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November 2006
| Volume 64 | Number 3
NCLB: Taking Stock, Looking Forward
The NCLB Issue
Marge Scherer
NCLB: Is There Life Beyond Testing?
Christy Guilfoyle
Its focus on holding schools accountable for student achievement on standardized assessments sets NCLB apart from previous versions of the law. The more severe consequences for schools that do not show the necessary improvements in student achievement—such as restructuring and state takeovers—loom just around the corner. Many educators are concerned that these sanctions and others, such as establishing a new curriculum, replacing school staff, or decreasing managerial authority at the school, have not been proven to raise student achievement. Others say that the need to comply with the law stifles innovation and that the limited focus on a small subset of subjects narrows the curriculum. The U.S. Department of Education is attempting to address some of these concerns by altering requirements and introducing new flexibility into the law. ASCD's 2006–2007 Legislative Agenda accompanies this article.
Highly Qualified Teachers for All
Linda Darling-Hammond and Barnett Berry
One of the most important aspects of NCLB is its demand that states ensure a “highly qualified” teacher for every student. This provision draws much-needed attention to the importance of ensuring equitable student access to high-quality teachers, write the authors. Some aspects of the provision have raised legitimate concerns—including the questionable criteria by which it defines “highly qualified,” the rigidity of its content-knowledge requirements for teachers of multiple subjects, and the inadequacy of supports for developing an adequate supply of teachers. To address the last concern, the authors propose an ambitious national initiative to improve teacher quality. They describe recommended federal programs to increase teacher supply, improve support for new teachers, provide better pay and working conditions, and nationalize the teacher labor market. The social savings resulting from a strong teacher force would, in the long run, far outweigh the estimated costs of these initiatives.
A Catch-22 for Language Learners
Wayne E. Wright
NCLB is leaving English language learners behind because it defies logic and common sense, is internally self-contradictory, and sets AYP expectations that the subgroup cannot possibly attain. Although the U.S. Department of Education allows states to use a variety of strategies to avoid having a Limited English Proficiency (LEP) subgroup, few teachers and administrators are aware of these and spend precious time, energy, and resources preparing English learners for taking high-stakes tests. English language learners should be excluded from the regular state tests, at least until they have enough English proficiency to meaningfully participate. Instead of narrowly focusing on preparing English language learners for state tests, teachers should focus on meeting students' linguistic, cultural, and academic needs.
Needed: Higher Standards for Accountability
Paul E. Barton
Barton argues that the school accountability system now operating itself has some accountability problems. He discusses three key flaws: (1) The system ignores the fact that—because many states have not yet aligned their standards, curriculum, and test—many assessments being used don't meet basic criteria for test validity; (2) The present accountability system does not reliably sort out effective from ineffective schools; and (3) Models that do measure such student gain are not transparent and don't help inform instruction. Barton recommends that the system shift to using two forms of a test that measure the same content, with one form given at the beginning of the school year and the other at the end. Such a test would measure the knowledge and skills students gain throughout a school year. Standards could then be set for how much gain schools should be expected to achieve in particular subjects and particular grade levels.
A Positive Agenda for ESEA
Reg Weaver
The National Education Association has strongly supported the Elementary and Secondary Education Act since its inception in 1965. But the law's most recent reauthorization, the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, is fundamentally flawed, writes NEA President Reg Weaver. Weaver offers NEA's recommendations for revising the law and addressing these flaws. For example, school accountability should be based on multiple measures instead of a single annual test in two subjects, reading and math. States should be allowed to design accountability systems based on growth models and other, more meaningful, measures of student progress. The law should address teacher quality by providing funds to attract high-quality educators to high-need schools. It should eliminate requirements that create unnecessary obstacles for talented and skilled teachers. Perhaps most important, Congress should ensure full funding of the law's many mandates and goals.
No More Invisible Kids
Kati Haycock
From talking with educators across the United States, the author has concluded that No Child Left Behind is having “an enormously positive impact.” NCLB's most important benefit is a new focus on the academic performance of poor and minority students, English language learners, and students with disabilities. The law has also provided leverage for educators who are working to close achievement gaps, putting the power of the federal government behind them. Haycock describes school districts in which educators have used NCLB data to inform positive change. She cites results from state assessments and the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicating that the achievement of elementary students is rising and gaps are narrowing. She recommends changes in the law to increase its effectiveness, including getting serious about high schools, giving more support to low-performing schools, including growth data in accountability measures, raising curriculum standards, providing more guidance for teachers, and doing more to attract the best teachers to the most needy schools.
What Are NCLB's Instructional Costs?
Michael B. Zellmer, Anthony Frontier and Denise Pheifer
To gather information on how No Child Left Behind's testing mandates have affected students and schools, Wisconsin ASCD conducted an electronic survey of administrators in every school district in the state. A total of 171 districts responded. Their responses indicated that the very resources that are central to the goals of NCLB—instructional time, staff time, and fiscal resources—have been diverted away from teaching and learning and have been reinvested in test preparation, administration, and reporting. Secretaries, teachers, guidance counselors, and other school personnel devote many hours to logistical preparation and test administration, resulting in loss of services to special needs students and instructional time for all students. When asked what changes in NCLB requirements they would recommend, respondents predominantly mentioned shortening, eliminating, or revising the large-school tests; using a growth formula or value-added system; and allowing schools to measure student progress in multiple ways.
A Firsthand Look at NCLB
How has No Child Left Behind (NCLB) affected you, your students, or your school? Educational Leadership wanted to know so we asked readers to tell us their stories. Some respondents questioned whether NCLB acknowledged the true purpose of education, many bemoan the seeming necessity of having to “teach to the test,” and some have surprising insights about the resulting improvements in their schools.
Turmoil in the Testing Industry
Thomas Toch
At the heart of No Child Left Behind's accountability system is the requirement that states test nearly every public school student in grades 3–8 and in one high school grade in reading and math. The magnitude of NCLB's testing requirements, the law's demanding deadlines, insufficient federal funding, and other factors have produced an undesirable result: many states have adopted tests that can be constructed quickly and inexpensively, but that primarily measure low-level skills at the expense of synthesis, analysis, and other higher-order skills. Because of the high-stakes consequences of test scores for students and schools, the content of NCLB tests has moved the curriculum in the wrong direction, writes Toch. To correct this problem, he calls for a federal and state commitment to improving the testing infrastructure in public education.
Assessment Around the World
Iris C. Rotberg
The current preoccupation in the United States with test-based accountability is founded on a set of faulty assumptions—about education practices elsewhere in the world, about international test score comparisons, and about the extent to which test scores are valid indicators of the quality of education or the state of the economy. For example, it is often assumed that the rest of the developed world is one high-achieving country, that other countries have found the “right” way to improve student achievement, and that international test score rankings are valid measures of the quality of education. These assumptions are not supported by the evidence. Examples of testing practices in England, Turkey, Germany, Singapore, Japan, and China provide a context for standardized testing worldwide.
The Side Effects of NCLB
Gordon Cawelti
With its focusing on high-stakes testing in reading and math, NCLB has narrowed the curriculum. This focus comes at the expense of instruction in social studies, the arts, science, and health and denies many students access to the quality curriculums that students in more affluent schools enjoy. NCLB is now the prescribed method of treatment for the achievement gaps in our schools, but it has several serious side effects: It has resulted in an imbalanced curriculum, it demoralizes teachers, and it encourages manipulation of the numbers. School leaders should take into account the many models that have been proposed over the years—the broad fields approach or the crucial issues approach, for example—to establish a framework for developing a balanced core curriculum for all students. The federal government can also help in a number of creative ways to ensure true student achievement.
How NCLB Drives Success in Urban Schools
Heather Zavadsky
Zavadsky describes effective practices she has observed in the five urban school districts that were finalists for the 2005 Broad prize—practices required or catalyzed by No Child Left Behind. The article lists three key NCLB-driven strategies these schools used to raise student achievement and close achievement gaps: clarifying and aligning curriculum; collecting and using data; and targeting interventions for struggling students and schools. Zavadsky gives examples of how the districts carried out these strategies.
A Tale of Unintended Consequences
Jennifer Corn
A teacher of Limited English Proficient elementary students in California describes how she put her students through daily timed read-aloud drills to boost their scores on a benchmark assessment of reading rate that her school district required. Corn briefly reviews the rationale behind measuring reading rate as an indicator of fluency. The reason her school district gave for emphasizing speed was that increasing students' reading rate would improve their scores on the California Standardized Test. Corn's school was in its fourth year as a school needing improvement under NCLB, threatened with closure if scores didn't rise. But her students' scores on the CST and other tests at year's end revealed that even daily speed reading drills had not helped many students meet the district's benchmark for speed. Worse, they had not helped raise scores on the CST. Corn discusses how the stress on speed had unintended bad consequences. She proposes a more balanced assessment of fluency.
How a Strong School Faced “Failure”
Lori Likis
When Benjamin Banneker Charter Public School in Boston realized that their students' 2002–2003 math scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System fell below the target set by Massachusetts for adequate yearly progress, they saw not one problem (poor math achievement), but two. Because it was the fifth year the school had not hit AYP targets, Banneker would be marked under NCLB as a school in need of “Corrective Action.” Because of the way AYP is measured in Massachusetts, even a math improvement campaign that dramatically raised the school's scores in one year could not reverse the application of a label implying failure. Banneker brought its math scores up to its AYP target by fall of 2004. But it was still labeled as below AYP and classified as in need of “Restructuring.” Confronting restructuring sanctions as well as state review of its charter, Banneker faced high stakes. The school was only able to reverse the restructuring process and save its charter through strong leadership, positive media attention, and pressing on with its already successful math campaign. Likis discusses implications for how NCLB formulas and labels, if not regarded skeptically, can hinder school improvement.
Phony Formative Assessments: Buyer Beware!
W. James Popham
Preventing 1,000 Failures
Douglas Reeves
Finding Time to Talk
Joanne Rooney
ASCD Community in Action
The Impact of NCLB
Amy M. Azzam, Deborah Perkins-Gough and Naomi Thiers
Journal Staff
NCLB: Taking Stock, Looking Forward
Naomi Thiers
Copyright © 2004 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
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