No Child Left Behind working?
 

The Economist

I saw a headline that test scores were improving a few days or a week ago, but didn't pay much attention. The writers at The Economist apparently were. I've heard absolutely nothing positive about NCLB from teachers - my sister included. But the writer of this article thinks it actually may be working.

I would counter that test scores are not indicative of any actual improvement on the part of children, except at taking tests; or, at least, that there is little connection between their scores and their long-term success in fields other than test-taking.

But I suppose that's basically the problem with NCLB. That, and the extra requirements (funding not included). (I think?)

..

I ran across <a href="http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/tma68/7lesson.htm">an excerpt</a> from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0865714487/102-3919712-6517746">a book by John Gatto, <i>Dumbing Us Down</i></a>, a while back. I've been dying to read it ever since: this country's shitty excuse for public education strikes me as a particularly important topic, in spite of (in fact, maybe even because of) how often it is overshadowed by bombs, turbans, guns, and dying children.

Are the teachers just teaching to the test?

You end up with good results, but poor critical thinkers.

Yes, even the good ones. It's a function of necessity - you only have so much time in the day, and the stakes for getting good scores are so high, that even the best teachers have to take months out of the year to teach specifically to the test.

That's a big part of the reason why my wife refuses to work in the public school system. She's an incredible teacher, creative, innovative, connects with kids, parents fight to get into her class, the next year's teachers fight to get her kids.

Her private school switched over to a standardized test for about two years, and she nearly quit out of frustration. She went from teaching students and developing kids to churning out test scores. It's awful.

-sm

what is a fair way to judge the progress of an education? the teachers i worked with before deciding teaching wasn't for me gave their lessons, gave some tests, but freely admitted that none of it mattered because they couldn't hold a student back even if they didn't learn thing all year.
we live in a society where it considered harmful to the child's selfesteem if we hold them back.

the private school my son attends tests the heck out of the kids - not one begi standardized test, but throughout the year scores are tracked. the teachers' income and job security is based upon their ability to teach kids the subject matter. market forces are brutal, but it means that an imcompetent teacher isn't going to spend too many years there.

is that the answer? it works for this school, but would it become just another game at a national level? what can be done to A) give a higher quality education B) not eliminate critical thinking?

See, but here's what I don't get. (No offense to your wife.) If this is really such a bright group of kids, they shouldn't have any problem with the content on standardized tests. I'm young enough to clearly remember those, and they were fuckin' easy.

There were teachers who would teach the test for about six weeks beforehand (boredboredboredbored), and there were teachers who didn't do a thing about it except warn us the night before to get a good night's sleep. Either way, the class seemed to do about the same. The only place "teaching the test" is even effective is when you have a whole class of remedial kids who all will fail unless they learn better test-taking skills.

I have to agree with Clodfobble. The best teachers just teach the subject, and don't worry about teaching to the test. Those standardized tests were around way back in the stone ages when I was still a kid. The teacher would tell us that we were going to have a standardized test that wouldn't effect our grade and to do our best on it. I actually sort of liked taking them since the pressure was off about a grade and they were a break in the routine.

I think too many standardized tests throughout the year take away from time that could be spent learning. Making such testing mandatory on a national level would not be something I'd favor.

We will get a higher quality of education in this country when this country begins to respect education. Right now it doesn't. Teaching is a low paying profession because we don't respect the work that teachers do. Schools need to be equally funded across the board.

WARNING: Marichiko is now going to climb up on her soap box:

As with any country, America's greatest resource is her people. The US cannot afford to continue with what amounts to a policy of complacency and indifference regarding the education and well-being of its young.
In the January/Feburary Atlantic Monthly, Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong discuss current global economic trends and the implications of these trends for workers in the United States. Cohen and Delong note that workers will have to better educated than ever before if the US is to retain its current level of economic prosperity. White collar workers will be competing with workers who will do the same job for a tenth of the pay in countries like India. At the minimum, an education at a state University will be crucial in order to hang on to a white collar job in this country in the coming years.

In a less complex world, Abe Lincoln could study a book by firelight and rise to become President of the United States. Now, Lincoln would be lucky to have a career as a bus boy with such a background.

In today's United States, while all men may be created equal, they are not raised equal. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, more than one third of children in the US currently live in poverty, and 45 percent of kindergartners live in low-income families.

The pattern of academic test scores is striking and consistent: children in families whose incomes fall below 200 percent of Federal poverty lines are well below average on their reading, math, and general knowledge test scores compared to the well-above-average scores of children living in families with incomes over 300 percent of Federal poverty lines ($55,200 for a family of four). Only 16 percent of the children in officially poor families but 50 percent of the children from the most affluent families scored in the same upper range.

Schools with high proportions of low-income children have higher numbers of inexperienced teachers, fewer computers, less Internet access, and larger class sizes than schools with lower proportions of low-income children. Thus, the children who stand to gain the most from quality schools often do not have access to them. Source

Our children are our future, and this country is throwing a significant part of its future away. If the future global economy will favor those with an education from MIT, it will delegate to the human refuse pile those who have a high school diploma from an inner city school in the Bronx or a poor rural area in far western Colorado.

A recent survey of western nations belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows the US lagging number 16 in place for social spending on its children. We take top honors, however, among industrialized nations for the percentage of our children living in poverty. Even the children of Spain and strife torn Ireland are better off than those living in the US.

We are on a direct collision course for economic disaster. It would require no revolution to avoid it. Here is a direct quote from the above study, "The other 15 countries in the OECD survey face similar global conditions with respect to trade, investment, technology, the environment, and other factors that shape economic opportunities. The paucity of social expenditures addressing high poverty rates in the United States is not due to a lack of resources — high per capita income and high productivity make it possible for the United States to afford much greater social welfare spending. Moreover, other OECD countries that spend more on both poverty reduction and family-friendly policies have done so while maintaining competitive rates of productivity and income growth."

If we allow the current shortsighted policies on the part of the US toward our own to continue, we and our children will pay an increasingly stiff price. I hope that for the sake of our people, our nation will finally wake up before it's too late.

Alternative theory: Stupid people don't make much money. Stupid people tend to have stupid kids.

As for social welfare spending: No, throwing money at the problem is not going to solve it. Specifically, taking more of the money from those who have had some success and tossing it into systems which can absorb arbitrary amounts of money without improving is going to make things worse, not better.

That's what I like, a logical, well thought out response. You and your highly intelligent children deserve the society that you will reap. Be sure you don't throw any money at their college education. Don't throw money at your or their medical care, either. Oh, and I wouldn't throw any money at savings or investments or a retirement plan, either. The military? Nah, lets not throw money at defense. Tell you what, just keep all your cash under your mattress in your gated community that you won't throw any money at for roads or police or fire protection. And make sure not to throw any money at the upkeep of your home. Wouldn't want to squander a penny, now would we?

If you'll excuse me now, I'll just stumble off somewhere in awe of your laser-like intelligence. :eyebrow:

Wow, Mari, you're really on the warpath today. Most of those things (russotto's kids' college education, medical care, their savings or investments or a retirement plan) do not fall into the category of "systems which can absorb arbitrary amounts of money without improving."

The only one you listed that might fit that category is the military, and who the hell's talking about the military here? We're talking about whether "high per capita income and high productivity make it possible for the United States to afford much greater social welfare spending."

Historically, we don't spend as much on welfare spending as other countries because we don't think it's a good idea. It's far from a documented fact that all our problems would just disappear if we threw more money at the problem. How can the D.C. school district be the lowest-performing and the most highly-funded if that's the case?

And this is just sentimental nonsense:

First of all, Abe Lincoln did more than study a book by firelight. He started business after business, failing at most of them, being relatively poor for a lot of those years. Bus boys don't start their own businesses, or they don't stay bus boys for long. Abe Lincoln was successful because he was determined to be, not because social welfare spending was somehow higher back in his day (far, far from it.)

The past global economy favored those with an education from MIT, too. Your homilies break down your credibility, mari. (And though you may not think it, you do have credibility with me in many areas.) The human refuse pile? Where, pray tell, is that? I can only guess that you must mean that those with just a high school diploma will have to work a lower-paid job. Well, duh. The man from MIT is designing nanotechnology to cure cancer, the high-school graduate isn't capable of that. He's not going to get paid the same.

Unless! he has studied hard all through high school, despite the fact that his school was crappy, and he is able to get into a college--probably not MIT, but better than a community college--on a scholarship which he will most certainly qualify for, and he perhaps will have the ability to become a technician for that MIT guy one day... and here's the important part: his children will be in a better position because of it. They won't have to go to that crappy school, they'll move to a better neighborhood and go to a better school, and maybe get into MIT. It almost always takes more than a generation to be extremely successful, just like it takes more than a generation to find oneself squarely in poverty.

Here's the thing: I would like to know how many people today who make, say, over $300,000, had grandparents who made an equivalent sum of money in their time. I would guess (though I don't know) that many if not most of them did not.

I do not make $300,000. i do however make more in a month than my grandfather made in the best year of his career. i make more in 4 months than my father made in the best year of his career.
yes, adjusted for inflation.
it isn't because i am smarter, that much is certain. it takes time to move up and change is incremental.

my grandfather had an 8th grade education when he went into the navy. after WWII he was a carpenter. he owned his own businesses - some succeeded, some failed but he always kept going. he helped 2 of his 4 daughters through college - they both have been very successful. his son followed him into the navy and then business and has become a multimillionaire through hard work and perseverence. their kids are all off to a much better start than their parents were.

my mother married my father right out of high school and dad took the factory route - which was a huge step-up from his father's past. he busted his ass and instilled in us that only education + determination can get you anywhere - if you are missing either one... things get harder. i went into the USAF to pay for school, and i've got a fairly successful career. my son is having opportunities that i was never afforded - but most importantly he is learning the same lessons we were taught education + determination are required.

A college education does NOT fall into this catagory while a primary school education does?

Well, I'm glad you, at least, are addressing my point. That long litany of mine was my way of expressing how weary I am of conservatives calling any expenditure they don't approve of "throwing money at it." "Throwing money at it" has becme the lazy conservative's way out of any debate

I never said all our problems would disappear if we invested in the education of our young. I said such an investment would place us in a more competitive position in the coming global economy.

I never said social welfare spending was higher in Lincoln's day. My point was that the US of Lincoln's time was a far less complex era. People could get away with being relatively uneducated and still make a go of it. Someone could come from a simple backwoods education and still rise to be president - THEN. Today's society with its technology and competition requires a better education for a person to be successful (Yes, I know there are the occasional individual exceptions, but I'm talking about the country as a whole).



An education from MIT was ALWAYS a good thing. Never said otherwise. My comments about graduates from high schools that provide a lower quality of training and preparation refer back to the Atlantic Monthly article I quoted. If global competition means that a minimum of a degree from a state university will be required, what is going to happen to kids who are forced to attend under funded inner city or rural schools? They will NOT be competitive and it won't necessarily be through any fault of their own. Of course, a college grad should be paid more than a high school grad. You are missing my point which was that all children should have the chance to attend schools that will equally give them the opportunity to be accepted into university programs if they have the desire, drive, and intelligence to attend. Right now, our schooling that we offer our children is not equal.

If you had bothered to look properly at what I wrote, I cited the work and conclusions of several people. If you wish to feel that the authors of the Atlantic Monthly article and the other sources I cited have no credibility, that's your free choice.

Why should ANY child in this wealthy country have to attend a "crappy school"? Especially with the coming pressures of a global workforce and economy, isn't it in the best interests of this nation to ensure that our people are as well educated as possible?

I have no idea. That was not the point I was trying to make. I was talking about maintaining US global competitiveness in the future by ensuring our young get the best possible education.

Mari, I have a question for you ... this time last year you were on welfare, destitute and facing eviction, and going online by stealing time from AOL, and now you have a new SUV and enough cash to get scammed out of it by a con man?

Recent posts have also seemed to indicate the memory loss thing is resolved.

Its getting better. I'm glad you think so, too. I was never on welfare. I was on SSDI which is for people who have worked and paid into the system. I got a lump sum settlement from SSDI last year which allowed me to buy a new second hand car and get ripped off by the ax murderer. I am now participating in the Ticket to Work Program and getting voc rehab. Thanks for asking.

in Lincoln's time his WAS a sophisticated education. compared to our expectations he was uneducated, but when compared to his peers, be was a highly educated, learned individual.

you ask about "crappy schools". the thing is that you can never make any two schools exactly similar. if you raise the quality level of all schools (which i support) some schools will still be considered "better" and other will be considered "crappy".

that is my same complaint when people talk about raising minimum wage as a solution to the rich-poor gap. it won't change the gap one bit, it will just make the numbers different.

just as the people who make the least amount of money in a society will be considered the poor, schools who aren't "the best" will be considered "crappy".

the question is how do you make a sufficiently objective decision of what constitutes and acceptable school and what is not?

At least it's my own response, and not just a regurgitation of what I read in the latest issue of some left-leaning magazine.

The rest of your stuff is all irrelevant to the subject of primary and secondary education. My claim is that taking more money from "well-off" people and tossing it into failing school systems will have a negative effect all around. This has nothing to do with parent's spending money on college educations, fire, police, roads, retirement or anything like that.

And if you're upset by people calling your solutions "throwing money at it", then you probably shouldn't advocate exactly that. The upshot of your article is that poor kids going to poor schools perform more poorly than rich kids going to wealthy schools, that the US can afford to spend more on social welfare and therefore it should, the implication being that this money will somehow solve the problem.

Right. The government has decided that everyone gets a high school education. We have to pay for it and they have to attend, regardless of quality. A college education, on the other hand, is a voluntary thing you have to work hard at, and pay for yourself, if you can't qualify for scholarships.

A college is run like a business; if they start sucking, they lose applicants and money. If a high school starts sucking, the kids and the federal money keep right on coming, there's just less learning going on.

I think you and I have different definitions of "successful." I think it is still quite possible for a person to be successful without a college education.

My husband has no college degree. His mom is a kindergarten teacher and his dad was a landscaper. He was fascinated by computers as a kid, despite not having one in the house as a child, and proceeded to learn everything on his own through library books. He worked very hard to get his first job in a computer assembly shop. He is now a network administrator making a very decent amount of money.

My friend Mike has no college degree. He moved up the ladder at Domino's Pizza for awhile, then decided that the franchise path was not for him and that he wanted to own his own business with no strings attached. He called random contractors in the phone book, offering himself as an "apprentice" for $9 an hour (non-English-speaking day laborers in my city get around $7-8 an hour.) For six months he worked for a guy, asking questions constantly. Then he left to start his own contracting business, and two years later he lives in a house that cost three times what mine did.

My friend Tara has no college degree. She started as a cashier at a local grocery store, and has stayed with the company for almost 7 years. She is now the senior HR administrator. She plans to be the store's general manager in another several years. They make well over $100,000 a year.

You may write these off as "occasional individual exceptions," but these are just the three people closest to me. I can think of four more very successful people I know with only a high school education right off the top of my head. I believe they are indicative of the opportunities available in the country as a whole. And of the three, only my husband worries about global competition. We will never be able to outsource new-home-building and employment paperwork overseas.

Of course they shouldn't. The question is, what will improve those schools? Money is not the answer.

I was trained to cite my arguments whenever possible. Blame it on the Colorado system of higher education.


If all high schools get funding no matter what, why is it that some are far better than others? Random chance?

No, I don't think that we do have different definitions of "successful." Certainly, people can still do well for themselves without going to college. Overall, however, people with a college degree tend to earn more than ones who don't have one. You pointed this out yourself in your previous post. Keep in mind, also, that I am talking about competition on the global scale in the years to come.

I assume, you would feel perfectly comfortable sending your children to school in Paradox, Colorado, then, rather then one in the suburbs of Austin. After all, funding makes no difference in the quality of education, right? Want to give me a source for this perception of yours? I'm not questioning your credibility, just wondering on what facts you have drawn your conclusion from.

No, but it's part of the answer.

I'm curious about this so I've been looking around the internet instead of grocery shopping and fetching Jim's laundry. First off, I found that my kid's private school education costs the same per child today that PA public schools were spending in 1993. This particular private school is a democratic/child-led/non-coercive learning environment with a 4-5:1 student/teacher(or helper) ratio.

I'd be curious to read more on this subject.
I think for the most part, public schools are just a very clear reflection of the community they serve.

Better parents and better students. It's not really "the school" that's bad--the teachers aren't hurting the students, and the principal's not selling drugs. It's the other students that make a school good or bad. If each of us attended high school alone, we could live up to our full potential. But if my teacher has to spend half the class period breaking up fights and telling the other kids to be quiet, I'm not going to learn anything no matter how smart I am. The students have to care, and no amount of new textbooks and computers-in-every-classroom is going to cause that.

I don't know anything about Paradox, Colorado, but I'll assume it's a poor rural area. And I would imagine that, legally, they get the same or similar amounts of federal dollars as other schools in Colorado. Really it's the monetary contributions of wealthier parents we're talking about. But I can tell you about the school districts in Austin, however.

First, Austin doesn't have that many suburbs. The main district, where I live, is the Austin Independent School District, which has I think 16 high schools. They each get the exact same amount of money from the school district, with only small variations based on attendance--if you're only teaching 1000 students, you don't get as much money as the schools with 2500.

Of those, there are only 4 that I am willing to consider sending my children to. This is based purely on my experiences with these schools/neighborhoods growing up in the city. But it is this active discrimination of "bad" schools on my part which leads to better schools in the first place. Parents who care have better-behaved children.

We bought our house based entirely on what high school the neighborhood fed to. I wouldn't even look at other areas. But our neighborhood is far from rich: our house was about $60,000 less than the median home price for the city. There are even less expensive apartment complexes right across the way from us. I am actively choosing to put every effort into having my children in what seem to me to be the best schools possible. And that's what's missing from the "bad" schools: the parents didn't care enough to do the research, or choose where to live based on the schools. There is affordable housing available in every school's neighborhoods (Austin participates in bussing, so a kid living south might feed into a high school way up north, it's all gerrymandered) if they only have the desire to find it.

Incidentally, even if I could afford to live there, I would not send my children to the southwest suburb, because while it is one of the richest areas in town, the children in that high school are incredibly cliquish. They perform extremely well on tests each year, but they also have problems with bullying, alcohol use, and--get this--cocaine, of all things. Richer isn't always better. It's having parents who care that makes the difference.

How about lower student to teacher ratios? That costs money, too, and it is one of the biggest parts of what you are really paying for in a private school.

Here, you and I are in complete agreement. A concerned parent can indeed make a vast difference in a child's education. The gratitude I have toward my father and his concern for my education knows no bounds. He encouraged me and helped me with my school work and made sure that I understood what a gift an education is.

I'm going to have to attend to some other matters, so I'll leave you guys to carry on without me and my inflamatory liberal statements - for a while. ;)

I don't buy that. I think the biggest part of what you are really paying for in a private school is for your child to be around other kids with like-minded parents. Student-to-teacher ratios are pretty even across a single school district, and yet some schools in a district will do well while others will not.

i really do believe that is the reality of it. to be certain, there are other forces at play, but this is a HUGE factor. i said that when i made the decision to send my son to a private school. the school has a tuition assistance program that is phenomenal - so even a family with no disposeable income can go there. i know this to be true, because my son's best friend is in that situation.

over dinner, his parents mentioned that this is their second child in the school - the older one is in the 4th grade. they had a career change and needed to pull their son out and go to public schools due to money issues. when the registrar discovered this he sent a package home with them - very similar to the FAFSA for college. there is a sliding scale of benefit - in their case the school has made them tuition free and even reminded them not to forget when the younger child was old enough to enroll.

all that to say this - the private school isn't better because you have to be "rich" to go. the fact that the parents place a high enough value on education to put their kids in a school even if it costs extra money is the issue - there are things that go along with that mindset.

i don't believe you have to go to a private school to get a good education. i used to ridicule private schoolers. in arizona the public schools are pretty bad - even in the higher income areas. the high school 5 minutes from my house is only 4 years old - even the teachers refer to it as "sandra Drug-O'connor". the "best" school district in arizona is in a relatively low income area.

The biggest factor in a child's education is one that NCLB cannot affect. It is the involvement of the parent(s). It doesn't matter how much you spend on education if the parents aren't working with their kids.

Figure out how to fix that issue, and then you'll have something.

Amen Dar. Some of the brightest, politest, funniest, most well-rounded kids I know are home schooled. Explain that.

i think that goes back to what Clodfobble and i were saying. it is about the family's view and valuation of education.

One problem created by some jurisdictions is a demand that all teachers be working on and obtain a Master's degree within specific time limits. But then these districts discovered a teacher with a Master's degree better be earning $50,000 to $70,000 per year.

Curiously that is the same problem with 'More children left behind'. It was originally created in cooperation between Sen Kennedy and George Jr. But then George Jr broke the alliance when the administration refused to put any money into their bureaucratic requirements. According to virtually every teacher, they are being forced to do things that are overall not beneficial to all students.

So what is a public school system to do? Increase costs again to pay for the 'more child left behind' laws.

Surprising all this talk about the law and not a word about who the original sponsors were. Even more important is the reason why that cooperative effort ended prematurely.

Legislate standards and improvements. OK. But the same law should provide money to pay for it. That bean counter mentality from George Jr is why he and Ted Kennedy had their education disagreement after what had looked like a love fest.

all I know is that a friend of mine works in the public school system (or did), he said that they spent most of their time prepping the kids to take the tests rather then the general education that most of us enjoyed (and by enjoyed I mean recieved...). until eventually he threw up his hands in disgust and went into the private sector of education where he is now happily teaching kids things other than the 'basics'.

NCLB "works" because students are being taught the tests, and due to the extortion that is federal funding the schools are shifting and fuzzing the various criteria that says what meets the federal criteria.

Escambia county Florida has had thousands of students fail their esit LEAPS, funny phrase that, and they are simply shit out of luck. The didn't pass the structured test they were being taught, and they'll suffer in life because they weren't being taught the necessary skills instead.