OCR Text |
Show Hingkley Journal of Politics 2006 tie connection between what students are supposed to learn, the knowledge on which they are assessed, and what we expect our teachers to know" (Shanker, 2005). Nevertheless, the funding discrepancy (which will be detailed later) means that unless the Department of Education offers more financial assistance, the final authority should rest with state and local education administrators, schoolteachers and individual families. This should not be considered an excuse to avoid improvement, as pointed out by the Washington Post. "Ideally, (NCLB) would jolt previously satisfied educators out of complacency and lead to improvements. But an easier response is to lash out... but the backlash is the result of a poorly written law for which the federal government has given poor guidance" ("Spellings Test", 2005). The law of unintended consequences has also forced many districts to choose between reading and math under NCLB and other subjects. Since NCLB passed, "71% of the nation's 15,000 school districts had reduced the hours of instructional time spent on history, music and other subjects" to focus more on reading and math (Dillon, 2006). NCLB Proponents declare that without reading and math other subjects are useless, while teachers point out that students learn differently and should be provided with more, not less opportunities in school. NCLB must be modified to recognize the proper role of the federal government, offer strong national leadership to choreograph standards and monitor progress, while also respecting the local jurisdiction of educational policy. The 2nd F: Flexibility in meeting THE STANDARDS Opponents of NCLB criticize the standards as being too rigid and penalties as excessive. Administration officials respond that NCLB has been flexible to state needs, both in how fed-eral education dollars are spent and the type of programs states can develop to meet the Act's mandates. Up to 50% of non-Title I NCLB funds from varying grants can be invested according to the district's needs, allowing, they claim, Unprecedented local flexibility with federal dollars. Nevertheless, teachers and administrators nationwide are holding their collective breaths over the struggle to fulfill ^YP requirements. Nancy Kober of the Center on Education * olicy argues that the inflexibility of the AYP requirements ^ill cause schools that are not performing poorly to still fail at ^P. She reasons that schools with diverse enrollments often nave a more difficult time making AYP because they have to meet performance targets for more subgroups, and that a school could raise achievement for struggling students but not make AYP if these students are still below the proficiency level (Kober, 2005). As the initial results of AYP were reported, the concerns expressed by many states increased. In 2003, "more than 28,000 schools, or 32% of all public schools in the United States, failed to demonstrate adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward meeting the accountability requirements of NCLB. Of these schools, more than 6,000 failed to meet the law's requirements for two or more years-leaving them just two years away from facing severe sanctions ("State Support Teams Swing Into Action to Assist Schools Not meeting AYP," 2004). Utah has attempted to create its own progress model, known as the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students (U-PASS). In April 2006, the U.S. Department of Education agreed to review eight state accountability programs (Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee) but ruled that the U-PASS program was unacceptable for determining school progress under NCLB (Baker, 2006). Among the reasons given by the Department of Education is that Utah compares each student's growth from one year to the next, rather than contrasting an entire school's third grade class with the previous year's class. In addition, NCLB requires separate reporting of math and reading scores. Utah combines math and reading scores and factors in "attendance, graduation rates, difficulty of courses taken and achievement on writing assessments" (Baker, 2006). Finally, U-PASS would require that 75% of students be on grade level by the 2013-2014 school year, not at the 100% mandated by NCLB. Proponents of U-PASS argued that kids learn at different rates and have distinct skills and that holding every single student to the exact same standard is akin to expecting every child at school's end to run a five minute mile. Some can naturally, some can with training, and some, despite strenuous exercising, would still come up short. The effort should not be discounted as "failing" but the Department of Education was unconvinced. Analysis: The underlying assumptions behind the NCLB requirement for AYP are that standardized test models accurately assess student development and that every school and student should be at the exact same standard. Both assumptions are incorrect. The real debate over flexibility should be about growth models versus the "one-size-fits-all" approach to NCLB and what form of testing should occur. Teachers argue that measuring student achievement- and concurrently, teacher ability-by one final cumulative test is unfair to both students and teachers. How many elected officials would want one snapshot moment to be the sum total of their entire year of effort? Yet that is what is expected of teenagers and elementary-aged schoolchildren and upon which teacher employment is dependent. Educators are not opposed to standardized tests and utilize them to show program effectiveness in some areas of student achievement (National Education Association, 2006), so long as they are accompanied by other methodology to track student progress. 29 |