Obama Gives Bush a 3rd Term in Education
The great mystery of education policy today is why the Obama administration is embracing the Bush program. I recently wrote in Education Week (June 10) that it is time to kill the Bush-era No Child Left Behind program. The overwhelming majority of teachers agree with me. Those who educate our kids know that NCLB is a failed program that is not improving our schools but rather turning them into test-prep factories and dumbing down our kids. Bush's main advisor Sandy Kress reacted with outrage on the website of Education Week, and Tom Vander Ark on Huffington Post called me an "edu-curmudgeon" for speaking plain truth.
Let me say it again: It is time to kill the Bush-era No Child Left Behind program. This is a program in which the federal government requires every state to test every student from grade 3-8 in reading and math every year. If states do not make "adequate yearly progress" towards 100% proficiency by 2014, then the schools face a series of increasingly onerous sanctions, ending with their being closed down. Vander Ark thinks that this punitive approach to school improvement is swell. I don't.
If judged solely by test scores, the only coin that the NCLB crowd understands, the law has been a dud. Kids today are making less progress on national and international tests than they did during the Clinton administration years.
While our kids focus endlessly on preparing to take their state tests in reading and math, they are not learning science, history, geography, foreign language, the arts, or anything else but how to find the right bubble on a standardized test.
A California study in Science magazine predicted that by 2014, nearly 100% of all elementary schools would be deemed failures because of NCLB. This would unleash a flood of sanctions: closed schools, fired staffs, public schools handed over to private management (a remedy that has recently been proved ineffective in Philadelphia, among other places), and public schools handed over to state control (another ineffective remedy).
Now Secretary Arne Duncan promises to close 5,000 low-performing schools. The thought of closing 5,000 schools thrills today's so-called "reformers," although none of them has any idea how to make them better. Where will Duncan find 5,000 new principals? Is there an army of great teachers waiting to staff those 5,000 schools?
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965--which is the original law onto which No Child Left Behind was grafted--had none of these punitive features. It was premised on the belief that the federal government could help schools by sending more money. In fact, the federal government never sent much money, never more than 10% of overall spending, and often much less than that. No one today could visit a typical inner-city school and complain that its biggest problem was that it got too much federal money.
But with this leverage, the new mandarins of education want to control all of American education. For some reason, first the Bush people and now the Obama people believe they know exactly how to fix American education. (Chicago, their model, is one of the lowest-performing cities in the nation on national tests, and Texas was never a national model for academic excellence.) Their answer starts with testing and ends with data and more testing. If children were widgets, they might be right; but children are not widgets, they are individuals. If reading and math were all that mattered in school, they might be right, but basic skills are not the be-all and end-all of being educated.
A recent study by Common Core (Why We're Behind: What Top-Performing Nations Teach Their Students But We Don't) shows that the top-ranking nations do not spend endless hours preparing for tests of basic skills. Instead, in nations such as Finland and Japan, there is a balanced curriculum of science, history, geography, the arts, foreign languages, civics, and other studies. Meanwhile our children are learning to guess the right answer on a multiple-choice test!
The amazing thing about American education today is that the Obama people--who promised revolutionary change--have no ideas other than to tighten the grip of President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind program on the teachers and children of the United States.
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The man has been in power about six month and many already hasve lost their faith in him. Give him time. I think that he knows the value of education. I think he will come through on this issue. But I say: GIve him time. This country is in crisis. Too much going on. Eventually he will get to education. I am a parent of a child who has been diagnosed with ADHD. My daughter has really been affected by test scores. But I have faith in our president and I think that eventually we will realize that our children are more than just test scores. That there are better ways to show if our children are productive or not. All this labeling is only destroying children's lives.
You're naive.
"All governments are lying murderers"
-Bill Hicks
In 6 months he already has shown us where he stands.
Really? wow. You know where he stands in all of 6 months? Wow!!
This will just be another government program. We spend more per child for education than any other nation in the world yet we still lag behind, why. The answer is simple the government runs our education system and government never run anything that works. The reason is that government does not do what is right or wrong if they do something, like give more money it is for votes. They don't care if it works or not just if you give them your vote.
Why do people see a great education in private schools. They do not spend more per child and in most case teachers are paid less or at least different. The reason is the government does not run it. They teach the children to think not just pass a test. They have discipline and do not have to worry with trouble makers.
That is the trouble with America today, to much government. Government got us into this recession with its regulations on lending. Government cannot get us out of it. Government is the only entity not feeling this recession, hired 250,000 since Obama was elected. We as Americans need to wake up and understand Government is not the answer but is the problem. The next time you vote vote for a common man not a career politician. I really don't care if they are Republican or Democrat or no party at all
Ok, I'll bite. Which regulation got us into the recession? There are basically no regulations(the key ones like Glass Steagall Act of 1933 were done away with in the past 30 years) or more importantly no enforcement anymore so I really am curious what this regulation is.
Have you heard of Madoff? The SEC was warned on several occassions that Madoff was doing something wrong but the SEC never did anything. When they finally did investigate they just talked to Madoff and determined from that he was honest because he seemed honest. lol, its nuts.
So yeah, what regulations are you talking about?
I agree. It's the lack of enforcement that is the problem. Wall Street, Illegal Immigration, etc. Obviously we know that things get a lot worse if we just ignore the problems. Re: illegal immigration, "Comprehensive (Illegal) Immigration Reform" is just a thinly veiled attempt at open borders/no enforcement, period!
We spend more per child because of sports programs and new computer labs every 2 years. Not because we spend it on quality education. Government is irrelevant although i disagree that the federal gov't should have anything o do with education besides funneling cash without stipulation. If government is the problem why is it so big. Big business is why we have big government. Small businesses don't get laws and subsidies that work to their benefit, in fact small businesses usually get screwed when big government helps big business out. Our education system needs to be held accountable to the states and the parents, not the feds. If Americans weren't so fat, lazy and stupid we would not use the feds to solve our problems and would empower local governments which are more responsive to local conditions. Ron Paul 2012!
Private schools do better because it is the motivated parents who choose to put their parents there. Public schools have to educate everyone, motivated or un-motivated, supported at home or unsupported at home. It is comparing apples and oranges to compare them.
And do we spend more per child than any other country on earth? Show me a reference to back that up.
Half our country doesn't believe in science. These are the adults. So of course we fall behind. Look at the cars we've been producing. Not smart cars. It pains me how small this country thinks lately. I work at a school and the kids are not dumbed down (but the testing doesn't help anything really)...
Obama seems a bit out of touch when it comes to the economy and education but he just started his first term! NCLB needs an overhaul for sure.
Ron Paul 2012!
"While our kids focus endlessly on preparing to take their state tests in reading and math, they are not learning science, history, geography, foreign language, the arts, or anything else but how to find the right bubble on a standardized test."
And they're not even doing that. The kids are so burned out over these tests that I don't even think the tests are measuring anything anymore except resentment and nervous fatigue.
Just weeks after my daughter's brain surgery some years ago, it was test time. The school began calling me the week before the tests trying to get me to bring in my (top 2 %) daughter. I had to explain to several different school officials that not only was she unable to even sit up, but that she was still in pain and the stroke she had had during surgery made it impossible for her see well enough to read the questions or to be coordinated enough to fill in the circles. They assured me they would send someone to the house to read her the test and fill in her answers!
Teaching to the test has ruined education. Giving and taking the test makes teachers and administrators desperate and students either nervous wrecks or cynical.
This needs to be stopped now.
So the answer is NOT to test. Same thing for higher education. Get your Bachelors/
It's not necessarily the testing, it's the methodology. I don't know about you, but most of the tests I took in college were NOT the fill-in-the-bubble brand. There were no magic letter answers on my tests -- I either wrote short paragraphs or I wrote essays in response to a question designed to provoke critical thought.
Oh, wait... there was one exception: The Praxis examinations necessary to secure my teaching license WERE multiple choice, fill-in-the-bubble tests.
Just goes to show ya.
An absurd comment, begging your pardon. If you don't know the difference between a government-imposed standardized test and a teacher-made or department-made test of content knowledge, please try to get some information that will help you.
I am so sorry your family has been through this ordeal with your child's health. I pray that her surgery was a success and that she has recovered fully. Radical blessings on you, your family and your friends. Don't waste time thinking about standardized tests. Thank God your child is okay.
Thank you, Diane Ravitch for standing up to popular, common "wisdom" that is exactly the opposite. There's a reason that most respected educators, and by educators I do not mean businessmen turned "educators" like Joel Klein, are against NCLB and that's because it flies in the face of years of hands on, versus twisted statistical research as to what truly constitutes learning and education. Unfortunately, there has now been so much money invested, so many middle managers hired to expedite the tests and so many politicians who have staked their reputations on this misguided mess that it will take some time for it to be extinguished. No one can be an expert on everything, and clearly education is not Obama's strong suit. Hence he relies on advisors, and unfortunately, they are all of same mold, so called "reformers" who are actually following principles first developed by "efficiency experts" in the 30's. We can only hope that he stumbles on some alternate voices during his tenure.
And in the meantime, we educationally handicap a generation of kids.
Ask any educator and they will tell you what a bogus act NCLB was and is. Obama, sadly enough, wasn't ready to be president. And he surely is not what so many thought they were getting when they wholeheartedly electied him. Guns, gays, education, health....
springsm. McCain said the fundamentals of the US economy are strong a few months back. Nice try.
How exactly is Obama wrong on guns? Ready to act? The right is criticizing him for taking on too much. Funny, not ready to act.
He is ready to be President. He is President. He is not ready to be impatient because people act like change can be ordered from a McDonalds.
I agree, NCLB should be abandoned . . .
However, as with current politics and multiple vested interests, accomplishing this will prove difficult! And when the GOP (my parents) continues their modus operandi of 'NO' and NEVER as their starting points, it will become increasingly difficult to solve anything. Moreover, the myriad (GOP) mouthpieces of propaganda and FAITH further complicate already dire issues!
Good Luck America!
Sorry that the truth hurts. While Obama is brilliant and nuanced in so many of the issues, he is ham-fisted and, frankly, ignorant about the issue of public education. Selecting his home boy and basketball pal, Arne Duncan showed just how shallow his understanding of the issue is. NCLB may have been wonderful for urban schools, but it is killing the rural and suburban schools - and, further, having all schools measured by the yardstick used with schools in urban centers is a sure formula for dumbing down the curriculum and undermining academic achievement.
The Bushies concocted NCLB to make it look like ALL public schools were failing, so as to make excuses to funnel federal funds to for-profit schemes and testing companies (McGraw-Hill, having family ties going back to three generations of Bushes!) They also wanted to rationalize federal help to private and religious schools, who can, by the way, cherry pick their clientele in ways the public schools cannot.
Obama is uncharacte
Diane Ravitch is 100% right. NCLB has been a disaster. Sure, districts have been changing this, and changing that, in response to the law. They’ve had to do a fast, spastic dance because their feet are being sprayed with bullets, but they aren't getting any closer to putting together a beautifully choreographed masterpiece that elevates the condition of our nation's children.
Spend some time talking with some of the savvy people working on the ground level in the inner-city schools. They don’t have a personal investment in glossing things over and trying to make things sound great. In the media, their voice is rarely heard.
Also, take time to learn how to recognize the propaganda that is constantly being spouted. You’ll need to beware of the cocky self-serving pronouncements, lame half-truths, and colorful graphs of self-serving data. The only way downtown district administrators can keep their jobs and get promotions is by keeping the fed and state departments happy by twisting the data and by making grand claims. They kowtow to edu-schemers who have their own self-serving goals in mind.
Honestly, if Vander Ark and the other edu-schemers had spent the hours they've put into meetings and conferences by regularly reading to 9 year-old African American boys at a public school instead, the impact they would have made on improving public education would be double.
Am I bitter about what NCLB has done? Yes, and I am by no means alone.
Like Diane Ravitch, I cannot fathom Obama's support for NCLB. My kindest take on the matter is that he has too much on his plate to think rationally about education. But I cannot be kind about his appointment of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education. Duncan's sole talent appears to be "killing flies with a sledge hammer," and he intends to apply that talent to what is left of value in our public schools!
So much has already been eliminated from the public school experience: music, art, science, history, geography, physical education, recess, thinking, creating, innovation, that there isn't much left to save. Only the kids, the millions who don't get vouchers or opportunities to go to charter schools. Duncan seems willing to sacrifice them, too, to show how tough he is.
Please, President Obama, show some of the understanding you have for people in oppressed parts of the world to the children in oppressive schools and their captive teachers.
See Tom Vander Ark's Profile
It's easy to oppose efforts to improve education and there's lots to criticize about NCLB. Here's what I appreciate about Obama/Duncan--they are sticking up for the 4M kids stuck in the worst 5000 schools. There's almost no voting constituency for these mostly low income kids--it's just the right thing to do.
NCLB was an attempt to ensure every family in America access to at least one good neighborhood school. Duncan wants to keep that promise. That's why he'll build on the framework we've got rather than "throwing it out" as Dr. Ravitch suggests.
So change how education is financed on the state level.....
Most states fund public education with property tax so rural and urban schools suffer while suburban schools flourish. And the answer to federal support isn't to yank funds or send the kids to charter schools if there is no improvement. Most charter schools in my state are performing well under the public schools, many have been out right shams leaving parents scrambling to get them back into public schools halfway through the years. Those kids end up being way behind their public school counterparts.
NCLB is horrible. It forces schools to include LD students in the scoring and teachers are pushed to mainstream them. My sister taught 7th-9th grade LD...some kids are never going to improve, they are going to hit their highest level and that's good. But a lot of LD students that are forced into mainstreaming actually back-slide because their confidence is destroyed when they're forced into performing on an academic level they simply can't. That hurts the improvement percentage and the school loses funding. Hardly fair to the school as a whole.
Also NCLB completely ignores other forms of human intelligence, a kid may be horrible at math but a brilliant artist or gifted writer. Kids no longer learn....t
Absolutely. I am a former teacher who has gone in to help monitor during testing, and I once monitored LD students for one of the tests. It was one on one because these particular students couldn't read and had to have the test read to them. The problem with that was, they also couldn't comprehend. But we were mandated by law to do this to those poor kids for the time allotted for each test.
Long before the endless testing was over, some kids were crying. Some tried their hardest, though they really didn't understand what they were supposed to be doing--and frankly, neither did whatever bureaucrat it was who decided these kids have to take that test.
This has got to be one of the most ridiculous, futile, and cruel things I have ever had to do as a teacher.
Yours is a down-to-earth comment. I teach 3rd grade - a veteran of 35 years. What we are doing to these students is not right. The pressure is incredible. These are trying times for all of us - especially the families. Now it's even more difificult to explain to parents that even though their child who has only a beginning understanding of English is judged to be Far Below Basic on the CST. No matter how talented in art or drama or writing - no matter how quickly she has moved in her new language - no matter how much aptitude or interest she has in science - no matter her leadership potential. She's failed. It's like a knife in my heart.
The only standardized testing that made sense to me were the few years we pretested in October and tested again at the end of May. It was not just assessing a child against a graph of numbers, but looking at how much she was able to grow that year. I remember feeling honest pride to see how my class had progressed as individuals during the time they were in my care. All the teachers I know are trying to not run a test-driven curriculum. The challenge is immense, but no one has higher expectations of us than we do. You don't get into this profession for the money. If the decision-makers don't listen to those of us in the classroom, the education system is going to implode.
With respect, bull. This is the argument that got Sen. Kennedy to back NCLB in the first place: that finally we would be addressing the discrimination that poor and nonwhite students experience in education. But what was the policy mechanism? An order that test score discrepancies vanish among groups. If the discrepancy was not reduced, then the school and districts would be punished. But standardized tests have a built-in, structural bias against children in poor neighborhoods. All the schools could do was fiddle with the numbers to try to make themselves look better. This says nothing about who can learn and who can't. It's simply the fault of the measuring device. There was nothing provided to schools and teachers to make education more effective for children of any kind. So please get some psychometric help. Good schools are often not the same thing as high-scoring schools, schools that improve their percent achieving proficiency, or schools that erase the disparity. It's the fault of the tools of the policy, not the intent of the policy. The President had some good advisors at first but he dumped them to appease the high-stakes people and the privatization people. Not everyone believes that Duncan did that well in Chicago. Ravich is right.
I am a teacher and I would love to see NCLB put out to pasture. But I'm with Freesia here in saying that I'm willing to be patient for a bit longer as he irons out the economy and pressing foreign policy issues. As much as we hate it, most are humming along on NCLB and completely overhauling our education system is going to be quite an undertaking. I would like our POTUS to tackle it when he can truly do it justice rather than doing something halfa$$ed that will only send us backward.
He hasn't even been in office 6 months of a 4 year term. Why are we expecting the man to walk on water?
I would imagine that anyone who is not a teacher who has had experience with those tests would have a hard time understanding the myriad problems with them.
It's not only Bush's education policies that Obama has failed to change. He's carried on with all of Bush's failed policies, with only cosmetic alterations.
I think out entire education system is tired and wasteful. The material covered and its value is minuscule when compared to the time spent on it. School provides little more than daycare at this point. We need a system where children's advancement is tied to how much they have learned and not how much time they've sat and wasted. If we are going to be test based at all then children should be able to take tests and advance as quickly as they can pass them.
yes!
I'm not clear here. And I'm tired so bear with me.
But has Obama spoken out on the NCLB program? Or is it just that he hasn't spoken out quickly enough to suit?
Because the Bush comparison seems over the top. I need to know more about what he's actually spoken out on, has planned, and if so what time frame.
This seems to be the new thing. Compare him to Bush. I don't care for it unless there's real justification because it strikes me as a cheap shot.
Say more. The specifics and commitments Obama owns.
He's on record as supporting NCLB, has been for a long time. The internet thingy is there for you to research this to your heart's content.
He supports the ultimate GOAL of NCLB, which is to move everyone to proficiency in math/readi
Actually, that is already happening. Our state's test proficiency goal is 300, which equate to approximately the 39th percentile. This hardly means proficient in my eyes. What are we saying the definition of proficient is- that they can read the eye chart in a doctors office?
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