In defense of NCLB (because I was threadjacking on this elsewhere)
By BlackRepub Posted in Culture — Comments (29) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
In full disclosure, right now I work for the Board of Education in Illinois, so this is coming from an insiders perspective.
Many people on the Left as we know, have had a huge problem with President Bush's signature educational initiative, No Child Left Behind, because it directly correlates school funding with accountability, especially in terms of poorly performing districts. NCLB predominantly affects low income, high minority districts, or low income rural districts, because that is often where the most poorly performing schools are. As a result, NCLB offers these schools extra funds as an incentive for higher test scores, and holding those students to the same standards and goals as the rest of the high achieving student population. The Left, which is highly backed by the teachers union feels that the real problem is that when the schools fail to meet the goals of NCLB and improve student scores, they have their money taken away from them for not performing up to standards. George W. Bush calls this battling the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Of course, one thing that nobody can aruge with , is results.
The fact of the matter is, with the Democrats not buying school choice, NCLB has been the best thing to happen to the inner cities since charter schools. The scores have gone up in the African-American and Latin community, and George W. Bush can take solace that among the many great things that he has done for African-Americans, it is his educational initiative that helped close the achievement gap between Black, Latino and White students.
Many here on with a libertarian streak argue against any expansion of the Department of Education, but they need to understand that it is an unrealistic goal. The Department of Education is here to stay, and it is here to stay because to dismantle it is political suicide. No politician is going to win the election of being "against the education of children", which is how the media and unions would spin it. So why then, should we not shape the Department of Education to a more conservative fold? Why not use the educational budget to improve the schools with carrots and sticks, while helping push statewide voucher programs? Why not push this highly successful program to the high school level and improve the high school graduation rate and college staying power. This way we are no longer talking about affirmative action because we are talking about equal achievement in the educational arena.
Furthermore, this is not just an educational issue, it is a law and order issue as well. We cannot dispute the fact that people who drop out of high school are more likely to abuse drugs, commit crimes, and got to jail. We, the taxpayers will either be paying for increased education, or increased jail and rehab. I would prefer to use the preventive measure of making sure every child possible graduates from high school. Note this does not mean all, but it means that many more than have been graduating before NCLB. Neil, gamecock and I were discussing this on another thread and I was tired of threadjacking to make a completely different point, so this is my defense of my favorite President and my first Presidential vote, George W. Bush and the great things he has done for education.
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson
I'll grant you it's a successful program, measuring it by its stated aims, even if I don't think the program has a place in Washington, heh. Basically this program is neoconservatism at its best.
Reading this makes me thing we could as easily have called neoconservatism neoprogressivism, in that it takes the classic idea of social improvement through government, and infuses it with some conservative-bred common sense about how the world works.
If I have to argue the scope of government with somebody, I'd much rather do so with a neocon than a lefty. At least the neocon won't be doing horrific harm to society! :-)
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This was a very good diary for as fast as he put it up. I'm trying to be positive :-)
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I meant, that I could have lived without NCLB.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
against NCLB, except from one liberal pseudo-Republican teacher, until a month or so before the 2006 elections. so I was quite surprised by all the grousing over it that suddenly blossomed here.
I completely agree with you.
I frankly (and quite strongly) prefer vouchers. NCLB is mostly a gimmick. I'm happy that you're insider view is that it's not entirely a gimmick, but I really can't get excited about expanding the program. (I agree with your general observations, however.)
For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection.
to NCLB demonstrated by many conservatives/Republicans. OK, there are very good reasons to oppose federal involvement in education, but that bridge was burned many years ago. If we didn't have the DOE, we'd still have federal civil rights laws, the real source of federal power over education. Federal money gives a bit of carrot with the stick, but if you did away with the DOE and the money, the fed would still have the stick.
NCLB gives some accountability and oversight to SDs that otherwise wouldn't have any and sets standards where either union power, local politics, or both would not. Once you get past the generalized opposition to federal involvment, something we're not able to do much about right now, what is wrong with imposing some accountability.
I'm not as opposed to federal involvement as many of you: if it weren't for the effects of civil rights laws and the National Defense Education Act, I'd likely have spent my working life working for near the minimum wage in some Hellhole of a Southern factory. The schools of the Jim Crow South are just one example of where local/state control of schools failed and only federal intervention improved them. Don't delude yourselves into thinking that competitive pressures would have forced The South to change; they certainly hadn't in the preceding century. The Southern ruling class was more than happy to inhabit a world of ignorance and xenophobia so long as they had "theirs." The same can be said of urban SDs today, there's just a different ruling cohort. If NCLB forces some of those SDs to educate at least some urban kids, I think that's a good thing.
In Vino Veritas
approach, ie a safety net at the fed level. I agree that NCLB improved the situation from the status quo. And Ac makes a good point that I think backs up BR in that urban schools are much like the South's were.
My points are 1) that we ought to have const amendments in interstate commerce and other areas where the Const leaves things to states.
2) that we need school choice and I would like to see it even if it takes a federal stick
3) I had heard that not just libs were mad at NCLB for the reasons BR gave, but also that many schools were simply inflating grades fraudulently to get the money
4) I do think that Newt has a good idea for a fed role in nat security to pay kids to take math and science ala a sputnik like response
I would also say this to BR, based on my extensive discussions with some prominent black repubs over the age of 50:
Black segregated schools in the 40s, 50s and 60s provided a better education than most integrated schools today! see Condi et al
They had black middle class and intact families. When we outlawed de jure segregation LBJ went too far by kicking the black man out of the house and making Uncle Sam daddy and then condescending to blacks by lowering standards. That was wrong.
Bush's NCLB does push back on that.
amen
more later
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson
As a father with three children in public schools, here is my 2 cents:
1) Just because something can now be measured does not mean it has improved. Gaming the test is common, and teaching to it from day 1 is required. The same people are failing today that were failing thirty years ago.
2) NCLB and Jim Crow have nothing to do with each other.
3) NCLB means that if you have a child that shuts up, can read, write and add, he/she will be left to themselves while the ESL and inner city youths are focused on.
4) The federal government now decides what is important to learn, and what is not. Period.
5) Do you actually think that failing schools will be shut down? And if they are, the students will be distributed to other schools so THEY can underperform too.
6) Teachers are not the problem. Facilities are not the problem. Money is not the problem. Testing and measurement is not the solution. The problem is the catastrophic breakdown in the nuclear family among poor and minorities caused by leftist social policies. These children cannot learn when they are not going to bed until 11:00 and Mom is out scoring crack.
7) There is a direct correlation between socio-economic status of the student body and test scores / school ranking. Always has been, always will be.
NCLB is a miserable failure. Just like in any monolithic bureaucracy, administrators measure, chart and then pat themselves on the back, with the only difference being that students who might once have excelled are now ignored in favor of making sure EVERYONE scores a "3" rating on the test.
My biggest problem with NCLB is that it only allows school choice for the few parents that have children in consistently failing schools. All parents should have a right to school choice. The federal government could simply pass a law mandating that all states provide vouchers or tax credits worth at least 75% of the cost of educating a student in that state in a public school and allow complete school choice within school districts.
We will still have local control, but parents will finally have the freedom to send their kids to the school that they choose rather than the government school they are pointlessly forced to attend, whether it is the best school nearby or not.
As Nasty Nan would say it's for the good of the children, through NCLB institutionalized racism has been exposed to a large extent in many of America's inner cities and across much of the rest of America it's shown us the results of the "bigotry of low expectations."
Many conservatives have complained that it's not "ideal" and refuse to accept this as a realistic place to start from which we can at least move toward an ideal in increments.
Thank you for your perspective from the inside, it sounds very much like a family members who just started teaching in the inner city down in North Carolina. Her words, "teachers unions ain't got nothing to do with teaching or kids!"
Recommended!
Well done is better than well said. —Benjamin Franklin
Actually I haven't seen any conservative complaints that NLCB is bad because it's not the 'ideal' reform. The complaints I've seen and would make involve NCLB going in the WRONG DIRECTION; that is, it expands the federal role rather than contracting it.
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If, and mind you I concede it's a big if, as a result of NCLB enough of America finally saw the truth and accepted as a solution that school choice was the way to go despite the battle to get there would it not have been worth it?
Well done is better than well said. —Benjamin Franklin
Yes, but I don't see it, in that it makes the assumption that if the government-backed school of the government's choosing meets the government's chosen standards, then the parents have no say in the matter.
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That if a school is failing the children/parents and those at least are given the opportunity to opt out to a different school through a voucher/choice program that all of America is better served in the long term?
And further that once choice is an established program that it's expansion then becomes more likely on an incremental basis through pressure on a local level?
Well done is better than well said. —Benjamin Franklin
If you're depending on the Department of Education to get what you want, then well, what you want could just as easily be taken away and made WORSE later.
We need to cut OFF the feds, and take back LOCAL control. NCLB is a massive step backwards from that true solution.
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compromise by men of differing ideals who came together to work out their differences. While NCLB is no work on that level those who demand all or nothing generally get exactly that, nothing.
Reagan promised to end the DOE over 20 years ago, the chances of that happening today are, I would guess much less.
I accept working toward a solution, you seemingly can only accept the "all" that much of America is not ready for.
An ideal without a plan to get there is not of much use, it's great to dream about but I'll take the plan that has a chance of success over the dream with no substance.
Well done is better than well said. —Benjamin Franklin
and I couldn't agree with you more! It's a real shame that something that is working is fought against by both sides.
___________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
On one side it's an assault against union power and accountability, on the other it's the expansion of government and spending.
Yet in reality the spending battle was lost by conservatives decades ago and with no accountability or measurements to boot. At every level the teachers unions have won and they fund those who fund them AND it's legal!
PS
Hello Sandra, long time no see!
Well done is better than well said. —Benjamin Franklin
Here in California the teacher's union is running campaign adds against NCLB. I always assume that if the union is opposed than the logical pro children position to take is to be for the program. It is not ideal, I have long supported vouchers as the ideal and see conservatives opposing the idea only because it puts the government in to the private education business (which is the wrong direction).
If schools that are failing their students are called out by this legislation this is a help. I agree that the breakdown of the family (and the resistance of some families to after school time being spent on school work). But I still see the teacher's union as the most serious block to improving education. The teach to the test mantra they spew is really just a sound bite, as all agree that the test requires exactly what students should learn and teachers should teach these fundamental elements before going off on tangents and social engineering programs.
As to having the government involved in establishing what should be learned, since the fundamentals of reading, writing, and math are pretty uniform, I don't have a problem with it. When I taught we were allowed to set our own goals -- this was an interesting exercise but not much different than having government testing standards against which we measure ourselves.
Every teacher I know left or right hates the program. It took much fast talk to convince the rep ones to vote for w in 04.
It could be a function of where I live, but your 2 comments are the very first positive feedback I have seen (from folks inside the system.)
Actually most teachers I know hate what has become of their job. Those comments (and the horror of dealing with the union) convinced me to go for programming instead of teaching math/ science.
I was a practicing engineer but I thought I would be a good teacher so I left engineering and went back to school. The job was wonderful, but the union and the seniority system left me quite unhappy. I ended up being laid off by seniority and went back to engineering. NCLB is not a great program, but it is a compromise that provides some test accountability and has the ability to take a stick to the worst schools. Far better would be to break the union and have every teacher negotiate directly with the principal for their jobs and pay. I would have liked that approach, but sadly will not live long enough to see it.
The union’s pet peeve, teaching to the test, is a red herring in that teachers do not have to allow their teaching to change to cover the test subject matter. The idea that the students can only pass the test because they have seen questions that look like the test in the classroom is nuts, if students learn the subject matter and how to deal with tests in general, they will have no problem with the standard tests.
NCLB is one of the most fundamentally liberal programs I've ever seen that garnered some degree of Republican support. It's really been quite bizarre. I don't know how it's possible for "conservatives" to get behind a program that has as its guiding principle the flawed belief that all children will attain the same levels of achievement if only the federal government involves itself in and ultimately controls their education.
Aside from the glaring philosophically liberal underpinnings of NCLB, it's not at all clear that the program has affected a positive change, let alone one that could ever justify the massive increase in federal spending and centralization of power at the federal level that accompanied NCLB.
See, for example, Cato's policy analysis here. Some choice quotes:
Consider, however, that NCLB was passed in January 2002, and 4th-grade reading scores did not in fact change at all between 2002 and 2005. The one-point uptick between 2003 and 2005 only offset a one-point downtick between 2002 and 2003. Furthermore, the Aspen commission neglects to mention that 8thgrade reading scores fell by two points after 2002. At least according to NAEP scores since NCLB’s passage, it seems that the law has achieved nothing of consequence.
After comparing the trends from 1990 all the way through 2005, the study’s author, Jaekyung Lee, concluded that
<...>
NCLB does not seem to have helped the nation and states significantly narrow the achievement gap. The racial and socioeconomic achievement gap in NAEP reading and math persists after NCLB. Despite some improvement in reducing the gap in math right after NCLB, the progress was not sustained.
Another recent report that bears on NCLB’s academic effects was conducted by the Northwest Evaluation Association, a nonprofit test provider that works with 2,400 school districts. Using its database of test scores from more than 300,000 students, NWEA researchers compared how much students learned over the course of the 2003–04 school year with how much they learned in 2001–02. What the researchers found was that students learned less in a year after NCLB’s passage than they did before it, a result that held true for every ethnic group analyzed and for both mathematics and reading.
But hey, you're free to provide your own citations and some actual evidence that NCLB resulted in something that justifies the cost. Maybe you can also explain why having the federal government extract tax dollars from the citizens of every state and then only giving that money back to the states to use in their education programs with certain strings attached makes any sense at all. First, individual states are free to devise NCLB-like programs if their citizens so choose. Second, these states could be doing it without all the waste that comes from the circuitous route tax dollars take from State to Fed and back to State again, with some percentage drained away by the bureaucracy.
Cato's conclusion is that NCLB should be terminated. I agree. Unfortunately for you, there is now great risk that (D)'s will soon be in a position of power that enables them to maintain the increased federal spending (or increase it even more) while merely modifying NCLB to be, if possible, even more liberal.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
THANK YOU. I've been saying this for years, and I've been distressed at what I've seen as knee-jerk reaction to NCLB by those who are completely unaffected by it.
I live in Mobile, Alabama, and I'm here to tell you that it HAS helped here. The public schools have been terrible forever here, and things have improved with NCLB. They still aren't up to *my* standards (my daughter is in a parochial school), but the families who send their kids to the public schools here simply cannot afford to do otherwise. Obviously, the optimal solution would be to have school choice and school vouchers, but lacking that, this helps. I'm rabidly pro-voucher and pro-school choice, but it's a grievous misjudgment to believe that either is going to happen any time soon with the behemoth teachers' union/industry as the opposition and our side being mostly complacent (as long as our kids aren't affected, right?).
Cato and others have lovely ideas, but real people live in the real world. I'd love to see what the idealists would say if they had kids in an NCLB school district and couldn't afford to do private/parochial school or homeschool. Raising generations of uneducated kids who end up dependent on government assistance is NOT consistent with conservatism at all.
I've been distressed at what I've seen as knee-jerk reaction to NCLB by those who are completely unaffected by it.
First, you need to explain who, exactly, is completely unaffected by the massive spending increases perpetrated by 43 and his glorious Department of Education:
Annual U.S. Department of Education spending on elementary and secondary education has increased from $27.3 billion in 2001 to $38 billion in 2006, up by nearly 40 percent. [from Heritage]
Federal spending on education has jumped considerably. The White House's budget request for FY 2008 would boost NCLB spending to $24.4 billion, a 41 percent increase over FY 2001 levels. [from Heritage]
The spending alone affects every citizen, not to mention the further centralization of power at the federal level over something that it has no Constitutional authority to regulate.
But let's talk about Alabama. What do you base your statement "it HAS helped here" on, exactly? Some facts and figures? Some data? Someone else took a close look at Alabama:
The report released Tuesday (Nov. 13) by Education Sector, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., contends states are gaming the system under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the 2002 law that measures states’ annual progress toward getting all students reading and doing math at grade level by 2014.
In a ranking based on 11 statistics that states annually report to the U.S. Education Department, Alabama jumped to 5th place in the country in how well it appears to be meeting various education measures, up from 22nd place last year, the group found. The percentage of its schools showing the amount of improvement required by federal law zoomed in one year from half to almost 90 percent, according to the report.
“This didn’t happen because Alabama students learned much more in 2006 than they did in 2005,” the report said. It happened because the state exploited loopholes in the law and set low standards for its statewide test so that more students passed those tests, inflating the state’s record in meeting the law’s benchmarks, according to the report. [cite]
I really encourage you to read the report described above, and linked to here. It is a very detailed walkthrough of how Alabama and other states are - help the explicit assistance of the Department of Education - working the system in order to make their schools look better than they really are.
Just one of many examples, from the report:
Alabama also included in its initial NCLB accountability plan a third element: “uniform averaging.” NCLB gives states the option to “average data from the [current school year] with data from one or two school years immediately preceding that school year,” in order to smooth out random year-to-year variations and better gauge longterm trends. Alabama adopted this approach—with a twist. Schools would be rated by either their current year score or the three-year average, whichever was greater. This created a double standard: If a school experienced a one-year drop in performance, it would be buoyed by previous higher results. If, on the other hand, the same school had a one-year increase, that result would stand alone.
Alabama’s use of the “uniform averaging” provision illustrates several critical points about state implementation of NCLB. From the beginning, states were aggressively looking for novel interpretations of the statute’s more obscure provisions, stretching and, at times, breaking the clear meaning of the law. Those interpretations always made it easier, not harder, for schools to make AYP. And the U.S. Department of Education was a willing partner in this process. In a July 1, 2003 letter approving Alabama’s initial accountability plan (which included the adjustable rate trajectory, the large minimum subgroup size, and the lenient uniform averaging procedure), Assistant Secretary of Education Gene Hickok said, “I join Secretary [of Education Rod] Paige in congratulating you on Alabama’s commitment to holding schools accountable for the achievement of all students.”
Pay extra attention to page 13 and the table of "targets". Notice anything peculiar? Why are we expecting special education students to achieve the exact same level of proficiency as every other student? This ridiculous notion encapsulates a core flaw of NCLB: that our goal should be identical achievement for all, rather than identical opportunity, and that we should cast aside a reasonable understanding that, no, unfortunately not all special education students (or all students in general) can ever be expected to achieve the same level of educational advancement. The irrational belief that through government regulation we will engineer that sort of utopian vision is something I normally see accorded to liberals.
Cato and others have lovely ideas, but real people live in the real world. ... Raising generations of uneducated kids who end up dependent on government assistance is NOT consistent with conservatism at all.
Real people shouldn't grasp onto liberal ideas that don't work. They shouldn't keep throwing good money after bad. Whatever your political persuasion, you're going to hope for well educated citizens. NCLB is the liberal's solution to that goal, not the conservative's.
I'll close with another excerpt from The Heritage Foundation, which again summarizes what I feel the more proper position re: NCLB is:
NCLB has exposed the federal government's inability to direct successful school reforms for the country's 95,726 public schools. It is just the latest chapter in the failed history of federal education policy. Since 1965, the federal government has assumed ever greater responsibility for improving public education, yet long-term measures of student performance show no significant improvement since the early 1970s.
Rather than further consolidating power and responsibility in Washington, Congress must move in the opposite direction. American schools need more than federal Band-Aids on a broken policy. They need greater state and local autonomy, where decisions can be influenced by students, parents, teachers, and principals. [cite]
don't you bro. I'll comment in detail later. But for now, I will say that I do think NCLB did improve the status quo and seems to deliver on its soft bigotry attack by FORCING libs to teach the poor and the black. And for that, amen.
more later
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson