief that to be successful you have to get a post-secondary education is ludicrous. Aiming for proficiency in the basics that they need to function as citizens is great, proficiency at collegiate level algebra as a requirement? I’d rather they be able to balance a check book, and calculate basic interest, or write a cover letter and resumè. Cutting out from other aspects of education (social studies, civics, history, arts, languages, phy ed, science) is not what we need to improve our students. Take away all those options, and where will they find something to excel at?

  NCLB is a great idea executed horribly. Yes, we need accountability in education, but it needs to be pressed home not only on teachers and administrators, but parents and students as well. Education is a continuous feedback loop and requires all parts helping to work in educating our students. If the parents can’t help, then let us educators try to fill in the gaps without handcuffing us at the same time. We aren’t here to fail your students, but we have to assess and evaluate how much they now when they leave.

  A proposal I would have wouldn’t kill funding for failing schools, but to send more funds to offer after-school programs to help students get the materials, understand them, or keep them out of trouble and in an environment they can learn/study. Give them something else to do besides just sitting at home and watching television or surfing facebook (like I am right now). These programs don’t have to be for more than an hour or two at the end of the day. If possible, find volunteers from the community to help operate/tutor/teach (with background checks paid with the funding). You know who might be a good idea to fill those gaps? Fresh-faced college grads who are having difficulties finding jobs, or recent retirees looking to fill time. For the former group, offer loan-payment assistance or waivers. Work with local gov’t to offer after-school transport for these programs via bus systems or local transit companies. The programs can include remedial and intermediate tutoring for students, fine arts opportunities, vocational education, service projects, physical activities.

  If the lack of funding is a problem, get the legwork to apply for the grants to help pay for facilities, supplies, bodies. Even in a time of recession, there are still some income sources to tap into, private and otherwise. Team up with local organizations (churches, Lion’s Clubs, Moose, Freemasons). These organizations usually have monies set up to fund civic philanthropic movements.

  But, it is a matter of actually being proactive instead of reactive. Tests are lagging indicators of how schools have done. Do something more. When I finally finish next spring, I will. Will you?

• [Anonymous]

  I can never understand why, after identifying the weakest schools, the “solution” is to close them down.

  The correct solution should be to give those schools more money and resources since they clearly have a more difficult task. Or maybe increase community programs in that neighbourhood so the children are better able to focus on the work?

• [feuilletoniste]

  The NSW public school system in Australia is the largest cohesive education system in the world; it has its problems like anywhere else but they are getting a whole lot worse now that education is so politicised. Politicians score cheap points running down teachers and unions, and make themselves look busy by instructing bureaucrats with no education experience to implement pointless but expensive programmes. Education is an all-in process; children flourish when they have a well-trained and fairly-remunerated teacher, reasonable class sizes and adequate classroom resources, engaged family members and a supportive community. You can train them and test them and call it progress, but 20 years down the line society will suffer for it.

  • [Notary Sojac]

    The sooner we admit that there is no amount of “resources” that can compensate for parents who basically don’t give a crap, the more likely we are to get a grip on the problem.

• [Anonymous]

  Much of NCLB and other education programs come from trying to borrow techniques from industry, and doing it in a half assed, poorly executed way.

  1st off, these tools, such as statistics, are just tools. They are not solutions by themselves. Industries that use statistics, quality control, etc. know this and use the tools to find and fix problems. You quantify the inputs and check the outputs. You use that to help you figure out how to make everyone more effective. Give them the right tools to get things done better, faster, cheaper.

  2nd, a lot of educators never bothered to really learn how to effectively use these tools. They never learned how to create testing that is simple and effective. They never learned how to truly interpret results. And federal rules just made it worse.

  But there is a glimmer of hope. All of this testing has created a huge database. It’s pretty worthless for evaluating individual teachers, students, and schools. But it can show the average effect of class size, spending, length of year, teacher training, and so on.

  And the biggest factor? Good teachers. Which doesn’t correlate to high pay. Class size, spending on education, and many of the other fixes we all have believed to be the solution are negligible. It boils down to good teachers.

  A bad teacher will advance students .5 years/yr (and retard learning for years to come), a good teacher will advance students 1.5 years/yr (and accelerate learning for years).

  The problem is we just don’t know what makes a good teacher good. The only factor I’ve seen in any publication (and my wife, a teacher of 10 years concurs) is classroom management. Quite literally how to get eyes and ears focused on the teacher. The funny thing is this isn’t a skill taught to regular teachers.

  My wife started in special ed, where she was taught classroom management. How to stand, how to walk, how to talk, how to listen, how to correct, how to punish, how to reward, how to make eye contact, how to arrange chairs. But that’s considered so mundane, they don’t teach teachers how to do it.

  So it could be for the sake of 1 friggin’ class not required of most teachers, we’ve doomed millions of students. But at least NCLB might have helped us figure it out. A diamond ring in the pile of poo.

  Thank you for letting me rant.

  PS My wife HATES NCLB. I use statistics for designing medical devices and it drives me up the wall how testing and statistics are misapplied by schools.

  • [Anonymous]

    People have posted surprising good insights into the problem, mainly that NCLB was well-intentioned but very poorly implemented. What makes a good teacher? It’s not their knowledge of the subject, it is how well they understand their target audience (which is comprised of both the students and their parents). Half of new teachers wash out in the first few years because they haven’t learned the most important skill, that of knowing their students. Most other problems, e.g. overcrowded classrooms, can be traced to a simple lack of resources; school administrators seem to have a good idea what should be done, but simply are not given the resources to implement those ideas. Finally, there are 2 problems that apply to public schools but not to private schools which are flip sides of the same coin: 1) It is too difficult to get rid of ineffective teachers, and 2) It is too difficult to get rid of students who are disrupting other students’ learning experience. The first part is mainly the fault of the unions, which are entirely focused on protecting teachers, and do not care at all about actually educating children. The second is the fault of the parents, who fail to teach their children manners, then bitch and moan that their little angel’s behavior couldn’t possibly be the problem. Charter schools generally do better because they don’t have as much of a problem with getting rid of people that are actually impeding education.

• [Brainspore]

  Expecting education to improve just because you’re conducting more standardized tests is like expecting the performance of your car to improve by checking your fluid levels every hour (but not actually changing the oil or taking it to a mechanic).

  Not only does the approach fail to address the actual problems, it keeps you from actually getting anything done because you have to dedicate ever more time and resources to the pointless tests.

• [Bill Albertson]

  I think that the real issue is that we went away from making sure kids were educated to a certain level on graduation (people being held back until they could show a certain level of advancement, etc), to instead judging schools as a whole on whether the right ratio of students could pass a test. The first is a lot harder to implement unless you trust the experts who do the work, and you also get what you pay for in that kind of environment. We in America, while we give lip service to the value of education, simply don’t believe in paying teachers very much, because education of our children just isn’t considered to be as important a profession as being an attorney or a doctor (even though it is just as regulated).

  Instead, America has slowly been devolving to second guessing the experts. This shows in the application of more and more standardized testing, and taking the onus on professional standards away from the professional organizations. We are to a point now where standardization and regulation mean more than education and developing children into responsible adults and citizens. And it is not just in the classroom, but in the lunchroom, and anywhere else someone could throw a regulation in to “make things work better, ’cause those educators can’t be trusted”.

  My kid attends a public school that works. The reason it works is that the TEACHERS are firmly in charge, and the administration takes its direction from them, and not the other way around. The teachers have the power to directly solicit help from parents, and they get it. In many schools, this is impossible due to administrative overhead or regulation.

  Our teachers and the parents have appealed to the school district for testing waivers below a certain age, and have gotten them. This means that younger students get the education they need tailored to their development BEFORE having to grind for tests.

  The teachers in our school get extra compensation and volunteer help from the parents as well- this means that they are not overworked, they can take vacation, and their wallets aren’t being drained by trying to provide for the class materials (as many teachers are required to do in other schools). This means not only can the teachers dedicate their professional time toward actually educating the kids, they feel like professionals (and consequently act like them).

  Three things need to turn around- teachers need to be in charge of the schools, administration needs to be made up of senior teachers, and compensation needs to reflect something other than a bottom barrel mentality. Get things to that point, and I think we will see America graduating kids on the same level as other countries, where Swedish kids in the equivalent of our 8th grade have finished high school AP biology and algebra, and graduate with fluency in more than one language and a trade skill.

• [webmonkees]

  A friend’s younger brother is about 3-4 years into teaching, and has gotten frustrated by the requirements geared towards these tests.

  They informed him that the history curriculum would be reduced and reading expanded. So, he’s assigning the students reading.. from the history textbooks.

• [Anonymous]

  My nine year old daughter is a voracious reader, devouring books well beyond her age level, intensely interested in math, sciences, and she’s a heck of a cook who loves to try out new recipes. She’s never once set foot in a public school, and hopefully never will. Our son has just started his formal schooling and will hopefully follow a similar path as his sister has. Neither of them have had their hopes, creativity and joy of learning crushed out of them by standardized testing.

  I do not understand why any parent would willingly allow their children to be subjected to the idiocies perpetrated by NCLB. I also don’t understand why more people haven’t stood up and said they won’t participate in it. There are numerous options such as charter schools, educational co-ops, religious schools, private schools, homeschooling, un-schooling, none of which are subject to NCLB. Vote with your feet (and your kids’ feet) and stay away.

  • [Anonymous]

    You are correct, you kids are better off being homeschooled (and I applaud you for doing so). However, there aren’t really as many choices as you think. Single parent families and those where both parents must work to pay the mortgage simply don’t have this action. Like many school districts, the Beaverton School District has fastidiously (and unlawfully) vetoed ANY charter schools because they actually need to cram 30 students into each classroom to pay for their poorly managed expenses. It now costs about $10,000 a year per student for education, and most private and religious schools actually charge that much. The irony here is that if I weren’t paying over $10,000/year in state income tax and local property taxes (used mostly to fund the public schools), I would actually be able to afford to send my child to a private school! I will have to look into co-ops, however.

• [aj]

  If this weren’t from someone whose job it is to make excuses for poor performance and fight reform every step of the way, it might be heartbreaking. But since this is from the NEA, I have to ask that you spare us the tears, crocodile and otherwise.

  Sure, No Child Left Behind needs reform. But the constant complaining from the teachers who can’t bear to be held accountable for taxpayer-funded results was old before it started, and is really old now.

  • [Anonymous]

    There’s good and bad to it honestly. From the teacher’s perspective it’s difficult, if not impossible, to gauge a teacher’s performance based on year after year of standardized tests. Suppose you have a gifted class of fourth graders one year, and the next year you have a class of fourth graders (all different students now of course) who are, shall we say, slow on the uptake. Now, lets say that your teaching performance stays steady, or even slightly improves, will that be reflected in the scores? No. Because that next year you just didn’t have kids as capable as the year before. But you’ll be penalized as if you had done something wrong. It’s a silly, silly way to measure teacher performance and it strongly needs changing.

  • [Anonymous]

    And how many years have you been teaching? And by teaching, I mean the years you were actually allowed to teach, as well as the years that you were told what to “teach” and how much to test.
    Now let’s see– who has actually profited from this?
    Oh, that’s right– McGraw-Hill, Pearson, et al publishing companies. I’m sure the fact that the Bushes and the McGraws are generations-old friends has nothing to do with the NCLB law being signed two days after Bush took office.

  • [Anonymous]

    I agree with you AJ to a point; My greater concern is that NEA is going to use this type of anti-bush hype to allow the new “Race To The Top” nonsense to climb in the minds of Americans. In reality it is all the same nonsense. Until education is run by educators it is going to be a mess. Far too many people who have nothing to do with education other than throwing money and their weight round are determining outcomes. Sound psycho-social research, along with child developmental research along with sound educational research has been ignored, it continues to be ignored. President Bush, as flawed as it was, was in response to some strong sound research which identified errors. The problem was, he listened to some of the biggest evil doers in this whole game. THE PUBLISHERS! They have for far too long been the status quo in eduction. Why, because they make textbooks, and STANDARDIZED TESTS? They are the only ones making money off of our children’s failures! That and the Federal Government! The absolutely ridiculous tenure process in education is equally flawed. No one should be guaranteed a job for as long as they live, just because they reached tenure. If you are not up to snuff, and have not continued on in your craft, then you can be replaced. I say that and I am a teacher! Furthermore, education should not be free, it should be equitable in all areas if it is to be judged by the Federal government. In keeping with the theme of my essay response here. Does the federal government without sound research tell the AMA how to practice medicine?

  • [joeposts]

    What does testing students have to do with accountability of teachers? I failed classes with good teachers. I aced classes with teachers who shouldn’t be in classrooms. All these tests do is frustrate teachers and turn kids off school. I think that’s the point – conservatives rule by creating crises among groups they dislike, and then swoop in with privately-funded ‘solutions’ that actually exacerbate the problems, leading to widespread disillusionment with the ability of the government to provide for citizens. Which is what conservatives want: smaller, less effective and more profitable government.

    The only standardized tests I had as a child were the ones that evaluated ME. The tests I took were actually interesting and got me into special programs since I was reading well above my grade level. The teachers I had were evaluated by other experienced professionals who did surprise inspections, checked their lesson plans, and sat in on classes. This is the way to do it – if any reforms need to be made, they should be geared towards making education more flexible and more relevant. NCLB does the opposite.

    But hey, I guess you could be right – teachers are all a bunch of leeches, who don’t care about good teaching, and are only in it for the money. LOL.

  • [mgfarrelly]

    Hi,

    I’m going to assume you’ve never worked in education based on your comments. Let me explain what’s wrong with your perception here.

    The NEA is a union. Like many Americans, you seem to have been conditioned to believe that unions=”the problem”. That union labor is less reliable, that union laborers are full of excuses. It’s understandable. Turn on a television or talk radio and hear about “union thugs” and how unions are “demanding more money”. When was the last time you heard a positive story about organized labor in the mainstream media? Maybe NPR every once in a while?

    Are there bad teachers and failing schools? Yes. Is this the fault of teacher’s unions? Not even by a longshot.

    Anyone who has worked in education can tell you what a good and bad teacher is. We’ve all seen the burn-outs, the people who can tell you (to the second) how long they have until retirement. What teachers need, what they CRAVE is to be empowered to actually TEACH in their classrooms. To have the bureaucracy, the politicking, the armchair educating, just back off.

    Teachers are not in it for the money, really. Compared to comparable fields and levels of education it’s sad how little many teachers are paid. If you’re in it for the long haul (and the rates of turnover are ridiculous, the most oft-cited reason for leaving the profession being the bureaucracy) you’re in it because you love it.

    NCLB makes it harder for individual teachers to teach. They’re turned into drillmasters for tests that don’t make kids any more educated about anything except the tests. Curricula doesn’t matter, just run the multiple choice “practice test” a few more times, get the reading score for the district up another 2% and then, maybe you can get some actual instruction in.

    If you want to see real reform in education stop listening to “education experts” who’ve never taught. Stop listening to pundits, who’ve never taught. Start listening to teachers, who face down the hungry brains every day and are doling out more and more meager broth.

    • [Notary Sojac]

      mgfarrelly @ 10

      My wife was a public school teacher for fifteen years and a member of the union for ten.

      For all of those ten years she pleaded with the union to take a stand in negotiations about cutting the bureaucracy and the micromanagement. They turned a deaf ear. Every time the contract came up it was all about money and tenure. Nothing else.

      Exit Mrs. Sojac from the union, and three years later, from the public schools. She does consulting services for homeschoolers now, and has never been happier with her work.

  • [Anonymous]

    I am a highly qualified teacher and I can not agree with you more. I am very proud of my profession and what I do – “nurture” and “educate” Almighty God’s children.

    If you haven’t already reviewed President Obama’s blueprint for reauthorization of the ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act), please do so. I have thoroughly reviewed it and I am pleasantly in agreement with the concepts contained therein. Simply “google” ESEA Reauthorization Blueprint.

    Additionally, I invite you to join me on “Courageous Conversations,” a rapidly-growing education webinar, the second Sunday of each month. Visit the links below to learn more and then join the dialogue. You can participate “on the web” or “on the phone,” it’s your choice! To participate on the web, you must receive the link.

    http://[e-mail]
    http://www.courageousconversations.ning.com
    http://www.courageousconversations1.blogspot.com

    Peace
    Hafeeza

• [Anonymous]

  “The only way we’re not going to leave any child behind is if this bus never goes anywhere.”

  - quote from a middle school teacher

• [Anonymous]

  Not to put too fine a point on it, but NCLB is but the last in a long line of federal debacles in the name of improving education. Remind me again why we even have a Department of Education? There would plenty of money to improve schools if they weren’t wasting so much of it.

• [Xenu]

  I’m going to have to agree with AJ here. It’s No CHILD Left Behind, not No TEACHER Left Behind.

• [Anonymous]

  The idea that a well-trained, poorly compensated teacher in an overcrowded classroom can somehow take 30+ children, all at different levels of development, all with different community and family support systems, and somehow magically turn them all into some idealized “standard” student belies a lack of understanding of both human learning theory and child development. Coupled with the chronic underfunding of California public schools (thanks to prop 13), and the demonizing of unions in general and teacher unions in particular, and you have a near perfect recipe for failure of public education, and by extension, democracy and society. NCLB was a misguided joke, and the Race to the Top is perhaps just as bad. Education is too important to be a competitive race, with winners and losers.

• [Talia]

  Every teacher I know has made similar complaints about NCLB. Its not just the NEA. Its an extraordinarily detrimental program.

  Just because they’re part of an organization you want to pick a bone with doesn’t mean they’re not correct.

• [Anonymous]

  Sometimes I feel that no child left behind should have been called no teacher left standing but that would be more satire than the truth. I teach high school biology to sophomores. I mean I teach students about biology, I give them a laboratory experience and I teach them how to write papers and manage numerical data. Some students are better than others but no one is left behind. There is not one student that comes into my classroom that I don’t try to reach. My curriculum is derived from standards adopted by the state, it is not so broad that it cannot be covered but not so narrow that it is not challenging. I relate what I teach to what what my students can understand. I decorate my room with biology terms and whenever I talk about a concept and have to use a term it is there on the wall for them to see. Every five days I test the students, those who get an A go to the library to study more advanced topics, those who remain in the classroom spend two more days manipulating knowledge through different learning strategies and then retake the test. I give a few A’s more B’s and some C’s; a few D’s and every now and then an F. I wish I could say it was like this in every classroom but it is not. When I look at my students in the classroom and compare them to some of the faces I see in the tea party, the halls of congress and on some state boards I feel bad that education could not have helped them more.

• [JonStewartMill]

  The most pernicious result of NCLB is that teachers spend huge amounts of class time “teaching to the test” — time that could be better spent teaching the students how to think.

  I don’t know what the answer is, but the idea that repeatedly submitting children to standardized tests will help them learn is about as boneheaded as thinking that you can cure someone of a fever if you keep taking their temperature.

  • [Anonymous]

    The problem of ‘teaching to the test’ is a red-herring. IF the subject matter was taught, the test would measure results. If you aren’t teaching the subject matter, then you cram for the test. That never works and it isn’t the fault of the test.

    Virtually every working adult is held accountable to a metric for his career. While no one likes accountability, it is the responsibility of the one writing the checks to verify competence and get the most value for the dollar.

    Maybe we should reevaluate the notion of public education if we don’t like answering to the public.

• [mofembot]

  The head of our U.S. accreditation board referred to NCLB as “no child left untested.” This underfunded boondoggle (that directly benefited Neal Bush, whose company created and foisted off pathetic “reading enhancement” materials onto districts across the U.S)… was the death knell for fine arts education, regular physical education classes, and other elective courses that made learning (or at least having to go to school) a little bit fun when I was in school.

• [getjustin]

  NCLB is just a numbers game. It’s not about kids, it’s not about success, it’s about the principal doing all they can to massage the numbers. I spent two years teaching in one of the worst districts (performance-wise) in Texas. Here are first-hand examples:

  Students who couldn’t read well (dues to being recent immigrants or because they’d been “passed-on” were often labeled as “dyslexic” so they could have the test read to them (wink wink.) If you could, you’d label them Special Ed so their numbers didn’t count for you.

  School days went from about 8-4. If you were behind, you stayed until 6 four days a week for “tutorial.” This meant an endless stream of worksheets.

  As the test loomed near, anyone who wasn’t teaching a subject on the test would have their curriculum cut so they could “drill and kill” with more worksheets.

  Kids who were behavior problems or who teachers knew wouldn’t pass were sometimes kindly asked not to come to school on test day (and their score wouldn’t count.) Or if they did come in, answers might be changed (for the better) when the student left for lunch.

  In the stress of it all, many students would get physically ill.

  This is all on top of an endless array of “strategies” students learn solely to beat the questions the way they were worded on the test. However, these often didn’t work in real life situations without the familiar language of the exam.

  The sad part is, I have no idea what the solution is. We need accountability, but we can’t afford it if testing (and purely quantitative data) is the cost. We need better teachers, but anyone worthy of being a great teacher probably has job offers for twice the pay. And don’t get me started on teacher’s unions. We just need to stop laying blame on each other and work our asses off to fix this broken system.

  There’s an adage that gets beat around education and sociology classrooms that sums up our situation:

  Either build schools today, or build prisons tomorrow.

• [Bill Albertson]

  Having a kid in public school, and a close friend with multiple kids in public school, and a mother-in-law who is a public school teacher, and friends who are public school teachers; with all of what I have seen, all I can say is that No Child Left Behind sucks!

  Here is how it sucks- every year, schools are rated by standardized testing. When they are rated, if they fall too low in an area, the school can be closed, staff fired, etc. If they don’t have issues, but also don’t show improvement, they can be closed, staff fired, etc. This sounds great on paper, but in practice it is nothing like ‘a job review’ or ‘a peer review’. It is just a dosey-do of people being pushed to teach to an insufficient test and set appropriate distributed grading curves to meet some useless regulatory requirement. Those who are good at gaming the system do well. Those who try to actually teach integrated skills where you can apply what you learn get punished.

  Let’s delve into some mistaken assumptions here. First, nobody can make “consistent improvement” forever. There is a point at which that would be impossible. It would be impossible once every student made a 4.0. Unfortunately, most people fail to realize that the curve levels out at a 2.0- that is why it is considered an average. Schools that fail to show improvement can be closed. Tell me how that would not be frustrating for teachers. Even more, it is frustrating for students and parents because many “good” students are graded DOWN so they don’t blow the grade curve for the school. One of my friend’s kids just received his first of 3 A’s- not because he did something new (his work quality has been consistent over the last 3 years), but because his A’s offset other students’ grades. Otherwise, he is a straight B student NO MATTER HOW HARD HE TRIES.

  Second, while No Child is supposed to equalize the playing field between rich and poor schools, it actually allows district bureaucrats to play even MORE games by using NCLB to randomly shift administrators between schools, and other tricks to get the “right” (read well off) schools emergency funding, while targeting other “troublesome” (read ghetto) schools for closure.

  Really think about the failure of logic here- you CAN’T show improvement in grades and tests EVERY year. Some schools simply DIDN’T have the resources to properly educate before this act, and after No Child, they are now being hammered and driven further down.

  If you think schools take up too much money, drive around to the schools in your district, and then to your district headquarters and their designated flagship schools. Look at the quality of the facilities, staffing resources allocated, and if you are lucky enough to find it, stats on per school allocation that aren’t doctored. All No Child has done is to allow corrupt school district bureaucracies game the system more than in the past, and screw over teachers and kids in the process.

  • [cymk]

    I agree, shifting around school administration does not fix the core problem of schools being underfunded.

    I went to public schools and I would never say any of them were over funded, granted they got by and I wasn’t subjected to some of the problems other school districts in my state had; (not enough books, school closings, etc…). One thing I did experience was poor teacher quality (my father worked in the administration building and knew who the shitty teachers were) teachers whom have reached tenure and have “lost” the flame that made them (hopefully good) teachers to begin with, but because of tenure you couldn’t get rid of them.

    I’d say with the right teachers and the right teaching environment you could get this mythical “consistent improvement” that NCLB touts, but lets be honest with ourselves how many schools have this mythical combination for more than a semester (if that)?

    Teaching kids to parrot information down on tests is not actually teaching them the information they need to know.

• [Anonymous]

  So the problem is not enough good teachers? Gee, maybe that’s because not enough talented people are drawn to a profession that is being scapegoated, starved of resources and micromanaged by bean-counters? Isn’t it interesting how the public schools managed to develop the scientists and engineers that helped win America the race to the moon, but now no amount of money can improve their performance? I guess good teachers stopped being born, or maybe it’s all the fluoride? It couldn’t be the legions of latch-key kids living with one or no working parents bringing these scores down, oh no . . .

• [Boba Fett Diop]

  No Child Left Behind is not a solution for the current problems of American schools. A real solution would be based on class sizes of fewer than 20 children per teacher; appropriate and abundant teaching materials; coherent, uniform curricula; and the funding to support these efforts.

• [pecoto]

  A few things other posters did not mention. There are huge numbers of students being “tranferred” (expelled and sent to other schools) in the weeks before the test. It is quite simply one school dumping it’s disruptive students on another school to bump up their numbers.

  After several months of these standardized tests and reviews for the tests, a lot of the kids just quit trying and shut down, because they are bored, and just tired of taking meaningless bubble tests.

  No Child Left Behind has also given school districts an excuse to create multiple large salary (often in excess of 100k a year)positions like “educational consultant” which are given to cronies and relatives of the top administrators. Meanwhile, effective veteran teachers are being laid off in the name of “budget cuts”, class sizes grow to ridiculous extremes and any chance these kids have of getting a decent education just spiral into nothingness….

• [Anonymous]

  The biggest problem with or without NCLB is discipline. Schools have little or no effective means to deal with chronic behavior problems. We have principals in schools that spend significant amounts of their long workdays doing nothing but discipline. Principals should be educational leaders that encourage, inspire, and coach the good teachers and get rid of the bad teachers that refuse to be helped in improve. Principals should not be there to simply police the disruptive 5-10%. Free up principals to do their most important job and schools will improve and kids will learn despite all the nonsense from Washington. I taught for 22 years and quit because I could not stand nonsense anymore. I taught with a crew of great, caring teachers and worked for two great principals, but everyone was extremely hampered by the bureaucracy and the constant testing. rdhill

• [Anonymous]

  Exams are supposed to test the student not the teacher!! If you perform poorly at work you get fired, your boss does not get fired. In education the teachers cannot fire underperforming students! But the system blames the underpaid teacher, school etc. without investigating student intent. This is the basic flaw of the No Child Left Behind system.

  Parents want to pay $3000 in taxes per year to the government and expect a private school education in return. That is another problem!