To Improve the Schools, Overhaul NLCB
By Monty Neill and Lisa Guisbond
In this most wealthy of nations, the quality of education in low-income and minority communities is often woefully inadequate. Proponents of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act claim the law will change this unconscionable fact of American life. Unfortunately, NCLB has not pushed states to promote rich and varied educational experiences for all children. Instead, by attaching very high stakes to standardized test results in two subjects, NCLB has caused more harm than good.
No Child Left Behind, the current version of the longstanding Elementary and Secondary Education Act, has come up for reauthorization just as the presidential campaign season begins in earnest. It has thus become a focus of attention for candidates and citizens alike. If Congress does not pass a reauthorized bill this year, as seems increasingly likely, the next U.S. president will be a key player in what becomes of this law.
Public opinion polls reveal a growing dissatisfaction with NCLB’s narrow focus on standardized testing and punitive approach to struggling students and schools. The presidential candidates are clearly catching on, at least on the Democratic side, using rhetoric that is increasingly critical of the law and saying it needs to be fixed. The ongoing campaign is a critical opportunity to keep the candidates’ attention focused on what is required to really leave no child behind and how far we have to go to achieve that noble goal.
The real problems facing U.S. schools serving children of color include inadequate resources, too few highly skilled teachers, and watered down "basic skills" curricula coupled with instruction that is sometimes little more than narrow preparation for standardized tests. The children who attend these struggling schools often lack adequate housing, nutrition, and health care. It is ludicrous to claim that gaps in achievement between these students and children who begin school with every possible advantage can be solved simply through a limited increase in federal funding tied to demands for rapid increases in test scores on pain of severe punishment.
No Child Left Behind assumed that with a modest increase in resources, all children could score proficient on state tests in reading and math by 2014. Voluminous research concludes this is not possible. No Child Left Behind mandates "adequate yearly progress," annual steps toward reaching the impossible goal, but study after study says 70 to 100 percent of U.S. schools will not make this goal. Demanding the impossible is demoralizing, not motivational.
Over the years, states have come to rely on standardized, mostly multiple-choice tests to measure student learning. These tests fail to assess higher order skills, so they tell us nothing about how well our children are learning to analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and apply learning. Because schools that fail to make AYP are eventually harshly sanctioned, in many schools the tests have become the whole curriculum. This third class, back-of-the-bus schooling would be unacceptable to most middle or upper class parents, but it is apparently considered acceptable, even encouraged, for low-income children.
The current version of NCLB demands that schools jump through one-size-fits-all hoops, striving through narrowed curriculum to reach a goal few will reach, only to be forced to engage in changes that probably will not work. This is not education reform, it is education deform.
There is a ray of hope in an emerging consensus about how to improve the federal law to help and not harm those on the bottom end of the “achievement gap.” For example, the Joint Statement on NCLB, signed by 140 education, civil rights, religious, and other groups (including Advancement Project) representing 150 million Americans, recommends basic changes to the law to simplify its overly complex structure and halt the narrowing of curriculum, while expecting sustained progress in school improvement and student outcomes. A working group called the Forum on Educational Accountability (FEA) took the Joint Statement recommendations and developed more detailed proposals for improving NCLB. These include:
The FEA recommendations would go a long way toward making the federal law one that helps, not hinders, far-reaching and sustained educational improvement. Dozens of civil rights groups are among the Joint Statement signers, lending their support to controversial reforms to the federal law such as multiple measures and expecting a rational rate of improvement from schools.
Candidates for president need to hear from voters on the campaign trail about how NCLB is failing to address the real needs of children and schools. They need to be pushed to support changes such as those proposed in the Joint Statement and by FEA. Then there will be reason to hope that a new president will work with Congress to help craft and support a law that enriches learning for all our children, particularly the most needy.
- The Joint Statement and FEA recommendations are available at www.edaccountability.org.
- FairTest has many materials on NCLB as well as on testing and alternatives in the schools and in college admissions.
Monty Neill is co-executive director of FairTest.
Lisa Guisbond is a testing reform analyst for FairTest.
