Posted on 04/18/2006 7:03:19 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - Congressional leaders and a former Bush Cabinet member said Tuesday that schools should stop excluding large numbers of minority students' test scores when they report progress under the No Child Left Behind law.
The Associated Press reported Monday that schools have gotten federal permission to deliberately not count the test scores of nearly 2 million students when they report academic progress by race as required by the law. The scores excluded were overwhelmingly from minorities, the AP found.
Some leaders said Congress may need to intervene. The Education Department and others owe the public an explanation, said the Republican House Education Committee chairman's office.
"All stakeholders involved in the discussion should be willing to step forward and explain to parents and taxpayers why they have asked for special accommodations," said Steve Forde, spokesman for committee chairman Howard McKeon, R-Calif.
The reaction came as President Bush, visiting a school in Rockville, Md., said his signature education law is helping to identify struggling children early on. He singled out the importance of closing a test-score gap between white and minority children but did not mention excluded scores.
Lawmakers who helped pass the law in 2001 said the system that allows states to get exemptions to exclude large numbers of test scores from the required racial categories needs to be addressed.
"If states are simply gaming the system and harming students' chances for a better education, they must not be allowed to continue to do that — period," said Rep. George Miller (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., a sponsor of the law.
Miller, the top Democrat on the House Education Committee, said he would ask Education Secretary Margaret Spellings how she plans to correct the problems.
Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., another backer of the law, said test scores should only be excluded if the reliability of the data was in question. He said the Bush administration should be making sure of that — or Congress might step in.
Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming, the Republican Senate Education Committee chairman, said the way student data are used would be closely examined when the law is reauthorized next year.
Former Bush Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, who now serves on a private commission studying the law, issued a joint statement with his co-leader of the commission calling the AP's findings alarming.
"If the goal of the No Child Left Behind Act is to ensure that all children meet state standards, then allowing large numbers of the most disadvantaged children to fall between the cracks is unacceptable," Thompson said with commission co-chairman Roy Barnes.
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Education Department: http://www.ed.gov
Worst solution to education problems ever.
Only encourages teaching to the test, fudging the numbers on purpose and / or cheating during the exam.
What's wrong with "teaching to the test" if the test properly represents the subject matter?
If the test properly represents the subject matter and the class has a good teacher, there is no need to "teach to the test", the kids will just learn the subject. If the test properly represents the subject matter and the class has a bad teacher, the teacher will need to "teach to the test" but that will be a good thing because it will give the kids their best shot at actually learning the subject.
The real issue is whether a test can be designed that properly represents the subject matter. For core academic subjects up to 12th grade, this is certainly the case, as the New York State Board of Regents proved over more than a century (although in the last decade or so the Regents Exams have been dumbed down, before then it was impossible to get a "Regents Diploma" without being adequately prepared for college).
No Child's Behind is Left Alone by young women teachers. This needs it's own hearing.
Fraud in the Government? Fraud in Education? Tell me it ain't so. I just can't believe it!
Only encourages teaching to the test, fudging the numbers on purpose and / or cheating during the exam.
Personally I like teaching to the test when the questions are simple mathematics questions and basic reading comprehension. Noone is forcing schools to teach only these subjects or to teach these subjects at a minimum proficiency. Schools choose that on their own.
Our society does not give credentials to engineers, drivers, or even nuclear reactor operators unless they have at least a basic set of knowledge (i.e. EIT, driver's test, etc.). And it is fairly obvious that we can't trust the schools to make an objective standard. Personally, I would favor an approach like Germany's where you must take a final comprehensive HS test. The NCLB tests certainly don't do that, but at least they help quantify the failure of our schools.
Oh, and by the way, the SAT, CCIE, EIT, DOE CORE Test, MCSD, etc. all only encourage teaching to the test, fudging the numbers on purpose and / or cheating during the exam. Yet the free market finds them helpful. Why would that be?
How do you teach to the test in Math? Can you enlighten me please?
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