Thread: NCLB

Here's an update on some of the schools that cannot meet the NCLB requirements. The questions now is, "what is to be done about it?" If anything.

LOS ANGELES — As the director of high schools in the gang-infested neighborhoods of the East Side of Los Angeles, Guadalupe Paramo struggles every day with educational dysfunction.
For the past half-dozen years, not even one in five students at her district’s teeming high schools has been able to do grade-level math or English. At Abraham Lincoln High School this year, only 7 in 100 students could. At Woodrow Wilson High, only 4 in 100 could.

For chronically failing schools like these, the No Child Left Behind law, now up for renewal in Congress, prescribes drastic measures: firing teachers and principals, shutting schools and turning them over to a private firm, a charter operator or the state itself, or a major overhaul in governance.

But more than 1,000 of California’s 9,500 schools are branded chronic failures, and the numbers are growing. Barring revisions in the law, state officials predict that all 6,063 public schools serving poor students will be declared in need of restructuring by 2014, when the law requires universal proficiency in math and reading.
“What are we supposed to do?” Ms. Paramo asked. “Shut down every school?”

With the education law now in its fifth year — the one in which its more severe penalties are supposed to come into wide play — California is not the only state overwhelmed by growing numbers of schools that cannot satisfy the law’s escalating demands.
In Florida, 441 schools could be candidates for closing. In Maryland, some 49 schools in Baltimore alone have fallen short of achievement targets for five years or more.

In New York State, 77 schools were candidates for restructuring as of last year.
Some districts, like those in New York City, have moved forcefully to shut large failing high schools and break them into small schools. Los Angeles, too, is trying small schools, along with other innovations, and David L. Brewer III, its schools superintendent, has just announced plans to create a “high priority district” under his direct control made up of 40 problem schools.
Yet so far, education experts say they are unaware of a single state that has taken over a failing school in response to the law. Instead, most allow school districts to seek other ways to improve.

Entire: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/ed...hp&oref=slogin



Comments? Opinion? Should the principals and administrators and some teachers be fired, and the students able to go to private institutions?



Educrats. Top-heavy and middle-heavy with bureaucrats, and kids with loser parents from LA, and Florida and New York.

to borrow a line i heard recently, "constantly weighing a hog doesn't make it gain weight".

Testing is needed in some respects but there are negative factors in many ways. Not addressing the different learning styles, and also teachers "teaching students to pass the test," which results in a lack of critical thinking and creativity.

Mike DeVries / The Capital Times-AP
Not Teaching to the Test: Wasserman in his classroom on Oct. 31


EDUCATION
Test Protest

A Wisconsin middle school teacher opposed to No Child Left Behind explains why he refused to administer a state exam to his students.

By Peg Tyre | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Nov 3, 2007 | Updated: 1:17 p.m. ET Nov 3, 2007





No Child Left Behind created its first "conscientious objector" this week. On Tuesday, middle school teacher David Wasserman, 36, who instructs a multi-grade class at the Sennett Middle School in Madison, Wis., opted to sit in the teachers' lounge rather than administer the state exam, which is required under the controversial federal law. After word of his protest was reported in the local paper, then picked up by a newswire, he was deluged with congratulatory phone calls and messages of support from across the nation. He spoke to NEWSWEEK's Peg Tyre about his actions. Excerpts:


NEWSWEEK: Was this a spontaneous protest?
David Wasserman: No. I gave my principal a heads-up that this was coming. I did it in a way that my students wouldn't be aware of what was happening on their test day.

Why did you take this stand?
I feel that the tests assess academic achievement in biased ways, with a challenging and confusing format of questions and answers. The tests don't engage thinking, questioning or connecting--ideas that we reinforce in our school the rest of the year.


What kind of statement were you trying to make?
That the tests have a negative impact--financially, morally and emotionally--on kids, the parents and the community. They aren't positive for teachers either. They are not learning tools. As teachers, we don't learn how kids did or didn't do on the tests so that we can improve. The scores are released to the media directly, so they can highlight schools that haven't made Adequate Yearly Progress [the standard under the law]. The teachers must take that blow and then somehow rally to raise those scores without the information they need and with even less support from the community.

But haven't the state tests been useful and important tools to underscore the achievement gaps between poor kids, kids of color and middle-class white kids?
If there is a gap, it's not because there is a gap in true academic achievement of the students. What you are seeing is a bias in the testing. If we had an aural language assessment [a test using the spoken word], for example, we'd have different test results that would show less of a gap between those groups.

Entire & Link: Teacher Boycotts 'No Child' Law | Newsweek Education | Newsweek.com