‘Avoidable Losses’

There are unintended consequences of education reform efforts, and then there are “avoidable losses.”

In a study of 271,000 Texas public high school students, Rice University researchers found that the state’s accountability system, the model for NCLB, has succeeded wildly…in producing more dropouts. Disproportionately minority student dropouts.

How bad was it? The study found that 60 percent of the African American students, 75 percent of Latino students and 80 percent of ESL students did not graduate within five years.

Judy Radigan of Rice explains to the Houston Fox affiliate how students were discouraged or held back in an effort to improve passing rates on state tests — the scores of which were the basis for ranking schools and rewarding principals.

The most damning paragraph in the study’s summary goes against the very spirit of NCLB, high-stakes accountability, and efforts to close the achievement gap:

The reporting of student test scores by racial categories resulted in the singling out of the lowest-achieving students in these historically underserved subgroups as potential liabilities to the school ratings, increasing the incentives for school administrators to allow these students to quietly exit the system, rather than to provide them with the quality education necessary for them to succeed.

According to Linda McSpadden McNeil, director of Rice’s Center for Education, “High-stakes, test-based accountability doesn’t lead to school improvement or equitable educational possibilities. It leads to avoidable losses of students. Inherently the system creates a dilemma for principals: comply or educate. Unfortunately, we found that compliance means losing students.”

Economic Stimulus Package

Money worries keeping you up at night? AOL’s Money & Finance blog, WalletPop.com, advises that there are good part-time gigs to be had this spring, thanks to No Child Left Behind.

“If you’re interested in picking up a few bucks without lifting anything heavier than a pencil,” WalletPop blogger Tom Barlow writes, you can make $11 to $12 an hour grading the composition portions of NCLB’s standardized tests – ”Easy money, if you ask me.”

What’s more, the job is fun! 

“My experience has been that the younger the student, the more entertaining the answers,” Barlow says.

If NCLB hasn’t exactly been great for education, maybe it can be good for the economy. Still, given all of our stress around standardized testing, it’s a little disconcerting to see it framed as an amusing way to make an easy buck.

Are the Patriots on the Way to 100% Proficiency?

It was a depressing week, as Bush dug in his heels on NCLB reauthorization and put a billion dollar voucher cherry on top in his State of the Union address.

So let’s not think about it. It’s almost Superbowl Sunday. Open a jar of salsa and a bag of chips, sit back, and enjoy one of those clever NCLB parodies, this time football-themed [via Education Notes Online].

It Was Behind the Sofa the Whole Time

Why wait for and grind through reauthorization? Swift & Change Able argues that most, if not all, of the fixes called for in No Child Left Behind reauthorization ”can be done without any changes to the NCLB statute. Instead, they could be addressed in a matter of weeks rather than years either through regulation or separate, targeted legislation.”

Such as? The whole shooting gallery — higher standards, growth models, multiple measures, differentiated consequences, even graduation rates.

Some of the reform is already allowed in the current law, albeit perhaps tucked away in little-known provisions. Those measures that require direct legislation could be passed with minimal fuss, bigswifty argues.

Could it really be this easy?

Such a strategy, bigswifty claims, ”would go a long way toward improving the law, without all the hoopla and drama associated with NCLB, and improving education for poor and minority children.”

The Trouble With Testing

Stateline.org’s Pauline Vu looks at the rise of standardized testing, weaving in some interesting numbers as well as raising a wide range of issues, from cost to effectiveness to the variations in rigor among states to the shortage of psychometricians.

The year before NCLB went into effect, Vu reports, states spent $423 million on standardized tests. During the 2007- 08 school year, that amount will increase to almost $1.1 billion. And the windfall largely goes to five (soon to be four) testing companies.

And yet, federal funds have been lacking to help pay the tab for administering now 45 million tests a year (going up to 56 million once NCLB’s science assessment is added). Hence a reliance in many states on cheaper-to-score multiple-choice assessments.

“States are not putting any more resources into the testing infrastructure, and as a result, we are getting testing on the cheap, and that is working against No Child Left Behind’s efforts to produce high-quality assessments that promote higher standards,” Education Sector Co-director Thomas Toch tells Vu. ”If we’re going to make tests the driver of quality in public education, then we need to invest to ensure that we get tests that are up to that task.”

But is the answer more money for better tests (and more profits for testing companies)? The operative word in Toch’s quote is if. As in, how about challenging the assumption that standardized tests are “the driver of quality in public education”?

So barring an infusion of cash, the consequence of NCLB’s testing mania will be an ongoing quest for cheaper and cheaper tests. That could mean looking to national standards for economies of scale, but it would be a shame if the national standards debate boiled down to how cheaply a test can be made and scored.

As Wisconsin’s director of testing tells Vu, “People who don’t have their heads stuck in the instruction don’t realize it’s not cheap to do this really well. And right now, I don’t know many legislatures that are very open to spending money or raising taxes to develop these kinds of instruments.”

Discouraging Words

Palm Springs teachers tell the Desert Sun what NCLB hath wrought. One teacher even speculated on showing her discouragement by wearing black on NCLB’s sixth anniversary this week.

Reggie Clark, a middle school robotics teacher, told the paper that under NCLB, students “are not really even thinking. They are just remembering certain skills.”

Well, at least it’s 21st century skills they’re remembering.

Happy Anniversary, NCLB

Today is the sixth anniversary of No Child Left Behind. Ah, it was only six years ago that we were so full of hope about student achievement, so fed up with “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” so seduced by the law’s clever name, yet standing on the precipice of one-size-fits-all testing mania and never-to-be funding.

President Bush marked the anniversary in Chicago, and the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board responded by introducing him to three older students who’ve seen no trickle-down effect of the law in the past six years. [Cross-posted with more colorful headline at Schools Matter]

With the city’s test scores static at best and in some cases falling, the Sun-Times says, “Those numbers won’t improve, many in Chicago’s trenches say, unless the law is changed to address what stands in the way: inequitable funding, overcrowding, violence, truancy and the overwhelming effects of poverty.”

NEA adds to the list the need for multiple measures, tracking progress over time, and fairer assessments of English language learners and special ed students. Oh, and quality early childhood education, improved teacher recruitment and retention, smaller class sizes, safe and modern facilities, and a real attempt to infuse 21st century skills into schools.

But in Chicago, Bush committed to rejecting any reauthorization bill that “weakens accountability,” and, if Congress doesn’t reauthorize the law, he said he’d chip away at it administratively to make the changes he wants. 

Meanwhile, what’s the right gift for a sixth anniversary? About.com says “candy” or “iron.”

Appeals Court Deals Major Blow to NCLB

On the eve of NCLB’s sixth anniversary, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled yesterday that Secretary Spellings is violating the Spending Clause of the Constitution by requiring states and school districts to spend their own funds to comply with No Child Left Behind.

NEA, nine school districts, and nine NEA state affiliates brought the lawsuit in April 2005 to oppose costly federal regulations that divert money from children and classrooms to paperwork and bureaucracy. At issue in the case was Section 9527(a) of the law that says, “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to …. mandate a State or any subdivision thereof to spend any funds or incur any costs not paid for under this Act.”

“It’s time for the Secretary to comply with the law and the Constitution,” said NEA President Reg Weaver. “If the Bush Administration won’t ensure that states and schools have the federal funds needed to implement the law, then they must cease with threats to punish states and districts who cannot comply due to lack of federal funds.”

Read NEA’s news release on the court ruling here.

[Cross-posted on NEA's Ed Notes blog]

Kennedy’s New Year’s NCLB Resolution

On the eve of the sixth anniversary of NCLB, Ted Kennedy has a column in the Washington Post outlining where to go from here in “fixing” the law.

The biggest failure of the last six years? Not adequately funding NCLB. “Struggling schools can do only so much on a tin-cup budget,” Kennedy writes.

Other improvements Kennedy calls for include assessing students beyond test scores, recognizing schools for incremental progress, boosting teacher training and staffing high-needs schools,  and dealing with the dropout crisis.

Wintry mix

We’re back from winter break, and by winter break, we mean “flat on our backs with a cold…sigh.” Here’s a roundup of interesing articles:

• Are Minnesota Republicans saying “C-ya” to NCLB? [Star-Tribune]
• Sherman Dorn wraps up the top education stories of 2007 [shermandorn.com]
• Forget the diet and exercise grind — an NCTE blogger makes a New Year’s resolution to get the teacher voice front and center in reauthorization conversations [NCTE Elementary Section]