Julia Steiny
November 7 2008
Dear Next President of the United States:
Soon you will be confronted with what to do about the 600-pound-gorilla federal law called No Child Left Behind. While it is almost universally hated you must proceed carefully because it did get states to collect and publish data about the kids who were most ignored — poor kids children of color and those with special needs. This attention was a good thing and long overdue.
The only other really good thing NCLB did was to force states to build 21st-century data systems that could handle the oceans of new information — many more test results participation rates demographics finances opinion surveys and so forth. Fine-grained information is really useful when it is used well.
Sadly NCLB used the good information to hunt for failure. Honestly “success” is hardly mentioned in the law’s massive 1200 pages. Instead NCLB identified 37 “targets” schools had to hit — participation and proficiency rates on test scores broken down by race economic status and gender. By 2014 all students are expected to be proficient in English math and science.
Anticipating the 2014 deadline for perfection states set schedules of interim targets that step up every few years to reach 100-percent proficiency. Math scores have always been lower than the English results so the increases for the math targets are necessarily steeper than those for English. Missing even one target puts the school on public notice as a “school in need of improvement” the law’s euphemism for failure. Since its passage in 2002 the law has been strafing the education landscape with “failure” labels.
And during that time the scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress — the gold-standard tests — barely budged. NCLB isn’t working well.
So here’s the solution: Go positive. Big time. Turn NCLB’s unrelenting negativity exactly 180 degrees. Remember that at the other end of the federal policy are children — squirmy little creatures born with powerful appetites for soaking up information. They don’t always want to learn what the teacher wants to teach but they respond well to positive attitudes and grown-ups who are nice to them. The perky upbeat tone of voice that kindergarten teachers use with children should be the tone of the rewritten law.
In fact don’t let any policymaker anywhere near that law’s reauthorization who can not think like a loving parent. Good parents discipline which means “to teach” in the sense of giving instruction to a disciple. Clueless parents punish which is to say cause pain when the child misbehaves in a misguided attempt to force the child to cooperate. Copious research shows that punishment doesn’t work with children. Why would it work with schools?
As presidential candidates both of you keep talking about “change.” The change education most needs is a resurrection of a red-blooded can-do American spirit that believes in success creates incentives and praises rigorous effort as good parents do.
Every day NCLB produces miserable news. None of South Carolina’s 85 school districts succeeded at making the Adequate Yearly Progress demanded by NCLB for the second year in a row. The whole state is “in need of improvement.” Is this doing their kids any good?
Nearly one-third of all Illinois public schools failed to meet their performance targets.
California officials predict that every one of the 6000-plus schools that serve low-income students will be deemed failures — needing “restructuring” in the words of the law — by the year 2014.
And these are only examples. Failure is mushrooming throughout the country. We’re watching a slow bloody train wreck whose devastation will be complete in 2014.
All along researchers argued emphatically that it is impossible for all subgroups of children to improve their achievement in lockstep to perfect proficiency. They were largely silenced as racists and wusses. States did as they were told and built curriculum frameworks for each subject and each grade level from which tests were developed.
Building robust data-driven accountability systems was something educators needed to do. But to give schools time to get their act together state departments of education made it easy to hit the targets in the first few years. But NCLB is now six years old so the bars for the targets are rising with ever-steeper demands to meet the deadline. Most schools have not figured out how to force their students to ace the tests which is why we’re seeing mass failure.
NCLB has cultivated academic failure just as the zero-tolerance laws of the 1990s cultivated a criminal population that filled the prisons to overflowing. Those with great faith in the powers of punishment see huge numbers of acceptable casualties as evidence of rigor.
I’m all for accountability but NCLB turned out to be a witch hunt. It’s not using good information to good purpose.
So dear Mr. Next President I recommend putting all the new data systems to work finding schools where the kids’ eyes are bright and hopeful where the teachers regularly laugh with their students where taking tests is a mere annoyance that assures the community that robust learning is thriving. Such schools exist. Use your celebrity to make a fuss over them. Encourage others to adopt their can-do techniques. Feed cajole incentivize intrigue and trick schools into developing strong appetites for great teaching and learning.
If you really do mean change then go militantly positive with NCLB. Be the good parent. Instead of Mommie Dearest.
Julia Steiny a former member of the Providence School Board consults for government agencies and schools; she is co-director of Information Works! Rhode Island’s school-accountability project. She can be reached at juliasteiny@cox.net or c/o EdWatch The Providence Journal 75 Fountain St. Providence RI 02902.
