0:00
[BLANK AUDIO].
>> The Title One, reauthorization of 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act.
A George W.
Bush initiative that enjoyed enthusiastic bipartisan support in the congress
promised to transform public schooling through an array of benchmarks that
the states would have to meet in order to receive Title One funds.
The new reauthorization aimed to build on and
strengthen the of the Improving American Schools Act of 1994.
The law proclaimed what has proved to be a utopian goal.
Namely, that all elementary and secondary students in school
districts receiving Title One funds would perform at the level of proficiency or
above on state tests of reading and math by 2014.
The year that would mark the closing of the achievement gap.
[SOUND] Recall that George Bush,
the elder had declared back in 1989 that US students would
rank number one in the world in math and science by the year 2000.
To understate the point extravagantly, that aim was not achieved.
Yet, here was George Bush, the younger and the Congress predicting 100% success for
the No Child Left Behind Act across the width and breadth of the land.
All with only, within only 12 years.
>> Where are the legislated instruments that are to work this miracle?
As this is an enormously complex law of more than 1,000 pages,
we will hit only the highlights.
Known by its acronym NCLB, the law requires school districts to
administer annual state tests of reading and
writing in grades three through eight and in grade eleven.
These tests are to be aligned with state standards.
School districts and schools are held accountable for
meeting adequate yearly performance targets.
The aim for each school is to make AYP.
Not just for the school as a whole, but also for
groups of students disaggregated by race, ethnicity, gender, disability,
limited English proficiency and economic disadvantage.
With some exceptions in special provisions,
the failure of any of these subgroups to make AYP in a given year
marks the entire school as failed for that year.
The act requires every teacher of a core academic subject to be highly qualified,
that is to say, teachers of English, reading, language arts.
Mathematics, science, history, foreign languages and so forth.
Highly qualified means holding a Bachelor's Degree and
a state teaching certificate or in lieu of a certificate,
a passing score on a state teaching examination.
It also means demonstrated competency in the core subject to be
taught with each state to decide what competency means.
>> What happens to schools that fail to make AYP?
Unlike the previous iteration of Title One, NCLB specifies sanctions
that apply when a school fails to make AYP for two or more consecutive years.
After two or more years, parents have the option to
transfer their child to a school that has a stronger performance record.
The transportation provided by the school district.
After four consecutive years, the school district is required to take
corrective action with one of the following options.
Revising the curriculum, extending the school day,
reorganizing the school or removing teachers.
After five years, the school is officially in the AYP doghouse and out of options.
It has to be restructured.
Among the district's options for restructuring or
reopening the school as a charter school, replacing its present staff or
turning it over to a private company.
An Education Management Organization, an EMO.
It is important to reiterate that NCLB opens the door to
the restructuring of failed public schools as charter schools.
The principle of school choice is embedded in the legislation.
An assumption is that strong, publicly funded, privately managed charter
schools will fill the breach when awful schools are closed in the wake of NCLB.
That's a very iffy assumption.
We'll take up charter schools in our next episode.
In addition, as the US struggled with its worst economic challenge since
the Great Depression in 2009,
the Federal Government launched the Race to the Top grant competition.
Dangling a total of $4.35 billion as a lure for
states willing to accelerate their systemic reform strategy.
In order to be eligible for a grant, Cash-Strapped States had to open up to
more charter schools, sign on to voluntary national standards.
Join one of two state consortia that would develop new
assessments based on those standards.
Reform educator evaluation systems and implement statewide data systems.
Though, neither the core standards nor assessments were completed,
states rushed to comply.
So, as to get some of the federal stimulus money for their struggling localities.
We turn now to other flaws in No Child Left Behind, which extend beyond its
possible goal of all American school children achieving proficiency or
better by 2014 and the related mad dash to conform to Race to the Top criteria.
>> David Cohen and Susan Moffitt, in their seminal 2010 book, The Ordeal of Equality.
Tracked the morphing of Title One from its first enactment in the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act of 1965 across 35 years of reauthorizations
to its present form as No Child Left Behind.
They find fatal weaknesses in NCLB.
For starters, the law is crippled by the US Constitution and Custom.
In our federal system as it stands, presidents and policy makers have to defer
to the states to develop standards and establish bars of proficiency.
The upshot has been that many states lower the bar to ensure that an optimal
number of students achieve proficiency and that's not the only problem.
NCLB encourages states, school districts and
schools to judge a school's quality solely on the base of it's test scores.
The state tests, which measure reading and
math are of the fill in the bubble machine gradeable variety.
They don't require students to do anything that would demonstrate critical or
imaginative thinking.
Presumably, one of the aims of the current school reform frenzy.
And they float free of any curriculum or
particular content a student may have learned, so much for alignment.
You don't see anything about curriculum in NCLB.
NCLB requires school districts to publish the annual test scores of every school in
their jurisdiction.
Rewards abound for superintendents and
principals whose schools produce high scores.
Public embarrassment awaits those whose schools enter corrective action.
Test scores achieve God-like or devil-like stature in large city school districts.
>> All of this makes for a manic, high-stakes,
hypercompetitive environment, that encourages not only teaching to the test.
But also widespread cheating, as evidenced recently in Atlanta and Philadelphia.
In those cities, teachers and principals stand under federal indictments for
erasing and correcting wrong answers on tests.
One former superintendent who has been indicted for fraud was named national
superintendent of the year on the basis of her district's high test scores.
Focusing on tests of reading and math leads school officials to
narrow the curriculum and marginalize non-tested subjects.
So much for the sciences, history, geography and so forth.
Especially in low income, urban schools,
where achievement levels have been historically low.
Teachers devote excessive amounts of ti, school time to test preparation.
And they tend to focus their attention on students who are close to proficiency not
on students further behind, less kindly put those deemed not worth the effort.
>> A final problem noted by Cohen and Moffitt is the huge disconnect between
NCLB's aim of total proficiency by 2014 and
teachers' capacity to achieve that aim.
Each year 1000 of schools fail to make AYP, which only puts them further behind
in the march toward 2014, which obviously has already passed.
[LAUGH] In 2011, Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan gloomily
predicted that 82% of schools would fail to make AYP that year.
The Center for Education Policy issued a corrective,
the annual percentage for the year was only 48%.
Chalk up apparent victory for NCLB.
NCLB was strangled in the crib by the serpent of 100% proficiency.
Cohen and Moffitt write of a demoralized teaching force.
They write of policy contagion on which a badly flawed policy has
poisoned educational practice.
Teachers on average,
earning less than equally prepared professionals in other fields.
Now saw a policy hammering them as key culprits in educational challenges.
Attacking their union protections and basing their professional
destinies on flawed statistical analyses of standardized test scores.
Even Michael Petrilli of the conservative Thomas Fordham Foundation.
Once a champion of NCLB, says, quote, I've gradually and
reluctantly come to the conclusion that NCLB as enacted is
fundamentally flawed and probably beyond repair.
[MUSIC]
Dr. John L. PuckettProfessor of Education
Dr. Michael Charles JohanekSenior Fellow
