Posted on 03/20/2007 3:56:46 AM PDT by theothercheek
Now that Congress is debating whether – and in what form – to renew No Child Left Behind (NCLB), some legislators on both sides of the aisle are openly wondering whether it’s time to face the reality that some children will never catch up, no matter what.
When Congress passed NCLB in 2002, the breakthrough federal education program aimed to have every public school student – whether middle class or poor, white or minority, native born or illegal alien - performing at grade level in reading and math by 2014. Robert L. Linn, co-director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA, recently told The Washington Post, "There is a zero percent chance that we will ever reach a 100 percent target."
A group of 57 Republican lawmakers have endorsed a bill that would essentially gut NCLB. The WaPo reports:
Under the House version, states could opt out of the law's mandates through a referendum or through a decision made by a combination of state officials. The Senate version would allow states to opt out of some requirements through negotiations with the federal government. Both versions would allow states to use nearly all their federal education funding, except money designated for special education, for any educational purpose.
One can make a credible case that it is senseless for NCLB to apply to special needs students or to non-English speaking illegal aliens (AKA"migrant children"), so the law was doomed to failure from the start. But The New York Times considers an additional factor that makes the educational goals of NCLB out of reach for millions of students, not just these hard cases: an acute lack of qualified teachers, particularly in the middle school grades.
Middle schools do not attract – and cannot retain – qualified, talented teachers, according to The New York Times:
[E]ducators in New York and across the nation are struggling to rethink middle school, particularly in cities, where the challenges of adolescent volatility, spiking violence and lagging academic performance are more acute.
As they do so, they are running up against a key problem: a teaching corps marked by high turnover, and often lacking expertise in both subject matter and the topography of the adolescent mind. …
"More people end up in middle schools because that’s where the openings are," said Carmen Fariña, a former deputy chancellor of the New York City school system who is now helping 35 middle school principals reshape their schools. "It’s not necessarily a choice." …
[I]n the Bronx, [Jason] Levy, the principal of I.S. 339, has worked hard to cobble together a staff capable of helping him revive a school mired in years of failure.
"Just go to a job fair," he said. "The lines for elementary school and high school are around the corner. We can’t get people to teach in middle schools."
One of his solutions has been to rely heavily on Teach for America. Twenty-one of his teachers, nearly a third, are part of the program, which recruits recent college graduates. While such teachers are often well-educated and energetic, many leave after their two-year commitments.
Why are these teaching jobs going begging? Because compared to middle school, teaching high school is a cakewalk – those students most in need of a dedicated, talented, innovative educator to inspire them to learn have dropped out already, the paper explains:
"Problematic kids in high school don’t come to school anymore, but in middle school they still show up," said Barry M. Fein, the principal of Seth Low. "I think that piece alone makes it more challenging."
The challenges surface in test scores. … The most recent results of math and reading tests given to students in all 50 states showed that between 1999 and 2004, elementary school students made solid gains in reading and math, while middle school students made smaller gains in math and stagnated in reading.
So there you have it: Tenured, unionized teachers who can’t – and don’t want to – make sure no child is left behind (second item, The Daily Blade, February 23, 2007). Whodathunkit?
NOTE: In case I did not put all the links in correctly, this is the second item in a feature called The Daily Blade and follows an article titled, "Nagin Has A Chocolate Chip On His Shoulder."
lowest common denominator approach. typical of the left. it's why nobody really succeeds.
Half the population is below average. But don't tell the liberals. It will disturb their worldview.
-Woody Allen
I see a push for higher teacher salaries is coming. That would help solve the lack of qualified teachers.
I do not like NCLB. It sounds good. It's a noble goal. But, from what I've seen, it ends up diverting a huge amount of resources to students with special needs who just aren't going to be at grade level. That's nobody's fault. But I wish we could see the situation fo what it is.
I know a woman who works at a local school. There is a first grader there with epilepsy and mental retardation. The girl cannot recognize the letters that make up her own name. She has seizures and empties her bladder in the classroom about once a week. Two full-time professionals are attachd to her to help her meet qualifications to enter second grade (ain't gonna happen).
Cost of two full-time professionals? Maybe $70,000. Impact of emptying a classroom during a seizure (and loading all the kids into a neighboring teacher's classroom? Substantial. And what's the benefit? No benefit at all.
I'd like to se NCLB cancelled.
There is one other aspect of this that many people miss.
It is impossible to have every student at 100%. Why?
Any test, regardless of the type, must have a percentage of failures to be a valid test, otherwise, it has to be redone. Don't believe me? Why do you think people are paid big bucks to make SAT, GRE, LSAT, etc tests? Besides, if you didn't have a percentage of failures, what would happen with the MCAT, for instance?
So, as the number of people passing a test increases, so must the difficulty of the test to keep it valid. By the axiom of 100% passing, you will test yourself out of reach by proxy of testing.
I say this as a teacher, who has to test regularly and has tests checked by administrators.
Something to chew on for sure.
OOOh - you know the difference between "median" and "average." Bet you didn't learn that in school.
ping
Saintly? No tenured and unionized - the double whammy. Do you know that in NYC and other big cities teachers can make up to $100K or more? In most cities, teachers make more than any other public employee - and more than moany private employees. Thanks to the unions and Dem politicos who equate pay-for-performance with "cutting funds for education."
The feds need to get their butts out of education. The Dept of Ed is unconstitutional and has no place in America. While it is commendable that some people want all children to be at grade level this is simply not possible and it is not the feds business anyway. Disband the dept of ed, stop sending federal money to schools. De-unionize schools and let each state handle their own school problems without the feds help. Once the feds and unions are out of the picture maybe parents will get more involved in schools teach or, better yet, start home schooling.
The Republican Pary.
L
Ping
I understand your frustration with the situation - special needs kids will not read at grade level, though eventually many of those who have been mainstreamed will read and write well enough to hold jobs like clerks, cashiers and stockroom personnel instead of "busy work" at some government sponsored program. Before mainstreaming, these kids were shoved into a corner of the school where no one checked on their progress and teachers were not expected to "do" anything with them. They were written off. There has to be a middle ground between NCLB and neglect for these kids - they're human beings (and could have been aborted, but for the grace of G-d). My ire is reserved for the millions of dollars taxpayers have to spend building new schools and hiring new teachers to relive overcrowding caused by non- English speaking children of illegal aliens ("migrant children" Bush calls them in the text of the law).
If a kid is reading at a first grade level they should be in first grade reading. Bet you would see a huge jump in middle school performance as kids wouldn't want to be left behind.
Kids can be vicious, put it to good use.
So keep making the tests harder and keep teaching kids to pass. Right now, high IQ kids are languising in class. Schools service them by piling on extra homework. That's not rewarding a child for being smart, that's punishing him. Keep challenging the kids - work harder with the failures - so that the smart kids don't get bored and stop working up to their potential.
I heard the average IQ is at 100 now.
And those who can't teach gym become administrators.
That's how they used to do it until teachers and psychologists came up with the cockamamie idea that it harms "self exteem." Our students now think they're all geniuses even though many of them can't write a grammatical sentence.
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