The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation is rapidly destroying the public education system in the United States. This is the overall message of Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Ravitch, a professor of education and former Assistant Secretary of Education, was initially a strong supporter of NCLB; but over the years, as she’s seen the actual outcomes of the NCLB legislation, Ravitch has changed her mind.
The stated purpose of NCLB is to make sure that all children are proficient in reading and math. Proficiency is determined by scores on state-created standardized (multiple choice) exams. Schools whose students fail to show progress are penalized by loss of students to charter schools, loss of federal funding, firings of administrators and teachers, and even having the school shut down. The actual end results of these goals and measures according to Ravitch are: teaching to the test; lowering the percentage score needed to pass state exams; cheating by administrators and teachers; and rampant fear among staff members. I’m surprised the student dropout rate and staff turnover rate are not higher than the already high rates that exist. Who would really enjoy attending or working in such schools under these conditions? “Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools.” (p. 111)
A recently-published article, “Ten signs you work in a fear-based workplace”,
highlights the current situation for most schools. Teachers are micro-managed and threatened, all to produce dubious student test results of progress towards proficiency.
Most of those going into the teaching profession want students to obtain new knowledge and to learn to think critically. Unfortunately, as Ravitch points out, “[NLCB] ignored the importance of knowledge. It promoted a cramped, mechanistic, profoundly anti-intellectual definition of education. In the age of NCLB, knowledge was irrelevant.” (p. 29) When knowledge is irrelevant and standardized test scores are the only measure of effectiveness, any teacher who opposes the narrow focus of NCLB is punished, and even forced out of her chosen profession. “Can teachers successfully educate children to think for themselves if teachers are not treated as professionals who think for themselves?” (p. 67).
All the pressure to make the grade is on the teacher. If a student doesn’t show progress or proficiency, it is the teacher’s fault. According to Ravitch, “NCLB neglected to acknowledge that students share in the responsibility for their academic performance and that they are not merely passive recipients of their teachers’ influence. Nowhere in the federal accountability scheme are there measures or indicators of students’ diligence, effort, and motivation…These factors affect their school performance as much as or more than their teachers’ skill.” (pp. 162-63) And what about the parents? “…in the eyes of the law, the responsibility of the family disappears.” (p. 163) I agree with Ravitch that, “Something is fundamentally wrong with an accountability system that disregards the many factors that influence students’ performance on an annual test—including the students’ own efforts—except for what teachers do in the classroom for forty-five minutes or an hour a day.” (p. 163) “None of us would want to be evaluated—with our reputation and livelihood on the line—solely on the basis of an instrument that is prone to error and ambiguity.” (p. 166)
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation entered into the high-stakes education sweepstakes in a big way. Initially, they poured millions into the small schools concept, certain that this would be the magic bullet. Gates admits in a recent article [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38282806/ns/business-bloomberg_businessweek/] that this hasn’t really worked as planned. But his new idea will surely work: reward successful teachers (those whose students achieve proficiency) with big bonuses, while firing unsuccessful teachers. Right, like that won’t lead to cheating. Or, as Ravitch points out, the current myth is that we can have schools “…made up exclusively of superstar teachers… This is akin to saying that baseball teams should consist only of players who hit over .300 and pitchers who win at least twenty games every season; after all, such players exist, so why should not such teams exist? That fact that no such team exists should give pause to those who believe that almost every teacher in almost every school in almost every district might be a superstar if only school leaders could fire at will.” (p. 184) The fallacy of the myth of superstars is highlighted by research which shows that most teachers ranked ‘best’ in a particular school one year were not the best in a subsequent year. “In other words, being an effective teacher is not necessarily a permanent, unchanging quality…Apparently, the test scores of their students reflected something other than what the teachers did, such as the students’ ability and motivation, or the characteristics of a class or conditions in the school.” (p. 186)
The disturbing conclusion one draws from Ravitch’s analysis is that the true purpose of NCLB is to destroy the public education system and replace it with private, charter, and religious schools, none of which would be required to take the lowest-functioning and/or most troubled students. As it stands, under NCLB, students in low-testing schools can opt out to attend a different school of their choice. But as Ravitch notes, “The regular public schools will enroll a disproportionate share of students with learning disabilities and students who are classified as English-language learners; they will enroll the kids from the most troubled home circumstances, the ones with the worst attendance records and the lowest grades and test scores.” (p. 220) And what will be the outcome for these public schools? They will be closed due to the inability of the teachers to raise test scores. “Privatizing our public schools makes as much sense as privatizing the fire department or the police department. It is possible, but it is not wise.” (p. 221) “Deregulation contributed to the near collapse of our national economy in 2008, and there is no reason to anticipate that it will make education better for most children…Education is too important to relinquish to the vagaries of the market and the good intentions of amateurs.” (p. 222)
Our students are not educated when we only teach to the test. Teachers are not considered professionals when they are micro-managed and threatened. If we want the United States to maintain its place in the world, we need to understand that, “Not everything that matters can be quantified. What is tested may ultimately be less important than what is untested, such as a student’s ability to seek alternative explanations, to raise questions, to pursue knowledge on his own, and to think differently. If we do not treasure our individualists, we will lose the spirit of innovation, inquiry, imagination, and dissent that has contributed powerfully to the success of our society in many different fields of endeavor.” (p. 226) Since NCLB drives out those teachers who are most capable of treasuring individualism, it may already be too late.
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