No Child Left Behind stomps on the most important IDEA in special education: individualization. Without individualization, too many students will be ghosts. Also see commentaries.
"Dear Mr. President,
What do you do when you see all the homeless on the street? . . .
How can you say no child is left behind?
We're not dumb and we're not blind."
—Pink, YouTube
Ax No Child Left Behind, Charley Reese, 11/26/2007
One of the things the next president should do is ax the No Child Left Behind law. It is based on a false premise.
Essentially it mandates that by a certain time, students should perform the same in academic skills. That is as stupid and unscientific as decreeing that every child must run the 100-yard dash in the same time.
Read more of this common sense article about human differences. Here's my favorite line ...
It's odd that a society that purports to claim tolerance and diversity as its highest values is also desperate to deny that differences exist. We are not the same, and we are not equal in a physiological sense. We never have been, and we never will be.
NCLB: Truths and Consequences
Feds say OR tests for special ed pupils don't measure up, Julia Silverman, AP (7/24/07)
"Our understanding is that (federal reviewers') concern is that 10th graders are not getting complex enough material," Alpert said. "But what is not covered may not be essential content for this population."
Parents and teachers of severely disabled students often have mixed feelings about standardized testing, saying they want children to be challenged to do their best, but want also to be realistic about their limitations.
"You hear over and over from teachers that an assessment tied to grade level standards for students who severe disabilities doesn't make a lot of sense," Jonas said.
NCLB: 'Too Destructive to Salvage'
Alfie Kohn says, It's time to say in a national newspaper what millions of teachers, students and parents already know: No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is an appalling and unredeemable experiment that has done incalculable damage to our schools — particularly those serving poor, minority and limited-English-proficiency students. ... This law cannot be fixed by sanding its rough edges. It must be replaced with a policy that honors local autonomy, employs better assessments, addresses the root causes of inequity and supports a rich curriculum. The question isn't how to save NCLB; it's how to save our schools — and kids — from NCLB. (6/07)
No wonder more and more teachers are lamenting, "I love to teach but I hate my job!" The NCLB's wrong-headed regulations were immediately obvious to teachers and are so very harmful to our most vulnerable students. If unaddressed, this purportedly well-intentioned legislation will result in the dismantling of public education - beginning with urban schools. We want accountability, but the kind that makes sense to the collective wisdom of teachers. And NCLB obviously ain't it. Adam Urbanski, Director, Teacher Union Reform Network (4/23/07)
Read more about what people are saying about NCLB ...
Survey Reveals that Only 1% of Teachers Find No Child Left Behind an Effective Way to Assess the Quality of Schools and 69% Report It’s Pushing Teachers Out of the Profession
Over 5600 public school teachers from all 50 states recently responded to a Teachers Network online survey regarding the effectiveness of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and its impact on the teaching and schools. (4/24/07)
No Child Left Behind and Students wtih Learning Disabilities: Opportunities and Obstacles
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), the Bush Administration's bold federal school reform law, includes benefits to students with learning disabilities (LD), as well as some barriers that might prevent these same students from enjoying all of the opportunities in the law. In this article, parent advocate and special education expert Candace Cortiella addresses questions about NCLB of interest to parents of kids with LD, and provides a checklist of NCLB-related actions parents can take on behalf of their children. (3/20/07)
In my opinion, this article summarizes idealistic, not realistic goals. Not allowing an IEP Team to exempt a student from standardized testing based on individualized testing information undermines the primary purpose of IDEA: individualizing an appropriate education plan for a student.
If football were like the NCLB ...
As heard on the Morning Update ... KPQ radio, Wenatchee, WA
1. All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, it will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable.
If after two years they have not won the championship their footballs and equipment will be taken away UNTIL they do win the championship.
2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents.
ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!
3. Talented players will be asked to work out on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using their instructional time with the athletes who aren't interested in football, have limited athletic ability, or whose parents don't like football.
4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the fourth, eighth, and eleventh games.
I will create a New Age of Sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimum goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child gets left behind.
If parents do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private schools that can screen out the non-athletes and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad football players.
— Staff, KPQ Radio, 2007-01-22, Posted on Susan Ohanian's Website
Fairfax vs. 'No Child' Standoff Heats Up, Maria Glod, Washington Post Staff Writer
Fairfax County VA is one of the fastest growing counties in the country. It also has a huge tax base and power. I'm glad to see that Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) are standing up for ELL learners by refusing "to give immigrant students tests that they think most would fail." Will it also fight the good fight for its students with special needs? FCPS Superintendent Dale says, "It's time for us to describe what are the quality parts about the law and what needs to be altered to make sense." Perhaps if administrators look more closely, they will realize that NCLB needs to go away, not hang-on to haunt the minority subgroups it harms more than helps.
One Reason (Among Many) That No Child Left Behind Cannot Work by Gerald Bracey
Back in the 1960's, people used to talk about the "veil of mystification" that governments would use to keep people from realizing the absurdity of some government policy. The phrase often comes to mind when I think about the No Child Left Behind law, especially the provision that requires 100 percent of all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014. Ain't gonna happen. (01/11/07)
Rating 'No Child Left Behind' a Failure: A superintendent of schools in NY claims that "The No Child Left Behind law is a fraud" and that it needs to be abolished because it is "a definite political, social, and economic con." He states that NCLB hides two of America's dirty little secrets: poverty and punishment for failing to meet standards that some subgroups will have difficulty making such as special education. Note from Kay: The latter might be called racism or prejudice against those who are not abled middle class whites. (12/22/06)
Many Childen Left Behind: How the No Child Left Behind Act is Damaging Our Children and Our Schools, by George Wood and Deborah Meier, Eds.
Many Children Left Behind is a devastating brief against NCLB. Far from improving public schools and increasing the ability of the system to serve poor and minority children, the authors argue, the law is doing exactly the opposite. Here some of our most prominent, respected voices in education-including Deborah Meier, Alfie Kohn, and Theodore R. Sizer-come together to show us how, point by point, NCLB undermines the things it claims to improve.
Things Fall Apart: No Child Left Behind Self-Destructs by Gerald Bracey
" ... as the law enters its fifth year, even its supporters can no longer ignore that the law is imploding. On November 30, Frederick Hess, Education Director for the American Enterprise Institute and Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation convened a conference, "Fixing Failing Schools: Are the Tools in the NCLB Toolkit Working?" ... "No."
Jonathan Kozol on NCLB ...
Some of Kozol’s harshest criticisms were directed at test-driven teaching programs, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, the 2001 law which mandates a set of tests that must be passed by students to qualify them to move on to the next grade — and for their schools to receive federal funding.
“The main problem is that the tests that it mandates ... are useless to our teachers,” he said.
Kozol noted that when President Bush was promoting NCLB, he argued that the tests would give teachers an idea of where students needed help.
The problem with this, Kozol said, is that the tests are generally administered between January and March, but the results are not known until June — when school is over for the year.
Furthermore, he noted, the tests “are not diagnostic. They don’t tell you anything about a child’s needs.” Instead, they simply give a pass/fail score.
However, Kozol said he sees a more insidious agenda at work in the legislation. “I think it was intended as a shaming ritual,” he said. The federal program was passed “to punish the public schools as an institution and pave the way for private vouchers.”
Furthermore, by holding children back a grade on the basis of a single test score, the law is making it more likely that they will eventually drop out of school altogether, he added.
“Every time a child is held back one year, it decreases by 50 percent the chance they will graduate,”
Another problem with the program is that while it mandates goals that must be met, Congress has not provided adequate funding to meet those goals, he noted.
“I have a problem with a system that will hold a seven-year-old girl accountable for what she has learned, but it does not hold the president and Congress accountable for what they have denied to her.”
As a result of NCLB, Kozol said, “teachers now live in a permanent state of terror and anxiety” over test scores. (12/02/06) Read more ...
Researchers Ask Whether NCLB's Goals for Proficiency Are Realistic: The current AYP targets have “become increasingly unrealistic,” he said. “As we get closer to 2014, you’re going to have all schools failing to reach AYP targets.” ... The law will be unworkable “unless we jettison the demand that all children be proficient,” said Richard Rothstein, a research associate for the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank based in Washington. “We can not have a single standard … that simultaneously challenges students” at all levels of achievement. (11/25/06)
NCLB mandates unattainable goal: No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires all students in grades 3 through 8, in each racial, ethnic, and socio-economic group, and whether they have special needs or are native English speakers, to be proficient in math and reading by 2014. This is widely understood to be unattainable, but educators and policy makers are insufficiently aware of the causes of our looming failure. Many of the law's supporters believe that the goal of 'proficiency for all' can't be reached primarily because there is too little time between now and 2014 for schools to improve sufficiently, and that the problem can be fixed by making the deadline more distant to allow more time to improve. For this symposium, we have been asked to consider whether such a goal can be reached; if so, how long it might take if, in fact, 2014 is too soon; and if the goal is unattainable no matter how distant, how we might establish more reasonable school goals for narrowing the achievement gap and raising the achievement of all children.
We conclude that the problem is more fundamental than a mis-estimate of how long it might take for all students to achieve proficiency. There is no date by which all (or even nearly all) students in any subgroup, even middle-class white students, can achieve proficiency. Proficiency for all is an oxymoron, as the term 'proficiency' is commonly understood and properly used.
Read more of this report. (11/22/06)
Report from Indiana University: No Child Left Behind is out of step with special education:
IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT! This article summarizes the good and the bad arising from the conflict between NCLB and IDEA and makes suggestions for sensible solutions.
Facing the 'Wangenheim Dilemma' ... How NCLB and IDEA conflict. (10/25/06)
The Challenge: Keeping kids in school
The key: CHOICES.
School uniforms aside, Leon County Schools in Tallahassee FL offer several drop-out prevention alternatives to keep kids in school. Read more ...
Play is important work for children; it is not a waste of time. Read more ...
No Patient Left Behind: We must have high standards set at all hospitals. We all deserve to live, and death is not acceptable. Our country will only be seen as the best when our mortality rate is at 0%. Even the terminally ill is not exempt from this law. If the doctors work hard enough, they will be saved as well. Again, no excuses, only results. Anything else will only be seen as a failure. Much like the impossible goals of NCLB!
How the "Cons" Are Screwing Middle Class Children, Parents and Our Nation's Future by Destroying Public Education
The real problem with NCLB, however, is not that it is underfunded. The problem is the assumption that you can commodify education at all. You can't.
The No Child Left Behind Act, and other school-privatizing schemes, is really a blowback to a nineteenth-century "create kids for the factories" model of education. Teaching for the test is the worst thing you can do. Want to teach a child to hate learning? Drill them and you'll do that. ~ Thom Hartmann, 10/10/06
'Accountable' Schools or Student Automatons? Public education will need many years to repair the damage it has suffered under the recent onslaught of state and federal high stakes testing programs that are attempting to force all students to reach what amounts to a "homogenized" level of achievement at the same time. ...
In the not too distant past in public schools, we were tested periodically to see how much progress we had made in the subjects we were being taught by teachers like those today who are given a curriculum to follow. If we were having difficulty in achievement, we were given remedial opportunities. That was the accountability process and it focused on each of us as individuals.
Each of us had separate learning styles that determined our learning speeds. All of us were different, yet all of us managed to get where we were going sometime in our futures. ...
Eleanor Roosevelt said, "Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have the obligation to be one."
Rationing Education: This writer says that the problem with NCLB is a classic case of misaligned incentives and supports a growth model in which all students must show progress, not just passing or failing. This model leaves no child ignored by the triage efforts now in place in order to meet AYP goals. Read more ...
99.9 Percent Bunk: Why is NCLB far from perfect? Impossible goals.
Here is another example of how NCLB stomps on IDEA ... "In an effort to stamp out the use of modifications allowed under IDEA, the federal officials overseeing NCLB ordered the California Department of Education to designate students with disabilities who took their tests with modifications as not participating. This decision eliminated the participation of any child with a disability in California who took the achievement test with modifications. Suddenly, their participation did not count." If their tests are not going to count, why should they take them in the first place? Read more ...
According to their IEPs, many of our "failing" students should not have been required to have taken the test. Why are the provisions of P.L. 94-142 and IDEA being ignored? When will decency and common sense prevail? Read more ...
... There's evidence to suggest that giving every schoolchild a good breakfast will raise test scores more than ending social promotion, increasing accountability, or requiring more testing. It's a fact that iron deficiency anemia, twice as common in low-income children as in better-off children, affects cognitive ability. In experiments in which students got inexpensive vitamin and mineral supplements, reported Rothstein, "test scores rose from that treatment alone." So where are the demands in Congress for an Eat for Success campaign? Plenty of us would march for No Child Left Unfed. Then we could go for No Child Left Unhoused and No Child Left Without Health Care. CAPITALISM, CALCULUS, AND CONSCIENCE by Susan Ohanian, printed in Phi Delta Kappan
NCLB Update by Peter Greene, a teacher in PA: No Child Left Behind is still chugging along. To review, just in case you’ve forgotten the broad outlines, the program requires all the states to subject all students to standardized testing, which will be used to prove, theoretically, that every single student in America is above average by 2014.
It’s patterned after the Texas Miracle, where, under then-Governor Bush, school leaders showed exemplary skill in faking, lying, book-cooking and otherwise creating the appearance that students were getting much better at taking standardized tests. The superintendent who did the very best job of faking his numbers (Rod Paige) got to be President Bush’s Secretary of Education.
If you are an optimist, you may believe that this program is well-intentioned but poorly engineered and executed. If you are a cynic, you may believe that this is a clever plot to dismantle public education and redirect tax dollars toward funding rich kids’ private schools. If you believe it’s a great program that’s really going to work-- well, I’ve tried to find a way to finish this sentence that beats around the bush but, really, if you believe that, you’re a dope. Read more ... ~ 13 September 06
... education expert Davis Logsdon says that "No Child Left Behind," which requires that students pass standardized tests in order to advance to the next grade, may be flawed at its core: "If that law had been around when President Bush was in school, he would still be in seventh grade."
... The true problems are in the dark and around the corner, and they deal with poverty, a minimum wage that hasn't been raised in years, neighborhoods whose water contains dangerous levels of lead, poor nutrition and all the attendant social problems. And I have to say that a university education is not for everyone. We need skilled people who ply a trade and perfect a craft. Politicians put the university education on some sort of pedestal without thinking of the need people have to develop their own individual gifts for the commonwealth. ~ Interview with Don Perl, One Tough Stand for Better Schools
"Imagine a student with disabilities normally reading on a second grade level, being forced to take a test on a seventh grade level. They are most often distraught to the point of physical illness. " ~ Ashley Atkinson, Director of Accountability & Assessment, District 5 (SC)
UNBELIEVABLE!: "If the child needs to throw up in the middle of the test, pull the trash can by his/her side, let them do their thing, and encourage the child to finish the test." ~ Administrative memo, Greeley-Evans School Dist., CO, cited on Susan Ohanian's site
The question is: How successful can an education law be that makes teachers the enemy? ~ Michael Winerip
"[NCLB] is like another Iraq war, with inadequate funding, naïve notions about the ease of success, and no clue about the eventual casualties." ~ Marty Solomon, retired University of Kentucky Professor
"NCLB is not sinking under its own weight. It's going down because it's built on a false foundation." Read more of Jim Trelease's analysis of the failures of NCLB.
"The No Child Left Behind law was in trouble and facing rebellion from angry states and districts even before Katrina. What that massive natural disaster did was sharpen our focus. It has forced us to look at the inequities schools all over the country must deal with on a daily basis, with or without a hurricane. These are inequities that the law simply ignores. Katrina has reminded us that schools are made up of students who are unique and who have very human problems -- every last one of them." Read more of this informative, well-written article about why NCLB is just wrong, written by Elaine Garan.
To get a quick look at what's wrong with public schools and why they're in such a mess, check out Susan's Ohanian's cartoons.
