NRCLB: No Rich Child Left Behind

Democrat & Chronicle: Essays

Question #1: Mrs. Smith and Mr. Jones both teach fifth grade. In May, only 40 percent of Mrs. Smith’s students passed the state’s standardized reading test, while 97 percent of Mr. Jones’ students passed the same test. Who is the better teacher? A) Mrs. Smith. B) Mr. Jones. C) More information is necessary. If you picked “C,” you understand the inherent complexities of education.
Question #2: Mrs. Smith works in a high-needs district. In September, most of her pupils read at a second-grade level, but through brilliant pedagogical strategies and dogged determination, she brought all of her class to a fourth-grade reading level or higher. Some of her students managed to pass the state reading test; all of them showed tremendous growth. Mr. Jones works in a more affluent district. In September, all of his students read at a fifth-grade level and by May most of them read at the sixth-grade level. Who is the better teacher?

According to the No Child Left Behind act, Jones is wildly successful as his students have demonstrated adequate yearly progress. Smith is not so fortunate. According to NCLB, she is an abysmal failure; her students have not shown AYP (adequate yearly progress) and her school will lose funding if this continues.

Both teachers are successful teachers, but only one is recognized because she lives in an affluent school district. It is important to have standards, but accomplishments for growth also need to be recognized as successful AYP.

Research has found a direct link between wealth/poverty and achievement test scores. The authors of NCLB just would rather have No Rich Child Left Behind, because they are the only ones that will accomplish the 100% of proficient students in the school. The standard of 100% reading on grade level (What is the cut-off score for grade level? How valid is the grade level score?) ignores the forces outside school that affect students in school.

Grading Schools on Poverty

The Bush Administration and the legislature, after months of lobbying, arguing, wrangling, dealing and agonizing, has given us the A-Plus Plan with its School Accountability Report Upon analysis, this Report turns out to be merely an elaborate and expensive way to grade schools on the poverty or affluence of their students.

The focus on high-stakes testing does the opposite of what is seeks to do. Rather than raising to free-reduced lunch sub-group closer to the average white middle-class students, NCLB labels as failing the schools with high numbers of free-reduced lunch students and then punishes them for having those students. It is a no-win situation for many schools.

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Memorization, the mind, and making connections

The outboard brain, memory, transfer and learning » Moving at the Speed of Creativity

I won’t pretend to know what really defines a “genius.” I do perceive that people who can synthesize ideas from different areas or disciplines, see new connections, and make new discoveries DO have a remarkable DEPTH of knowledge which is tied to specific facts and ideas. Those people aren’t simply generalists, they ARE experts on various subjects. The need to be able to have so much information MEMORIZED and stored directly in your brain for ready access appears to be FAR LESS important than it was in the 1st century A.D., however.

Is there no place for memorization in school anymore?

It depends.

What is the purpose of the memorization? Is it famous quotes or poetry that will enrich their lives and their writing? Is it unrelated names, facts, and dates that will be memorized long enough to regurgitate it back onto a test and never be used again? Is it a list of spelling words for the test on Friday (I’m guilty of this too), or is it connected to to their writing because they frequently misspell it? Does the learning stop after the multiplication facts are memorized, or does the learning apply those facts to higher level math situations?

Sometimes the information needs to be memorized so it is instantly available when needed and can allow for quick connections to subtle patterns that otherwise might be missed.

For example, a series of numbers might have a recognizable pattern if you knew your multiplation facts and perfect squares. Then they can continue the pattern in order to solve the problem.

Unfortunately, much of the memorization in School 1.0 is simply for the test and is then forgotten. If you don’t use it, you lose it.

That’s why school School 2.0 needs to be about making connections: between people, between ideas, between cultures. The brain works by making connections. The more connections made with a bit of information when it is stored, the more likely it is to be remembered. That is why higher level learning help retain so much better what is learned. Each level of Blooms Taxonomy is another layer of complexity. Each layer of complexity multiplies the number of connections the content. So, the more complex the learning environment and the variables within it, the better the students learn the content.

Yes, there is a place of memorization in education. Yes, you can look up basic facts. However, that is just the beginning of the learning, not the end. Sometime we just have to slow down, observe the learning environment around the content, and reflect on what you have learned. Connection - “Stop and smell the roses.”

Geniuses know where to find the information they need because they did their research to become an expert on that topic. They also made lots of connections to memorize a lot of facts, too. Why did they memorize it? Was it just for the test?

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NCLB: Nation At Risk vs. Sandia Report

No Child Left Behind is based upon public perceptions that public education in the U.S. is failing. The media jumped all over the “Nation at Risk” report and swallowed the propaganda hook, line, and sinker. The Sandia report corrected many of the lies in the original report. However, the powers-that-be at the time buried the report and it never saw the light of day until much too late. The systematic suppression of the report is characterized in the later-denied statement that Deputy Secretary of Education said, “You bury this or I’ll bury you.”

from Education at Risk: Fallout from a Flawed Report | Edutopia “A Nation at Risk” (1983)

What the report claimed:

• American students are never first and frequently last academically compared to students in other industrialized nations. American student achievement declined dramatically after Russia launched Sputnik, and hit bottom in the early1980s.
• SAT scores fell markedly between 1960 and 1980. Student achievement levels in science were declining steadily.
• Business and the military were spending millions on remedial education for new hires and recruits.

The Sandia Report (1990)What was actually happening:

• Between 1975 and 1988, average SAT scores went up or held steady for every student subgroup.
• Between1977 and 1988, math proficiency among seventeen-year-olds improveds lightly for whites, notably for minorities.
• Between 1971 and 1988,reading skills among all student subgroups held steady or improved.
• Between 1977 and 1988, in science, the number of seventeen-year-olds ator above basic competency levels stayed the same or improved slightly.
• Between 1970 and 1988, the number of twenty-two-year-old Americans with bachelor degrees increased every year; the United States led alldeveloped nations in 1988.

Accidental Architects

: The Regan Cabinet. Top Row: (7th person from left to right). Edwin Meese III, counselor to the president. He urged Reagan to reject the “Nation at Risk” report. Middle Row: (1st person from left to right)Terrell H. Bell, secretary of education. He hoped to link the country’s economic woes to the state of our schools. Bottom Row: (2nd person from left to right) George H. W. Bush, vice president. In 1989, as president, Bush convened a national education summit — and no educators were invited. (3rd person from left to right) Ronald Reagan, president. He inaccurately linked the report to school prayer, vouchers, and the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education. (5th person from left to right) Caspar Weinberger, secretary of defense.
During his tenure, the Department of Defense’s budget soared to $300
billion. Meanwhile, Republicans were trying to abolish the Department
of Education.Credit: Corbis

These are the authors of the predecessor to No Child Left Behind. Their mission in education was to tear down the public education system in the United States.

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Reflection on full day school workshop

    The kids were off for Martin Luther King. Jr.’s birthday, but the teachers had an all-day inservice.  I was kind of look forward to it because our speakers were supposed to tell us about how Ruby Paine’s Framework for Understanding Children in Poverty  would help our kids.  Nearly half the kids in my class are on Free/Reduced lunch, so I was very interested in how I could help them to achieve better.

The people who showed up were 3 administrators from Hutchinson, KS USD 308 school district.  The proceeded to tell us about the impressive gains their district had made on No Child Left Behind’s Adequate Yearly Progress.   Over half their students live in poverty, but they pulled their students’ achievement above the ever-rising AYP proficiency bar.  It’s impressive, and I wondered how they did it.  They credited it to 5 things:

1. Ruby Paine’s program  $$$
2. Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures program $$$
   
3. Koality Kids / Quality Keys program  $$$
4. Data driven curriculum alignment and assessment analysis
5. Technology integration

They spent some bucks on the first three training programs.

They spent the rest of the day telling us about what the Ruby Paine program, Koality Kids program, and data were, but very little about how we could use it in our classroom.   I was excited to hear that they had successfully implemented Cooperative Learning and Technology integration into their district.  That’s what I wanted to hear.  Nada.

Instead we got cramped points full of lists and words too small to see.  We got a birds-eye, administrator overview. Each presentation, Koality Kids, Ruby Payne, and data, was abstract.  Each presentation had 5 minutes of sunshine that gave me an activity or graphic organizer I could use.  I could have gone without the other 55 minutes from each.  I guess it’s par for the course for full-day inservices.  I guess I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.

I still would like to know more about Cooperative Learning structures, address the needs of students in poverty, and technology integration.  I guess I will still have to search for it on my own.  Do you have some good ideas for resources?  I’ll include here ones I find useful in my classroom.

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Open Source Textbook

Kim, on her Missouri State Teachers Association blog, talked about Motion Mountain: The Free Physics Textbook. This was my comment.

I had heard about a movement to create an open source textbook. An open source textbook is one written by teachers who teach the subject. What a novel idea! Teachers divide up the tasks and all contribute collaboratively. Rather than a large publishing company, who’s bottom line is $, deciding what teachers teach. The teachers decide and write the textbook exactly how they want it. It can also be updated within months instead of in years. Great idea!

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