Sen Edward Kennedy in an opinion article printed in The Washington Post argues that the No Child Left Behind Law needs revision and better funding but that it should not be abandoned. This is the sixth anniversary of the singing of the NCLB law. Kennedy was a lead author of the bill and attended the signing in Hamilton along with John Boehner and President Bush. Excerpts:
- On the plus side, the law demands that all children must benefit — black or white, immigrant or native-born, rich or poor, disabled or not. Before its enactment, only a handful of states monitored the achievement of every group of students in their schools. Today, all 50 states must do that. Across the country, schools are poring over student data to identify weaknesses in instruction and to improve teaching and learning. All schools now measure performance based not on the achievement of their average and above-average students but on their progress in helping below-average students reach high standards as well.
- The positive changes are evident in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, better known as “The Nation’s Report Card.” The improvements are still modest, but they’re noticeable, particularly among students who formerly were low achievers. We’re beginning to see a narrowing of the achievement gap between white students and other students.
- All of this is good news. But the law still needs major changes to bring out the best in all children. The process for rating troubled schools fails to reward incremental progress made by schools struggling to catch up. Its one-size-fits-all approach encourages “teaching to the test” and discourages innovation in the classroom. We need to encourage local decision makers to use a broader array of information, beyond test scores, to determine which schools need small adjustments and which need extensive reforms.
- The act doesn’t do enough to support teachers as the professionals they are by training and mentoring them and by placing good teachers in the schools that need them most. It fails to deal with the dropout crisis, which puts large numbers of young students beyond the reach of the American dream. It doesn’t involve parents enough in helping their children succeed. It falls short in achieving smaller classes so that teachers can give children the one-on-one attention they need.
- Most of all, the law fails to supply the essential resources that schools desperately need to improve their performance. We can’t achieve progress for all students on the cheap.
- As Democrats and Republicans choose their nominees in our democratic process, and as President Bush prepares to deliver his last State of the Union address, let us all remember that we owe it to our children and our children’s children to put progress ahead of politics and support what is working in school reform, and to work together to fix what is not.
From the Washington Post, “How to Fix ‘No Child’, “ written by Sen. Edward Kennedy
“Sen. Kennedy Says That No Child Left Behind Deserves To Be Fixed”
Which suggests that it needs to be scrapped.
More detail on Joe C.’s logic–
Is nobody asking if public education is supposed to benefit the individual or the public? If the public is to benefit, then we must sort out how much we must devote to benefit those who are incapable of learning. The notion that “all children can learn” is simplistic and false. I am not here arguing that children with severe disabilities are unworthy of attention–in fact, I’ve worked closely with several disabled K-12 students, and if the proper education can be provided then they become productive citizens who are an asset to their communities. On the other hand, I’ve seen children with severe disabilities who suffered through the rigors of the school day only to meet their demise, as predicted medically, far before adulthood–it didn’t seem to me proper regardless of the perspective one embraces.
Is nobody concerned about how we’re going to pay for all this? As I recently ranted at a faculty meeting where I teach, at some point we need to tell students “Look, you are buying the cheapest education available, and we’ll do the best job we can, but we’re NOT available 24/7/365!”
Education will not be fixed until we forbid politicians from inventing new programs. Require them to fund schools, directly and simply, with the least possible level of reportage and oversight and legal restrictions. This was the supersystem for education that existed in the early 20th century, the time that led to the greatest levels of inventiveness and literacy in American history, the school system that produced the corps of engineers that was a crucial factor in winning WWII, implementing the Marshall plan, and propelling the USA to the lofty heights of most prosperous nation in history. It worked once–why not bring it back and see if it works again?
Dr. Ruddick, you write,
Didn’t the corps of engineers that worked during WW2 come from a time when the majority of adolescents finished their education at about the eighth grade? High schools at that time did not attempt to educate the masses. And before the time of WW2, the percentage of children attending high school was even smaller. I’ve kept some of the textbooks my parents used in high school and it is obvious that the level of academic work for high school then was much higher than it is today.
How to provide a quality education for all students is the challenge of today. You seem to have faith that the educational establishment, if given the resources and freedom, will produce quality results. But historically, we’ve seen school systems when left to themselves become bloated bureaucracies — padded with well paid, well meaning people — completely ineffective in producing anything much of quality. Children were pushed through the system at great expense and many graduated without any academic skills. My impression is that your faith in the system is not justified by history.
Wasn’t the main reason that state government got into legislating school testing, school accountability, school report cards, etc., the fact that the educational establishment proved that it was utterly incapable and, in fact, disinterested in making itself accountable?
Your thought to improve schools by simply giving a lot of authority and money to the educational establishment — “It worked once–why not bring it back and see if it works again?” — seems unlikely to get much support. We cannot bring back a previous time when only a small fraction of the population wanted or needed higher education. But more importantly, I don’t think the educational establishment has a history that gives it much credibility; it has failed again and again to provide leadership or vision that could help guide the formation of public policy. It is increasingly seen as simply another political entity whose primary concern is promoting the security and welfare of its own members. Most people, it seems to me, would not think it reasonable to believe that simply giving the educational establishment more money and more freedom would likely lead to quality results.
The educational establishment itself, I believe, must show leadership about educational reform and should generate and explain plans for reform to the public. These plans should be based on sound educational and organizational theory and should be compelling in their thoroughness. American education needs radical reform. Why are there not leaders in the educational establishment who will lead this reform? Why is the educational establishment not generating cogent ideas that could help form and inform a meaningful discussion about school reform?
Isn’t it ironic that even the very educated can have no knowledge of their own history, or no grounding in the harsh truths of the real world. The mind doth boggle, it doth.
Ah, I write “prevent the politicians from inventing educational programs” and the immediate conclusion is that old Ruddick wants the educational bureaucracy that the politicians created to keep on what it’s been doing.
Yes, once upon a time an eighth-grader knew more than our typical HS grads now know. And once upon a time we were approaching the highest practical level of literacy. Back then, the education “establishment” was made up entirely of educators. One became a new teacher and found a long-ternured faculty that was ready to mentor, a building principal who attained the position only after years of classroom teaching and recognition by peers, and a sysytem superintendent who was an educator more than politician.
Back then, teacher training involved lots of coursework in subjects that would be taught in school–not in theoretical or management-oriented education courses.
You argue that legislators demanded assessments because the educators wouldn’t do so. That’s blatantly false. Educators in the 1970s cried out in frustration over “social promotion” policies–implemented by administrator-politicians, not teachers–that meant that grading was irrelevant. The entire “self-esteem” movement was created not by teachers, but by a state of California commission (which later recanted their “make every child feel good” nonsense, but too late to prevent the collapse of standards and discipline).
EVERY factor in the decline of education has come from the state houses and boards; bloated administrations, politicization, “flavor of the month” programs, work conditions that inspire most new teachers to leave the profession in less than four years.
Considering that every state-invented program has failed and failed again, I think it’s reasonable to suggest that we could do no worse if we held teachers responsible for student learning once more–and not by threatening them with termination of employment if their stubborn little charges refuse to learn, but by giving them REAL authority to pass, fail, and discipline within the standards of the profession.
The biggest question to answer in that scenario is what job-retraining programs will be necessary for the dozens and perhaps hundreds of out-of-work administrators who will fall away from school districts large and small. I suppose the grant writers will sign on to art and charitable organizations, and the public-relations staff can go into advertising or politics, but where oh where will the curriculum “specialists” land if we return to the days when teachers were expected to be able to teach to standards without anyone to translate them?
Dr. Ruddick,
I just don’t think it is accurate to put all the blame for the woes of education — EVERY factor, as you say — on the actions of state house politicians. I can’t see how it is possible that a fair analysis of history would not conclude that a large share of the blame for the woes of public education, in fact, falls on the educational establishment.
I remember, along with you, educators in the 1970’s complaining and griping about all sorts of things. But I don’t remember any leadership, or, really, much effort at leadership to congeal teachers into a meaningful voice for school reform or school improvement. I taught in a school district where in the 1970’s the teachers’ union decided to strike. I was a new teacher and made the decision to support the strike. The strike issue was mostly about increasing teacher pay. I think the record of history shows that most organized teacher actions, in the 1970’s and afterwards, centered on union issues of teacher pay and work conditions. The purpose of organized teacher actions, in the history I’ve lived through as I remember it, has been to strengthen teacher rights by strengthening the structures of the status quo via strengthening the negotiated contract.
The rationale, I guess, was that by increasing teacher pay and by giving teachers more contract protection, public education indirectly would be improved. What was missing in this rationale, however, was a workable plan to help solve the gathering crisis in public education. Simply giving teachers more pay and better contracts was not sufficient. What was needed was comprehensive school reform. But to tackle comprehensive school reform would have been a divisive issue for teachers and teacher’s unions — many teachers simply are comfortable with their standing within the status quo and fiercely resist change — and so it was never an issue that was seriously addressed.
The poor results of our schooling structure has always been a concern to a lot of teachers. I remember discussions in faculty meetings about the obvious fact that many students, regardless of their credits and grades, as graduates had failed to attain an adequate level of academic achievement. Regardless of the discussions, not much changed. What I observed in the school in which I taught, I’m sure, was commonplace throughout the state.
The way I remember, it was because the educational community failed to reform itself that the politicians became involved.
I’m thinking about your statement,
The biggest issue in education, it seems to me, is the issue of student motivation and, also, teacher motivation. I wondering how you are envisioning the school you refer to — how it would work in practice to motivate students and teachers to new levels of engagement and achievement. The devil is in the details.
Mike, surely you understand that, as labor unions, the NEA/AFT/AAUP are constrained by law. They are required to represent the interests of their members–NOT to provide leadership or to set standards for the profession. And can you tell me who created those labor laws? That’s right, the very people you’re telling me not to blame.
And would the professional association for faculty create immediate, earth-shaking improvements? No, it took us years to get into this mess and it will take years to get out of it. A lot would depend on who was empowered to set initial standards and guiding principles for such an association, and the best candidate pool for that job should be teachers who’ve been on the job for several decades, ones who have a good handle on what really happens in a classroom when students are learning.
It’s not out-of-bounds to suggest that creating an educational establishment that works more like the bar association or the medical boards would lead to a higher degree of professionalism. But that, again, would require the cooperation of the legislators, who–let’s face it–have been talking “education reform” for decades now, while every new “reform” or objective they implement either has no effect or makes things worse.
If you have any counter-proposals that you think are promising, I’d appreciate hearing them. If they involve non-educators (in which group I include Susan Tave Zellman and Margaret Spellings–politicians!) making education decisions based on their own sound-bites, I’ll politely say “no thanks, I’ll pass” in advance.
Dr. Ruddick,
I’ve made several posts that show my thinking about what a counter-proposal might include, and you’ve responded in part to these previous posts:
“Strickland Should Use Charter Schools To Help Fulfill His Promise: ‘Reform and Renew the System of Education Itself’ ”
Joe Lacey, And the New Dayton School Board, Must Find A Way To Transform Failed DPS Organizational Structure
A Great Question: How Can We Tell If a School Is Excellent?
My judgment is that the public school system is in need of a radical transformation. The educational establishment — which includes university departments of education, school board associations, teacher associations — I believe, should show leadership in helping to bring public education transformation to reality. My thought is that radical change should be envisioned in a long term plan that would show how to slowly phase out the old guard of teachers and administrators into retirement, and give new teachers a new vista of professional opportunity. The radical change that is needed would be fiercely resisted if it is imposed in the short term — but what may seem impossible in the short term could be very possible to envisage in the long term.
What seems clear, to me, is that to propose that we simply advance the present system into the indefinite future is not reasonable. The result of the educational establishment’s intransigence concerning making meaningful reform, I believe, is that the public will lose more and more patience with the system. The general public will not tolerate a continuation of the present system indefinitely, and the result will be that more and more school reforms will be imposed through the political system. What is needed is educational leadership. I believe that Gov. Strickland — because he is a Democrat and because he has established himself as a strong proponent of making public education more effective — has an opportunity to help such leadership emerge. I think he should look to ways of reforming the charter school laws and should use those renewed laws to help bring transformational leadership into reality.