Tag Archive for ‘NCLB’ at The Core Knowledge Blog

Tag Archive for 'NCLB'

School is in, Senator McCain

Published by Robert Pondiscio on March 6, 2008 in Educational Policy. 0 Comments

Now that John McCain is the GOP nominee, he can count on all kinds of advice from the education commentariat. First up, Fordham’s Checker Finn and Michael J. Petrilli, who offer the Republican standard bearer some suggestions in the Weekly Standard. Noting that McCain “doesn’t consider education a top presidential priority” and has had little to say on the subject, they sugggest McCain integrate education within his larger platform, which promotes a strong, competitive America.

“Start by playing to your strengths, Senator, fitting education policy within three broad themes of your candidacy and worldview: keeping America confident in the face of Islamic terrorism, strengthening our ability to compete in a globalizing world economy, and fighting wasteful spending,” Finn and Petrilli offer. Give U.S. schoolkids a deep knowledge of U.S. history and America’s role as freedom’s champion. “That means not letting history and civics get squeezed out of the curriculum by NCLB’s obsession with reading and math scores,” they write.

Most intriguingly, Finn and Petrilli argue McCain should urge governors “to develop a set of common, rigorous expectations and assessments for all young Americans from Okeechobee to Walla Walla. And he could push Congress to rewrite NCLB so it focuses not just on academic stragglers but also on our savviest youngsters, too.”

Romer on Curriculum Narrowing

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 25, 2008 in Curriculum. 1 Comment

Ed in ‘08 chairman Roy Romer weighs in helpfully (mostly) on the issue of curriculum narrowing and NCLB.

A report from the Center on Educational Policy last year showed 44% of school districts had increased instructional time spent on ELA and/or Math in elementary schools since the passage of No Child Left Behind, cutting time from science, social studies, art and music, physical education, recess, or lunch. According to a followup report this week, districts increasing time for ELA and Math had done so by an average of three hours each week. To make room for the added time, they’ve cut of about two and a half hours each week from one or more other subjects.

“I don’t believe that time should come at the expense of other academic areas like science, history, or the arts,” blogs Romer. “We at ED in ’08 have long advocated for more time for learning in America’s schools. States like Massachusetts have already followed the lead of many other developed nations and put in place a longer school day, and their students are proving all the more successful from it. That extra time is helping to balance out the school agenda so that students all receive the diverse range of subjects – and support – they deserve.”

All well and good, but it would be even more helpful in Governor Romer and others concerned about the narrowing of curriculum would look more closely at the link between content knowledge and reading comprehension, rather than continuing to treat reading as an independent academic subject.

Teaching content IS teaching reading.

The Knowledge Connection

Published by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. on February 16, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Educational Policy. 0 Comments

Why has the No Child Left Behind law left so many children behind? According to the latest scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the reading achievement of eighth-graders has declined since the law was passed in 2001, and the large reading gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children — “the achievement gap” — has stayed where it was. Today’s eighth-graders had recorded gains in fourth grade, but these have not led to improvements in later grades — when reading scores actually count for a student’s future.

Those in Congress in charge of crafting revisions should understand that the law’s disappointing results owe less to defects in the law than to the methods and ideas schools use in their attempts to fulfill the “adequate yearly progress” mandate for all groups of students; this causes schools, as many complain, to teach to reading tests rather than educate children. But intensive test preparation by schools has resulted in lower reading test scores in later grades. “Teaching to the test” does not effectively teach to the test after all.

Studies of reading comprehension show that knowing something of the topic you’re reading about is the most important variable in comprehension. After a child learns to sound out words, comprehension is mostly knowledge. Many technical studies support the assertion that after students can fluently sound out words, relevant knowledge is the crucial difference between students who are good or poor readers. In light of the relevant science, an analysis of the textbooks and methods used to teach reading and language arts — for three hours a day in many places — indicates some of the reasons for the disappointing later results. These test-prep materials are constructed on the mistaken view that reading comprehension is a skill that can be perfected by practice, as typing can be. This how-to conception of reading has caused schools to spend a lot of unproductive time on trivial content and on drills such as “finding the main idea” and less time on history, science and the arts.

Continue reading ‘The Knowledge Connection’

You Got Some Splainin’ To Do!

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 8, 2008 in Educational Policy. 0 Comments

Mike Antonucci, blogging at Intercepts points to a January 31 story by UFT staff writer Michael Hirsch, detailing a phone call from Hillary Clinton to the Delegate Assembly of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers right after the New Hampshire primary. The eyebrow raising quote: “‘Education and children are the causes of my life,’ [Clinton] said and promised that ‘we’re going to get rid of No Child Left Behind,’ a promise that brought delegates to their feet roaring approval.”

Antonucci points out that “get rid of No Child Left Behind” doesn’t exactly square with her campaign’s stated position, which promises to “use the pending reauthorization to expand support early childhood education, improve teacher training, lower class size, enhance parental involvement, eliminate environmental hazards in schools, and protect the programs that work for all of New York’s children” among other things.

Wonk vs. Wonk

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 7, 2008 in Assessment and Testing, Curriculum, Educational Policy, Opinion and Teaching. 1 Comment

I have been watching the renewed hostilities between Eduwonk and Eduwonkette this week over the issue of No Child Left Behind’s impact on curriculum. I feel honor-bound to weigh in, since I inadvertently started the fight. A few thoughts on their posts:

The issue of whether testing has crowded science and social studies off the curriculum is beyond dispute, and I’m not swayed by the argument that if 44% of schools report a narrowing of the curriculum under NCLB, then the legislation is not the culprit, since 56% report no deleterious impact. If 44% of patients reported an adverse reaction to a medication, it would be off the shelves before the sun set. So it’s a problem.

Eduwonk is absolutely correct, however, in noting that good schools focus on curriculum and instruction. “While low-capacity schools may have spent time on social studies pre-NCLB,” he writes, “it’s a safe bet that many of them were not teaching it very well.” But the opposite is also true: most good schools were good schools without any external accountability measures whatsoever, so that’s not where our focus belongs. If the functional structures are in place — strong leadership, good teachers, active oversight, engaged parents who are informed consumers of education, etc. — there are multiple levels of quality control to assure good outcomes. NCLB is all about making bad schools act more like good ones in the absence of those self-policing mechanisms.

Continue reading ‘Wonk vs. Wonk’

The 2% Solution

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 4, 2008 in Educational Policy. 0 Comments

If your child’s school is a persistent low performer, and you have the ability to transfer to a better school at no cost, including transportation, you’d leap at the chance, right? You might think so, except more people are still in the seats at the bitter end of the latest ugly Knicks blowout than transfer their children out of failing NYC schools. According to the New York Daily News, less than 2% of the 181,000 children eligible to transfer to higher-performing schools under NCLB actually did this year.

“Only 9,200 students even applied to leave their failing schools, and of those just 3,090 ultimately enrolled in a different school,” the paper reports. And if you’re tempted to ascribe those low numbers to a quirk in New York’s implementation of NCLB, think again. Nationwide last year, 120,000 students out of 5 million eligible took transfers, meaning New York’s average mirrors the country’s.

“Some parents of kids in failing schools told the Daily News they weren’t even aware they could transfer out, and some were turned away from better schools that are already overcrowded. And still other parents like their children’s schools just fine, even if they are labeled as failing, or think transferring kids will only make the institutions worse.”

Talking NCLB

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 31, 2008 in Curriculum and Podcast and Video. 0 Comments

Greg Toppo of USA Today, Ed Trust’s Amy Wilkins, Joel Packer of the NEA and others chew on No Child Left Behind on WAMU’s Diane Rehm show (Katty Kay of the BBC guest hosts). Listen here.

Wilkins understates the degree to which testing has narrowed curriculum, but lays the blame on the states anyway. “What we’ve seen in too many states and too many school districts, is they’re leaving teachers without a good strong curriculum,” says Wilkins, who wants to see the Feds “provide states with money to develop good strong rich curriculum tools. The way to raise student achievement is a broad, rich, deep curriculum. The problem is the states and the districts haven’t provided teachers with those curriculum tools leaving teachers with only the tests to teach too.”

Toppo points out the futility of talking about comparisons between the U.S. and other countries since “there 50 different standards, one for each state.”

On Sol Stern’s City Journal Piece: Substance Trumps Structure

Published by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. on January 22, 2008 in Educational Policy. 2 Comments

I’m so glad that Sol Stern has written this piece.

The comeback to it that I am already hearing from die-hard choice advocates is: well, the non-choice schools haven’t done so well either! This is an argument?

Stern’s point goes far deeper than that — to doubt whether any of the primarily structural approaches to school improvement are promising, after all. His view: we need to talk about substance not structure.

The choice movement is a structural approach. It relies on market-theory to improve outcomes, not venturing to offer guidance on precisely what the schools need to be teaching. That would go against the genius of the market approach, which is to refrain from top-down interference into what needs to be taught and learned in the schools. Stern rightly shows that this is a fundamental failing in the choice movement.

But market-based “choice” is not the only structural reform of the recent past that has refrained from actually concerning itself with the substance of what is taught and learned in school. There was the government-funded whole-school-reform project. It too was a meta-structure that said “Let a thousand flowers bloom,” thus rendering itself superior to any particular substantive notion of what needed to be taught and learned in the school.

Continue reading ‘On Sol Stern’s City Journal Piece: Substance Trumps Structure’

Who Do You Believe? Me or Your Lying Eyes?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 18, 2008 in Assessment and Testing, Curriculum and Opinion. 0 Comments

I respect and admire eduwonk, but I have to strenuously disagree with his characterization of the impact of testing and No Child Left Behind as “hysterics.” I wholeheartedly support accountability, and I don’t have a problem with standardized tests. Really, I don’t. But one cannot blithely dismiss the narrowing of the curriculum that has occurred in schools — especially struggling inner city schools — in order to beef up test scores. It’s literacy, math and not much else, despite compelling evidence that content knowledge is the key to reading comprehension. We’re serving students in our most challenged schools a thin gruel that doesn’t meet any reasonable standard for an education. We simply have to do better, not dismiss the critics. The NY Times highlighted a few schools that are aiming higher, but to suggest that this shows testing concerns are overblown is a curious conclusion.

It bothers me to hear a well-respected policy analyst take such a stance, for I fear it could invite other less serious observers to downplay the deleterious impact of testing culture, rather than do the hard work of creating and implementing an accountability strategy that resists being gamed, dumbed-down, or measures only the thinnest slices of school performance. “All that test prep isn’t that bad,” it will be argued. “At least they’re learning something.” Isn’t it pretty to think so?

Make no mistake. There are classrooms where students go weeks, months, an entire school year without social studies, science, art and music. I’ve seen them, been in them, and worked with teachers who, despite great misgivings, felt pressured to run them. It’s neither hysterics nor hyperbole. It’s a legitimate issue that left unaddressed or blithely dismissed, could ultimately stop reform dead in its tracks. The very worst thing that can occur is if people believe the accountability cure is worse than the disease. “Drill and kill” is not the issue. It’s kids who can decode, but can’t comprehend. It’s kids who get to high school and college without the functional knowledge they need to succeed in higher education and as full participants in society. It’s complacency that kids who score on grade level are being educated, when all they’re doing is stepping over a hurdle that is conveniently lowered year after year.

Dismiss it at your peril. It’s real. I’ve seen it, lived it. I’ll introduce you to the students who’ve been damaged by it. Accountability was designed to help them, not do further harm. Good enough is not good enough.

Oh, my. I’m having a Hillary moment….I just don’t want to see us fall backwards.

Update: The redoubtable eduwonk thinks I doth protest too much. Perhaps so. But why use two words when ten will do?

Update II: eduwonkette has my back.

Two Questions

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 15, 2008 in Curriculum and Educational Policy. 0 Comments

On Bridging Differences, Core Knowledge board member Diane Ravitch asks two questions, one provocative, the other profound: “One, how did American education fall so effortlessly into the control of Know Nothings from the world of business, law, and politics? and, Two, how can we—that is, the American public—begin to talk again about schools that prepare students not only to take tests but to be engaged and thoughtful citizens, to participate in and enjoy the arts, and to have the interest and capacity to read a book that was not assigned by a teacher?”

Great questions.

Education reform feels as if it’s at a bit of a tipping point right now. Six years of NCLB and not a lot to show for it. Even accountability hawks acknowledge that an aggressive focus on testing is narrowing curriculum to an unhealthy degree. One of our deepest thinkers about education has thrown down quite the intellectual gauntlet. Who will pick it up?

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