What It Takes to Make a Student (No Child Left Behind)

[ulysses]

(NYT, free registration, yadda yadda)

When the law (uly note: NCLB) took effect, at the beginning of 2002, official Washington was preoccupied with foreign affairs, and many people in government, and many outside it too, including the educators most affected by the legislation, seemed slow to take notice of its most revolutionary provision: a pledge to eliminate, in just 12 years, the achievement gap between black and white students, and the one between poor and middle-class students. By 2014, the president vowed, African-American, Hispanic and poor children, all of whom were at the time scoring well below their white counterparts and those in the middle class on standardized tests, would not only catch up with the rest of the nation; they would also reach 100 percent proficiency in both math and reading. It was a startling commitment, and it made the promise in the law’s title a literal one: the federal government would not allow a single American child to be educated to less than that high standard.

snip

This contention — that the achievement gap is on its way to the dustbin of history — is one that Bush and Spellings have expressed frequently in the past year. And the gap better be closing: the law is coming up on its fifth anniversary. In just seven more years, if the promise of No Child Left Behind is going to be kept, the performances of white and black students have to be indistinguishable.

But despite the glowing reports from the White House and the Education Department, the most recent iteration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the test of fourth- and eighth-grade students commonly referred to as the nation’s report card, is not reassuring. In 2002, when No Child Left Behind went into effect, 13 percent of the nation’s black eighth-grade students were “proficient” in reading, the assessment’s standard measure of grade-level competence. By 2005 (the latest data), that number had dropped to 12 percent. (Reading proficiency among white eighth-grade students dropped to 39 percent, from 41 percent.) The gap between economic classes isn’t disappearing, either: in 2002, 17 percent of poor eighth-grade students (measured by eligibility for free or reduced-price school lunches) were proficient in reading; in 2005, that number fell to 15 percent.

more: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/magazine/26tough.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

A little commentary:

I'm posting this in the middle of the night (eastern) because I'm not going to bed tonight. I work in a school that is the poster child for the achievement gap - 97% free/reduced price meals, 99% African American. What NCLB has meant for my school is not more meaningful support, but more oversight and more threats. I'm going to be up tonight scoring assessment data, not planning more effective instruction - much less solving the economic problems our kids bring when they come to us.

I'd like to believe that a Democratic Congress will, in 2007, meaningfully revise No Child Left Behind. I doubt very much that it will, though.

[emlev]

1. Link to thread with petition against NCLB reauthorization

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2815124&mesg_id=2815124
Just posted in the last half hour or so.

[ulysses]

2. thanks.

We'll see what good it does.

[emlev]

3. You're welcome. How about

if you post your OP on my thread, and give me a rec? That will kick mine back up to the top, and if it gets one more vote after that it'll be on the Greatest page. That way more people will see your post and mine and hopefully sign the petition.

[nengsth]

4. Thanks, what now?

Dear schoolteacher - what do you suggest is the government's role in raising student scores? There is absolutely nothing you can do about economic problems your kids bring to the school.

PS:

Their economic problems arise due to the lowlife guy who got the lady pregnant and skipped out on her. What could the government possibly do when the lowlife guy is doing this and the ladies engage in relationships of this nature?

[ulysses]

5. hmm.

Their economic problems arise due to the lowlife guy who got the lady pregnant and skipped out on her.

It's that simple? Dang, I need to let some folks know...

[heidler1]

6. The true commonality of under achieving students is poverty.

I'm sure that genes have a lot to do with both too, but many can be saved from this endless cycle.

[Mythsaje]

7. Well, obviously THIS government

thought it had a role and passed NCLB in an attempt to do exactly that. The fact that the law is useless anyway...

you tell me.

[Greyhound]

8. The last sentence of your post is what makes me want to scream & cry

at the same time. I wish I could honestly disagree with your assessment, but... :banghead::cry::banghead:
:kick: & R

[LWolf]

9. This is no surprise.

No big news to people actually teaching these kids. Mandates, threats, an increase in testing, scripted programs, and bureaucratic time spent scoring, documenting, and meeting all the paperwork demands leaves less time for the things that actually help students learn.

The achievement gap starts even before the "savage inequalities" outlined by Kozol. The entrenched social inequalities in our nation are shameful, hypocritical, and a whole list of other things I'm not going to type right now. The environments that so many of these children are gestated in and born into, and grow up in, create the achievement gap. If all children entered safe, healthy, nurturing environments, had adequate shelter, food, clothing, and nurturing until school age, that gap would decrease quickly.

If all kids had the kind of environment that helps stimulate the critical brain development that happens the first 4 years, that gap would disappear.

If we really want to close the gap, we'll move beyond the school walls and invest in the infrastructure that will make sure that there are no "war zones" in the U.S.. That every single citizen can live in safety. That everyone has access to health care, housing, job training, and whatever they need to make a healthy, productive life for themselves. That every single child in the nation has a multi-layered safety net to help support physical, social/emotional, and intellectual growth and development.

I know you know what I mean. How many teachers can't reach into their classroom and pull out a child that needs so much more than "school" can provide? I have a bunch. The situations they live and grow in break my heart.

How are extra tests, mandates, and paperwork supposed to address that? How are mandated programs and instructional methodology going to?