NCLB: Unattainable Goals
It seems that there are at least some that are coming to the realization that the goals as they were set forth in the original No Child Left Behind Act, are completely unattainable and unrealistic.
Washington Post (via MSNBC so you don’t need to register)
“There is a zero percent chance that we will ever reach a 100 percent target,” said Robert L. Linn, co-director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA. “But because the title of the law is so rhetorically brilliant, politicians are afraid to change this completely unrealistic standard. They don’t want to be accused of leaving some children behind.”
So there you have the real problem. Not that people don’t know that the law is flawed nobody wants to be seen as “leaving a child behind” advocate. Much like the Patriot Act, the name keeps lawmakers voting FOR things they know they should vote against.
Foes and supporters alike praise the law for drawing attention to student achievement gaps. The law requires testing for all students in reading and math from grades 3 through 8 and once in high school; it also requires reporting of scores for groups of students including racial and ethnic minorities, those from low-income families, those with limited English skills and those with disabilities who receive special education.
Unlike those that blindly support the law without understanding what it is saying, those that are critical acknowledge that there are certainly good intentions in the law, but how it was constructed, and how you can hope to achieve a 100% rating when you include those that have limited English Skills and those with learning disabilities, is not short of just plain silly. So instead students with learning disorder get shipped around to other districts and such to help some districts (those “disposing” of the students) better “benchmarks” while it provides funds (the school shipping out the student generally pays the other district) to those districts that accept them. That is not education, it is a shell game, and the children are the little pebble being slid around under those shells.
They also much do away with the sanctions that are built into the law. These sanctions, are actually counterproductive, as they take away money from the areas and districts that by definition need it the most, the districts where the children are not faring as well. Does this make sense to anybody? “Your schools aren’t doing well, now go and improve them… with less money to accomplish it.” This is what they are in essence telling these districts.
We can’t allow NCLB to be reauthorized, just because it “sounds good.” It needs to be overhauled and fixed.
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I was looking back over your site to see what else you’d written about NCLB and couldn’t really find anything. What, in a nutshell, are your objections to No Child Left Behind?
I believe that the NCLB may have gotten lost in their own sets of rules because of so many hands out for money. The NCLB act is a perfect act to aide our children in understanding the system that has been an American Dream for many years: working towards accomplishing goals! Our goal every month as adults is to work towards the provision we need to live. Desiring a new home, a new vehicle, or a huge savings account are incentives that inspire us to work harder.
I have had the priviledge of working with approximately 2000 children as my company managed a project for one of the providers in the 2006/2007 year. Children are not easily persuaded to do extra academic work just because any of us think that they “should” be.
Using tools and incectives has been a long used method to get adults to work harder, spend more money, or to sign up for credit. It’s the American way that has long existed before many of us were born. Doesn’t anyone realize that our children see American adults as examples and flow right into the same patterns? Why wouldn’t anyone be able to see that children who have been persuaded by Incentives and fun tools are the ones that actually step up to study harder, spend more time, and apply themselves to getting better grades? Many of the children that I worked with have been neglected of some of the fun incentives due to their economical status. It doesn’t take alot to encourage a child who has never had something special.
When anyone objects to helping a child it’s a shameful thing. I have watched 1501 students of the 2000 actually benefit from the NCLB program this past year even if it was to build their confidence to desire to learn. Reports from parents were amazing and exciting. The only place I see that the NCLB could help more would be to promote, rather then discourage, the providers in the giving of incentives and/or tools that encourage learning. Unattainable Goal? I respectfully disagree.