Thursday, August 16, 2007

News-Leader: No Child Left Behind is horribly flawed

An editorial in today's Springfield News-Leader provides solid reasoning to support its thesis that the federal No Child Left Behind law is flawed and provides absolutely no evidence on whether schools are failing:

Unfortunately, the AYP numbers, by themselves, are meaningless.

Why?

All they measure is a snapshot of one grade's performance from year to year. We don't know, for instance, whether last year's poor performing Reed students improved this year. We don't know if students at Bissett and McGregor did better or worse over the past year. All we know is that at least one sub-group of those students didn't meet the AYP goals — which get higher every year.

For instance, it's quite possible that Bissett and McGregor turned in better scores than last year but still failed to meet AYP. (The full numbers are not yet available.) This is why we've consistently argued that the AYP numbers should be but one test in a series of measures that local school officials — not the federal government — should use to determine if schools are high performers.

From the beginning, schools like Bissett and McGregor start in a deep hole. Both school serve a population in which more than 85 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch. It's not rocket science to know that many children living in various stages of poverty come to school less prepared to learn than those of better economic backgrounds. Further, McGregor serves a large population of students who speak English as a second language.

The key to true accountability in local schools should be this: Do the students who didn't meet a certain standard this year improve next year when they are retested? That's the ultimate flaw of No Child Left Behind. We won't know the answer to that question because the testing doesn't work that way.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Solid reasoning? Two parts of the editorial seem, to me, to employ less than solid reasoning (I've also included suggested solutions):
1) Federal tax dollars should be used to fund a big part of education, but schools should be held accountable by "local school officials" instead??? Solution: Stop federal funding AND federal interference in education.
2) Children who are "less prepared to learn than those of better economic backgrounds" should be left behind??? Solution: Teachers should be aware of the economic condition of their students, and teach accordingly. Stop using this as an excuse to let students off of the hook. ALL students need a proper education, and it is not the federal government's responsibility to give it to them.

This sounds more like one of the usual excuse-laden op-ed pieces from someone at a school district recently rated "needs improvement" rather than an editorial.

The last paragraph in the story has an excellent solution to the problem:"It's important for local school districts to examine individual schools' performance based on comprehensive measures of success, and we encourage the Springfield Public Schools to do that at Bissett, McGregor, Reed and every school in the district." That fact that Randy didn't include it in his posting speaks volumes about people who make their career in government education and then complain about the government being involved. If the federal tests don't give school administrators the data they need to improve, why not collect data at the local level? Why didn't "local school officials" do that? Why did it take the federal government to step in before administrators started considering the best ways to monitor and improve effectiveness in the classroom?

Anonymous said...

And you are a product of public or private schooling?

If public, your grammar skills are adequate.

If private, your reasoning skills appear to need a little... umm, work.