There are many reasons why the No Child Left Behind program is a failure. First, it depends upon a testing policy borrowed from Texas, which had a very low rating for education when Bush was governor and is counterproductive in its current state. The program is having a seriously damaging effect on education. The federal government only provided 9% of educational funds previously, and the costs for the NCLB program are not being covered.
This leaves even less for states to spend on materials, equipment, and teacher education. The best teaching methods require assessment by portfolio or project assessment, but schools may have to drop these to teach to the national tests. The scoring methods for the tests, the major flaw of relying on one test, the ranges for assessment, and the sanctions applied are penalizing the students they are supposed to serve because these students are being ignored or eliminated from the scores. The NCLB program must either be scrapped or seriously overhauled or our education system will get worse.
These NCLB tests are making bad changes in our schools.
“Critics claim that the law’s focus on complicated tallies of multiple-choice-test scores has dumbed down the curriculum, fostered a “drill and kill” approach to teaching, mistakenly labeled successful schools as failing, driven teachers and middle-class students out of public schools, and harmed special education students and English-language learners through inappropriate assessments and efforts to push out low-scoring students to boost scores.” (Darling-Hamilton 2007)
This author shows us the major problems with the exams. The whole complicated method for measuring schools is intended to improve schools by using sanctions. These are punitive measures that do not work and are making teacher’s average students go elsewhere. As Linda
Darling-Hamilton puts it (2007), “It assumes that what schools need is more carrots and sticks rather than fundamental changes.” Schools that have been doing the right kind of assessment are being forced to scrap this to “teach to the tests”.
The AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) ratings are damaging the minority students and the schools which serve them. In addition to the requirement for passing these tests, the schools must show a certain measure of improvement in each of the 30 targets areas of minorities, all based on the arbitrary level set by the federal government, and completely ignoring the level at which they begin. (Rothstein 2007) Schools, such as Bud Carson Middle School in Hawthorne, California (Wallis and Steptoe 2007), stayed in the “needs improvement” category for sanctions because they serve a large number of second language learners. While most critics agree that segmenting the results of the tests according to the targeted groups is good, the requirements are not having the desired results.
The more diverse the school population is, the more likely it will be penalized under this initiative, so some schools are finding ways to eliminate the low scorers in these groups from the student population.. “In a large Texas city, for example, scores soared while tens of thousands of students–mostly African-American and Latino–disappeared from school. Educators reported that exclusionary policies were used to hold back, suspend, expel or counsel out students to boost test scores.” (Darling-Hamilton 2007)
This means that the segmented rating and the AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) requirement push schools to neglect students who are at and above or far below grade level. The first group will pass the test, while the second group is too far behind to be worth the trouble. So the good students and the really poor students will be ignored, while schools push the borderline students to improve, spending time and money on teaching
them to be good test-takers. (Rothstein 2007) In addition, by applying the same standards for grade level across the board, we are setting the bar too high for some groups, (White Deborah 2008) and too low for others. (Rothstein 2007)
Sanctions use up more education money for no gain. The sanctions for schools that fail the AYP range from being forced to issue vouchers to being reorganized entirely. However, the funds to finance these sanctions, promised by the federal government, are not forthcoming. School districts are being forced to spend money on these less than useful interventions which could be better spent elsewhere. This is because the students did not pass on one test given annually.
Rothstein (2007) notes that the idea of using one single test has been proven to be flawed, since any child, and even the whole class can have a bad day. The scoring evaluation is even more flawed on the subgroups because they are smaller than a full grade, so the margin of error for subgroup achievement is larger. The more integrated a school has more subgroups, and so the accountability is especially distorted for them.
Darling-Hammond states that “the law’s emphasis needs to shift from applying sanctions for failing to raise test scores to hold states and localities accountable for making the systemic changes that improve student achievement.” (2008) She insists that the money spent for one week in Iraq could go a long way to fixing our system. The mandate from the Clinton 2000 initiative was more productive by helping states to develop high-quality standards for teaching and apply proven teaching methods, such as project work, portfolios, and research essays, evaluated by well-trained teachers.
A continuous improvement model should replace the current one, and testing results should be used to measure where more help is needed, not to penalize the schools. Schools threatened with
failure in only one goal will divert attention from all other subjects. (Rothstein 2007) There should also be multiple measures of achievement, including those that assess higher-order thinking and understanding. Money needs to be spent to improve facilities and access to quality teachers with well-equipped schools.
Proponents of the NCLB will point to the rising scores as proof that it works. However, the missing students who are eliminated in many ways, including suspension, counseling out, and transfers are not mentioned. In addition, the areas now neglected as teachers teach test-taking are quietly ignored. So the rising scores are the only evidence that students are learning to pass these tests. What also does not show in these numbers is that as more students pass the tests the less attention the needy learners way below the line are getting.
Those in favor of NCLB say that we must have national standards or we will never have educational equality, but it is an opportunity that is not equal. While a minimal national standard overall for grade-level performance is a laudable goal, it would work as well if the curriculum was compared on a state-by-state basis and the education level assessed in this way. Schools have found ways to cheat the SCLB tests or distort the populations of students taking them, so we would be no worse off using curriculum assessment and it would cost a lot less. The real inequality exists in how federal matching funds are allocated.
States which spend more per capita on education have more money to spend, fewer needy students and they get more federal money. (Rothstein 2007) The needy states have less to spend, more needy students and they get less federal money. Perhaps we should look at equalizing opportunity instead of results.
The NCLB had a genuinely valuable goal, but it isn’t working, and the problem lies in opportunity, not results. The tests for NCLB are flawed, and the idea of measuring education by one test has been proven faulty many times. The sanctions are pushing schools to cheat or adjust their populations so that they score well, by eliminating the lowest scorers. The best and the worst students are now being ignored while schools divert time and money to teach the rest to pass tests.
Progress should be measured and it is a good idea to segment the populations so that schools serving the higher risk students can get extra help, but not so they can be penalized for serving these students. Testing should be limited to use for allocating funds to help raise the scores using the more comprehensive methods which teach many high order skills. Applying tests that can only show that students can pass the tests should be replaced with genuine assessment standards and schools should be helped instead of being spanked. As it stands, the NCLB is going to lower our educational levels as schools try to push the students past these exams, usually at the expense of more valuable activities
References
Darling-Hammond, Linda. “Evaluating No Child Left Behind.” The nation. 2007. Web.
Rothstein, Richard, 2007, The American Prospect. Web.
Wallis, Claudia and Steptoe, Sonja. “How to Fix No Child Left Behind.” Time. 2007. Web.
White Deborah. “Pros & Cons of the No Child Left Behind Act.” About. 2008. Web.