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How No Child Left Behind makes sure no child gets ahead
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The idea seems laudable.
The achievement gap (for the uninitiated, or for those who have never worked in education, this refers to the gap in academic progress and success between racial and socioeconomic groups) is undeniable. For example, in Florida, the annual dropout rate in 2006-2007 was 2.4% for white students, compared to 4.7% for black students and 3.9% for Hispanic students. Miami-Dade County--which has overall dropout rates higher than the state average--had a dropout rate of 4.2% for white students, 7.4% for black students and 5.3% for Hispanic students in 2006-2007.
Even before graduation becomes a question, minority students lag far behind their white counterparts. The gap grows as the students do. While 43% of African-American students read on grade level in lower grades (up from 26% in 2001); but by tenth grade only one in five is reading on grade level. Though more progress appears to have been made in math, reading is a critical area that affects all other areas of a child's education. Without adequate literacy, a child not only cannot pass reading tests; he or she will also struggle with all other subjects. Social studies, science, foreign languages, even math as it pertains to word problems--all of these require students to be able to read and understand what they read. For a student having difficulty reading for comprehension, all classwork, homework, tests and projects will be harder and take longer to do. This creates a frustration that compounds itself daily, until, by the time the child is in high school and is already significantly below grade level, he/she has often lost almost all motivation. It seems futile. Why bother trying and trying and trying, when each year the goal seems even less attainable?
The idea behind the No Child Left Behind Act was, and is, to close the achievement gap. A praiseworthy goal, to be sure. It is obviously in everyone's interest for all students to perform better in school, be literate, graduate from high school, go on to college or trade school or the work force, armed with the tools needed to succeed.
So how is it that, if you talk to most teachers or administrators nowadays, No Child Left Behind has become more laughable than laudable...at best? And an almost criminal failure, at worst?
For starters, No Child Left Behind relies far too heavily on standardized tests, most of which are fundamentally flawed. While the questions should be challenging for students at that grade level, they should not be challenging for teachers with degrees in the subject area. Yet that actually happens. In an FCAT Reading workshop I personally attended two years ago, there was a lengthy discussion amongst a roomful of English and reading teachers as to the correct answers for several FCAT questions. This is not uncommon. When teachers cannot even agree on the answer for a multiple-choice test (where there is no "partial credit"), how can tenth-graders be expected to get it right?
Besides the flaws inherent in the tests themselves (and there are certainly plenty in the FCAT), No Child Left Behind has also created a culture of Testing Takes All. In many schools--particularly schools where test scores have been low in recent years--nearly everything revolves around the test. Preparing for the test, learning test-taking strategies, motivating for the test, often at the expense of other worthwhile subjects like history, civics, science, geography and arts. Not only does constant preparation for a test bore most students to death (regardless of their level or abilities), it also sends kids the message that this test is more important than anything else. If they fail, they too often regard themselves as failures, and when school is completely centered around that test, and they have failed it several years in a row, many soon start to feel there is no way they will ever pass it. They effectively give up. If they are not going to pass that test, they are not going to graduate, and if there is nothing else going on in school to hold their interest or motivate them to continue (which there usually is not, if the school is focusing on nothing but the FCAT most of the year), they are likely candidates to drop out.
On the other side of the coin, excessive focus on the test can make students who are at or above grade level, and/or who are exceptional test-takers, unnecessarily cocky. After all, if that test is the most important feature of school, and they were able to breeze through it successfully, what is there left for them to learn? They already know all anyone expects them to know (they think).
We must not forget that this test is meant to ensure a minimum level of skills. Theoretically, all students who have been receiving a quality education from responsible teachers, assisted by responsible (and literate) parents, and have put in the effort needed on their own end, should have no great difficulty passing the test on time. By placing such emphasis on simply passing that test, to the exclusion of other academic goals, children are sent the message, however unintentionally, that they are "done."
Since schools are subject to funding based, in large part, upon test results (passage rates among retakers; passage rates among first-time takers; progress made from year to year overall and in certain subgroups such as special education, limited English proficiency, the lowest 25%, etc.), it is little surprise that schools, particularly low-achieving schools, pour as many of their resources as they can spare--and some they can't--into core classes tested by the FCAT and into remedial classes like Intensive Reading and Intensive Math. While class size restrictions are observed rigorously in classes covering material or skills tested by the FCAT, they go out the window fast in electives or any class not tested on the FCAT. The same goes for materials. One salient example is the willingness of the Miami-Dade County Public School district to adopt a new program for Intensive Reading classes every year. Each time, it gets rolled out with a great deal of fanfare and is touted as the latest and greatest, proven by much research, to improve students' reading skills and (seemingly more importantly) test scores. Most of these new programs require computers, software, and other technological equipment, not to mention hours of professional development to train the reading teachers to implement the new program effectively. By the time the teachers finally start to get the hang of the new program (whether or not they believe that it is somehow the substitute for teaching that the district usually seems to think it is) and learn how best to implement it in their classrooms, the FCAT is over, the year is over, and the next year, there is yet another new program better than the last. Each time, the district sinks millions into the new program, only to relegate it to storage to collect dust after that trial run year. "Reading Plus" is one such example. Opinions are mixed as to whether or not it was truly an effective program, or whether teachers in Miami-Dade County really had the resources necessary to implement it correctly in the classroom (Reading Plus delegates said they did not), but regardless, after a year of professional development sessions for reading teachers, district visits and check-ups on whether or not teachers were making effective use of the incredibly expensive program, it was scrapped.
But that only serves to bring up another valid point. No Child Left Behind tends to create lots of mandates for what levels students must perform on, and plenty of restrictions about how classrooms should be set up, how they should function, what should be taught in them and how, yet the money to implement those standards and restrictions generally does not follow. In the case of Reading Plus, schools were expected to implement the program exactly as prescribed by the company producing the program, yet, since the district obviously could not afford to turn every reading teacher's classroom into a computer lab, each reading teacher was given only seven computers, meaning students were expected to "rotate" through stations. Each student was meant to get on the program every day of class for half an hour. But the 80-minute blocks do not allow for every student to get on the computer every class, much less once one considers the realities of the classroom: behavior problems that are usually amplified in settings where they are supposed to be "working independently" while the teacher assists other students; students who are not behavior problems but none the less do not do what they're supposed to do while the teacher is not watching them; and the inevitable technological problems and glitches that slow the process down. In the case of Reading Plus, the program was very slow to begin with (meaning students rarely made it through their whole agenda in less than half an hour), froze up often, and/or sent them back to the beginning. This created needy students who, instead of working independently on the computers as they were supposed to while the teacher helped another small group of students, were vying for the teacher's attention to get assistance with the program or the computer or the kid sitting next to him throwing paper at him. In a computer lab, where all students could have been put on the computers at the same time and the teacher could have circulated around to help the students needing assistance, it might have worked quite well. In a classroom with one teacher, twenty-five kids, and seven computers, it was impossible to implement the way it was intended to be used.
Great ideas for what should be done in the classroom, and how, are only great insofar as there is funding to implement them properly. Without that--doing things "halfway," as seems to happen all too often in Miami public schools--students are missing out on a lot.
But an equally important point, that does not get equal attention in public conversation, is that when all available resources are funneled disproportionately into classes centered around increasing the test scores of the lowest-performing percentiles, the highest-performing percentiles--or even just those with the minimum necessary skills to pass the FCAT--tend to be neglected. The general consensus seems to be, "Well, they passed the test, they're on grade level, they'll be OK." Few resources are designated for programs designed to challenge the abilities and creativities of students already meeting those minimum standards mandated by No Child Left Behind and tested by the FCAT. Even high-performing children--to make no mention of average, grade-level children--are still children. They are still subject to boredom and frustration and lack of motivation, and if they are not consistently being challenged to strive harder and achieve more, many are liable if not to get behind where students their age should be, at least not to rise to where they personally could be. When a child is on grade level, that should not mean that he is stopped and kept right there until the rest of his peers catch up with him. Instead, he should be encouraged to keep moving forward. Though we want all students meeting certain minimum standards, we also need those students who are already ahead to keep moving ahead.
The United States is already lagging behind many countries in Europe, not even to mention Asia, when it comes to education. In these tough economic times of layoffs and record-high unemployment, major corporations and research facilities are importing employees from other countries because they simply cannot find American graduates with the necessary knowledge, skills or experience for those positions. In other words, very often, American graduates are not competitive with graduates from other countries. If we want to become competitive again, all children should be pushed ahead, especially those who are not behind. The needs of average- and high-performing students should be considered right alongside the needs of struggling children.
Minimums should remain minimums...not standards of excellence, beyond which there is nothing left to achieve. Gifted programs need funding, too, as do honors programs, AP programs, and academic electives.
Making sure no child gets left behind should not mean holding the rest of the children back so that no child gets ahead, either.
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