The President has called for NCLB to be replaced. He says reform just can’t wait.
Reform is critical only if NCLB is repealed. Killed off. Done away with. The federal government needs to stay out of education. Leave education up to local government and states. No more unfunded mandates. No more absurd hoops to jump through.
NCLB has almost ruined national education. President Obama calls for reform from the bottom up, not the top down. This is a good direction. Congress needs to start on this endeavor, yesterday. Education is a local issue.
Hmm well … back to the days of “social promotion”?
And the continuation of vast inequalities even among schools within the same cites/states.
Back????? Did we ever leave social promotion?
Emma, I am not sure what you even mean.
Since I am not really sure what is being proposed, I will withhold my judgement. I want to say anything is better than what is out there now…and then I think about that statement.
Nothing has made for greater disparity between schools than NCLB. Its all in your school population. Got minorities? You are screwed? How about kids on free lunch? You are screwed. Minorities? LEP? Screwed. And your school will revolve around those kids.
Got an average kid? He’s screwed.
Yes, we are perfectly capable of screwing up education at the state level. Who needs the federal government to help us achieve that! While we’re at it lets get the federal government out of our personal lives outside of education as well. Does the term functional illiterates come to mind, and no I’m not referring to illegal aliens.
SA, I am not denying that social promotion is the order of the day. It has been for 4-5 decades. High school kids fail courses but I have known few elementary or middle school kids who actually failed.
Kids have passed for so many decades, no one thinks it will happen to them. F’s be damned. Educational studies document that repeating a grade doesn’t do any good. (how could we tell, it never happens to anyone?) Sadly, more and more kids make no attempt to do what is expected of them because they know nothing will happen to them. It seems like a cycle of doom.
But the above isn’t what’s wrong with NCLB. That crap was going on long before NCLB came on the scene to make matters even worse.
I agree with you that the feds need to get the heck out of education and leave it up to the states and localities, but the President’s proposals for reforming NCLB take us in the opposite direction. His proposals are more like NCLB on steriods.
His major proposal is for national academic standards to replace state academic standards for K -12 education under a federally funded “voluntary” program known as the Common Core State Standards effort (CCSS). Thus far more than 40 states and DC have agreed to adopt the Common Core Standards for all subjects for K – 12, though only the standards for Math and English have been written. The stick used by the feds to entice states to agree to adopt these standards, in many cases sight unseen, was ARRA funds as ARRA funds for education were only available to state’s which agreed to adopt the CCSS.
Working hand in hand with the CCSS effort is the national assessments effort. Two consortia have formed and are drafting assessments which will accompany the new national standards and will replace state assessments. Those consortia are PARCC and SMARTER and both efforts were funded with $350 million in ARRA dollars. Like the CCSS, 40 + states have already agreed to replace their state assessments with one of the consortias’ assessments, and, as before, they’ve agreed to do this sight unseen as the assessments haven’t been developed yet.
How is any of this part of the President’s proposal for reforming education? Adopting common standards and assessments by 2014 will be required for any state to receive federal funding for education, as per the President’s proposed reforms. So much for that “voluntary” thing.
The President’s reforms also call for national standards for teacher qualification and certification, national systems for tracking student performance both during K -12 and after they graduate, and national systems for monitoring teacher performance. None of those standards or systems have been developed yet, but states are required to agree to adopt and implement them if they want to receive federal funds for education.
NCLB required all of this on a state by state basis, whereas the President’s proposal nationalizes it all. Where the President’s proposal differs from NCLB is in accountability. Under NCLB states and schools were expected to have an increasing percentage of students pass their state exams each year. The President’s proposed reforms will do away with that (which I suspect is part of the reason Virginia was able to convince the US DOE to let our pass percentages remain unchanged for the next several years, but that’s totally off topic).
Virginia, BTW, is one of the few states which has refused to replace its K-12 academic standards and assessments with the CCSS. We have revised our standards of learning for Math and English to reflect the CCSS, which is probably necessary as every textbook out there will now be aligned with the CCSS, but thus far we refuse to adopt the CCSS and Assessments.
I hate to put links in comments, but here is a link to the PWC Education Reform blog with information about the Common National Standards and Assessments if any of you want to read more about it.
http://pwceducationreform.wordpress.com/national-academic-standards/
I don’t pretend to know what the answer is, but I can tell you it’s not in standardized test scores equaling sanctions (read “SOLs).
@ Pinko
I agree with you! Under NCLB states were required to submit a plan that would result in 100% of students passing their states standards based exams. The plan Virginia submitted had a mandated pass percentage that would increase on set increments until it reach 100%. We haven’t reached that target for 2 years running and had to get a waiver.
If I had to look at NCLB to pick the one thing which lead made it so problematic, I wouldn’t necessarily point to the accountability parts, though they did play a role. I’d point to how it was implemented by states and schools districts as the biggest failure. Not teachers – because most teachers really didn’t care much either way, but how district officials and school based administrators responded to the accountability mandates.
Rather than use the data obtained from state mandated testing to identify areas where the academic content taught in a class or grade level was falling short of expectations and adapting instruction to address those gaps, district officials implemented intensive test prep programs. We see that net effect every Spring when schools stop teaching content and have students study old SOL test questions. We see that with tutoring for struggling students which isn’t focused on teaching them the content they need to move on to the next level but rather has them study old test questions over and over again. Teachers, BTW, hate the test prep and would much rather have that extra month or two to focus on content proficiency.
Certainly one could blame NCLB’s accountability requirements for this reaction, but I’m not sure I agree with that. I don’t think removing the accountability requirements will suddenly result in school districts focusing on content as opposed to passing the test. I don’t think districts will be any more likely to examine test data from the federally mandated exams to identify content gaps than they are with test data from state mandated exams.
I certainly don’t advocate Obama’s plan. I only advocate killing NCLB.
There is plenty of remediation built into the testing program through out the year, as well as practice of SOL test taking questions. I don’t know what you are basing your statements about remediation on. It really is a huge component in the puzzle for schools with large percents of the ‘big 4.’
If a kid fails adding and subtracting, you have to get that part covered before you can work on adding and subracting fractions or + – decimals.
Remediation isn’t really done in SS and Sci. because it isn’t critical like math and LA. as far as NCLB is.
Pinko, the SOL component you speak to is simply the evaluation of what has been taught. Unfortunately, its importance goes to steroids with NCLB.
NCLB has to go. It is unworkable. I can’t picture the school where every kid masters all subjects.
KimS,, I always enjoy your input. You are well informed and it gives me the perspective from a parent point of view.
Hmmmm, perhaps….if we get enough conservatives in office, we can get the feds completely out of education and kill the dept of..while we are at it.
That would kill nclb
no child’s behind left did always have a pedophilic hue