House Education Committee Chair George Miller (D-CA) yesterday laid out the changes we can expect in the NCLB reauthorization bill, notably letting states use more than standardized test scores to show progress.
Growth models, multiple measures, better funding, more sensible assessment of English-language learners and special ed students — all good. Not so much: teacher pay based on how students perform.
“The American [...]
Another Center for Education Policy study announces what educators and parents already knew: the curriculum is getting mighty narrow under NCLB. Science, social studies, art, music, phooey! Even lunch and recess — who needs ‘em?
Well, all kids, CEP says, calling for a “well-balanced curriculum and adequate instructional time in all core subjects.”
Still, I’ve seen some Onion-esque headlines about [...]
Is 100% proficiency possible? Jim Horn at Schools Matter takes on Spellings, studies and compares, contrasts.
“The single worst piece of federal legislation” he’s seen in his adult life. That’s how former Republican Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives David Jennings characterizes NCLB on Daily Kos (via Minnesota 20:20).
Jennings, now a MN school superintendent, warns that his high-standards state will be forced to regress to meet 100% proficiency.
He pulls no punches in pointing out the law’s [...]
School Administrators Chief Paul Houston is at it again. Writing in Education Week [registration required, but oh-so-worth-it for this article], he lambasts the testing industry and picks apart recent studies that are praising NCLB.
Who has benefited the most from No Child Left Behind? Would it be the teachers, who have faced pressures complying with regulations that bear [...]
University of Chicago economists tell the American Enterprise Institute what many teachers and parents have long claimed: To make AYP targets, schools are hyper-focusing on boosting the test scores of “bubble kids” in the middle — at the expense of low- and high-achieving kids.
Education Week has all the details of researchers Derek A. Neal and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach’s [...]
The Life That Chose Me writes to his members of Congress urging changes to NCLB’s requirements for special ed students, with this specific and compelling anecdote:
Personally, I feel like a criminal when having my students with profound disabilities go through the new alternate assessment. Why on earth would anyone demand and expect that an 18 [...]
Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Kansas Teacher of the Year Josh Anderson argue in the Philadelphia Inquirer that NCLB is undermining America’s global competitiveness.
…[G]raduates of our public schools are quickly realizing the most valuable skills in a global marketplace are the very same skills our schools are asked to forfeit in exchange for continued federal funding.
If [...]
Should NCLB offer more carrot, less stick? Two consultants ponder whether an emphasis on schools that succeed, instead of those that struggle, is the way to go.
On Headway Strategies‘ company blog, they propose, “a school couldn’t be labeled Needs Improvement unless the state also found some things that they were doing right and recognized those things.”
Julia Steiny in the [...]
Billie Stanton in the Tucson Citizen, likening NCLB to “the elephant in the living room,” calls for an overhaul — and federal funds — to make it work.
…[W]e’re stuck with federal control, which wouldn’t be so bad if the lofty goals articulated - standards, accountability and closing the achievement gap - were intelligently pursued and adequately funded. [...]
