(full disclosure: CTA has hired me to do blog outreach on NCLB)

Well, CTA sure got George Miller’s attention yesterday with the blog ads.  He actually responded with a statement to Education Weekly:

The CTA claimed today that the legislation would judge teachers’ performance solely on the basis of their students’ achievement gains, even though the organization knows this isn’t true. Contrary to the CTA’s assertions, the legislation would consider achievement gains along with other measures, like principal and master teacher evaluations. The CTA also wrongly implies that I don’t support things like class size reduction, teacher professional development, and mentoring programs for teachers. I do support those things, which is why they are included in the bipartisan discussion draft of NCLB reauthorization legislation that we have circulated. From the very beginning, I sought the input of teacher organizations to craft the legislation.

Actually, Rep. Miller knows full well that the Miller/Pelosi proposal still bases achievement gains predominantly on test scores.  It counts for something like 85% of the scoring and indeed states could choose just to base it on test scores.  Perhaps he needs to read the press release over again.

Notice that he only responded on a limited number of topics and was quite defensive.  Just because he included teachers in the discussions, does not mean that he totally heard them.  Take the issue of data.  I know boring right, but stick with me below the fold.  It’s an important lesson about the failings of the first version and how this Miller/Pelosi proposal fails to fix them.

When NCLB was first passed it demanded assessments of student achievement, measured by tests scores.  The goal was laudatory, to close the achievement gap, however we don’t have the data to make honest assessments.  Those that have tried to come to conclusions have used various methods to try to take scores and use regression analysis or other efforts, but have always pointed out that any conclusions are limited by the lack of available data.

In California, which is not atypical, the biggest roadblock is that we don’t have a statewide student identifier – or a way to track a specific individual student as she/he progresses from grade to grade.  That’s the only real way to know if things are working.  Instead, researchers, bureaucrats and politicians are taking snapshots of group performance at any time, and comparing it to snapshots of a different group a year later.  There are obvious flaws in this from the research standpoint.  That issue has also complicated things like tracking graduation and dropout rates.

The other problem comes in when you try to compare states to each other.  Each state has its own standards and its own method of testing how students measure up to them.  Now states had to have their testing processes approved by the Dept. of Education to meet NCLB requirements, but the Dept. of Ed. accepted very few of them, especially at first.  California has one of the oldest and most widely-respected accountability systems that began back in 1999.  Since NCLB, the state has attempted to mold the exams to also use them for federal purposes.  But it’s difficult.  And CA’s system is a growth model – tracking progress over time, rather than setting benchmarks that schools either meet or don’t in any given year, as is the case with NCLB.

The draft legislation, tries to mandate the data system requirements for the states, including linking teacher data to student data, which is opposed by CTA.  And, again, there’s never any money for any of it.  Creating complex data systems, integrating them, converting data to them, etc. all takes money – especially in a state as large as ours with around 9,500 schools and nearly 1,100 districts feeding in data for 6.3 million kids.

That is what we mean by including new mandates and failing to ensure there is funding.  Having data and tracking students is a great thing, but you can’t mandate that it happens and then not provide the funding.  The California legislature will not provide the money to meet federal requirements, nor should they.  The feds need to provide the resources to meet their mandates.

The Miller/Pelosi proposal is unacceptable as currently written.  Many problems with NCLB have not been fixed, nor has funding for things like the data programs been provided.

Keep the pressure on Miller and Pelosi.  Take action.  Blog it up on your own sites.

(full disclosure, CTA has hired me to work on blog outreach about NCLB)

The main flaws of NCLB have been known for years.

1. The program is woefully underfunded to the tune of a whopping $56 billion
2. It relies too heavily on one measurement of student achievement,: standardized testing.

Luckily this bill comes up for re-authorization this year and we have a great chance to get it right.  Unfortunately, the current NCLB bill from Miller and Pelosi is more like something we would expect from the Bush Dogs.  It fails to fix the above, and in some respects goes backwards.  The California Teachers Association (CTA) is urging people contact their Members of Congress and ask them to Vote NO on NCLB, saying this proposal “does nothing to improve the law”.  A series of blog ads are now up (Calitics ad is coming) on a whole host of Californian and national blogs, calling out Pelosi and Miller on their insistence on punishing teachers and students.

Urban education expert and author Jonathan Kozol has been fasting for 67 days as a “personal act of protest at the vicious damage being done to inner-city children” by NCLB.  Kozol has a powerful piece up today on HuffPo:

The poisonous essence of this law lies in the mania of obsessive testing it has forced upon our nation’s schools and, in the case of underfunded, overcrowded inner-city schools, the miserable drill-and-kill curriculum of robotic “teaching to the test” it has imposed on teachers, the best of whom are fleeing from these schools because they know that this debased curriculum would never have been tolerated in the good suburban schools that they, themselves, attended.

The current proposal still relies on just test scores, instead of multiple measures of student and school success like attendance/graduation rates, a rigorous curriculum and the number of students taking honors and AP classes.  It adds a merit pay program (a truly bad idea, more on that later this week), creates four new levels of sanctions on schools and does not guarantee that there will be funding.  more on the flip…

Here is NEA on the current proposal:

We are also concerned that this Title imposes many additional mandates and requirements on schools and states (such as the longitudinal data system and student mobility audit) without any guarantee that additional funding will be provided to meet both new mandates and help states and schools overcome the cumulative $56 billion shortfall that occurred since 2002 between the NCLB authorized and actual funding levels.

More restrictions and no guarantee of funding.  Great….

Kozol again:

The justification for this law was the presumptuous and ignorant determination by the White House that our urban schools are, for the most part, staffed by mediocre drones who will suddenly become terrific teachers if we place a sword of terror just above their heads and threaten them with penalties if they do not pump their students’ scores by using proto-military methods of instruction — scripted texts and hand-held timers — that will rescue them from doing any thinking of their own. There are some mediocre teachers in our schools (there are mediocre lawyers, mediocre senators, and mediocre presidents as well), but hopelessly dull and unimaginative teachers do not suddenly turn into classroom wizards under a regimen that transforms their classrooms into test-prep factories.

The real effect of No Child Left Behind is to drive away the tens of thousands of exciting and high-spirited, superbly educated teachers whom our urban districts struggle to attract into these schools. There are more remarkable young teachers like this coming into inner-city education than at any time I’ve seen in more than 40 years. The challenge isn’t to recruit them; it’s to keep them. But 50 percent of the glowing young idealists I have been recruiting from the nation’s most respected colleges and universities are throwing up their hands and giving up their jobs within three years.

When I ask them why they’ve grown demoralized, they routinely tell me it’s the feeling of continual anxiety, the sense of being in a kind of “state of siege,” as well as the pressure to conform to teaching methods that drain every bit of joy out of the hours that their children spend with them in school.

My sister is getting close to getting her teaching credential.  How are we going to keep people like herself in the profession, when we are going backwards with this law?  California needs to hire 100,000 teachers in the next ten years.  The law would make it more difficult to hire and retain the teachers we need to improve California’s schools.

The Democrats were elected to Congress with a mandate for change.  NCLB was on their lists of things to fix.  Why do we have a Bush Dog bill instead of a real bill?  Are we saving gunpowder on this issue too?

We can’t let the past repeat itself. This law is too important for the future of our public schools.  Find out more on the NCLB page.  And take action.

(cross-posted from Working Californians)

The biggest failing of the current ESEA (aka No Child Left Behind), other than the woeful underfunding, is its reliance on only one measure of achievement, a single test.  The one-day snapshot from a standardized test is an unfair, inaccurate and misleading measure of student achievement.  It has caused an over-emphasis on teaching to the test at the expense of other programs like foreign languages, art, music and PE.  The current one-size-fits all approach is hurting all our kids and pushing struggling students behind.

California has recognized the limitations of that model, especially as it relates to the improvement of our ESL, minority and disabled students.  Too often these students are left behind, and schools unfairly punished for having high proportions of special needs students under NCLB.  New state rules require that our schools make progress towards closing the gap between whites and lower-achieving minority students. From the LAT:

“It’s going to be more challenging for schools to reach their growth target,” said state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell. But “closing the achievement gap is not only an economic imperative, but a moral imperative.”

The state’s primary measure of success is the Academic Performance Index, which grades schools on a scale from 200 to 1,000 based on student test scores in math, English and other subjects. Schools are required to meet annual improvement targets. Minorities, the poor, the disabled and other groups also have to improve, but until this year, the achievement gap could widen even while a school received credit for getting better.

The API is not perfect, but it is a lot better at measuring school performance than the feds’ single test system.  Looking at straight across-the-board improvement is not enough.  California is focused on improving the performance of all students and truly not leaving anybody behind.
The LAT also has a editorial today on the reauthorization of ESEA.  They state that NCLB has helped expose how poorly we are doing in educating our children, especially poor and minority students, but it has been setting unrealistic achievement standards.

Still, the law has not yet achieved its key goals: improvement in student scores and a narrowing of the achievement gap between white, middle-class children and their poor, minority counterparts. Flaws in the law have held back real educational progress and unfairly placed blame on public-school teachers for everything but the weather. The law has labeled many good schools as failures, which has led to a bipartisan uprising against legislation that once had true bipartisan support. While its basic tenets should remain intact, and even be strengthened, the law needs an overhaul to deserve reauthorization this year.

Reauthorization should not come without some meaningful changes.  We need to get away from blaming teachers for everything, over-emphasizing a single test and get back to recognizing the individual needs of our students and schools.

In states where proficiency actually means something, on the other hand, it doesn’t necessarily help the students who most need help. Teachers often work most with the children who are just below proficient, getting them above the bar so they’ll count as successes. Children at the bottom, who need the help even more, receive too little attention. Gifted students, meanwhile, are left out of the equation, prompting many schools to cut their programs for gifted children.

The law should be rewritten to require yearly improvement for each student – a realistic goal that teachers can meet whatever their students’ scores were at the beginning of the year. This would encourage more good teachers to work at the schools that need them most, and would relieve schools from being blamed for the low scores of a new student whose poor performance is no fault of theirs. To close the achievement gap between minority children and white, and between poor and middle class, more growth should be expected from the lowest-scoring groups.

Indeed, the law should be re-written to allow states to implement growth models that measure changes in student performance and give schools credit for making progress over time.  We should build-in common sense flexibility in assessing test scores from both students with disabilities and English Learners.  Under the current law, schools are frequently unfairly penalized, even though these students are working hard and making progress.

This year NCLB labeled 1 out of 5 California public schools as failing, bringing severe punishments.  We need a system that provides assistance and resources to help all students and schools succeed.  That means fully funding the program.  The President and Congress broke their promise to our schools, making NCLB a federally mandated burden on local school districts.  The shortfall in promised federal support since 2001 now exceeds $55 billion.  It is wrong to make additional demands on our schools without providing the resources to meet those demands in the first place.

NCLB was supposed to help our students not harm them.  The schools that serve mostly disadvantaged, minority students have been hit the hardest and that needs to change.  ESEA/NCLB should provide financial incentives to attract and retain teachers in hard to staff schools, as well as resources to provide quality training to teachers and paraprofessionals.  As Congress begins debate on this program, it should find ways that the bill can encourage and provide resources to increase parental and family involvements in our schools.  Any reauthorization should come with greater flexibility, more inclusive measures of success over time and the funding to actually make success actually possible.