The federal government should be the engine of equality, not the locomotive of inequality. With the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Congress has the opportunity to fundamentally transform American education and set it on the path towards equality and excellence for all children.
When ESEA was last reauthorized by Congress in 2002 with overwhelming bipartisan support, the Bush administration called the new law the "No Child Left Behind Act" (NCLB)—a play on the Children Defense Fund's trademarked mission statement to "Leave No Child Behind."
To many, the rhetoric of the new law's title promised to match the reality: it aimed at measuring the progress of every child, in every school, every year; data would be broken down to identify racial/ethnic and socioeconomic achievement gaps. Schools, districts, and states would document and track the academic performance of all groups of students including students with disabilities who were not counted at all for so long. Every child was to be held to high standards and supported. Surely, no child would be left behind.
But it soon became clear that NCLB's titular promise was merely a rhetorical fig leaf covering up new ways for our nation's schools to leave millions of children behind. NCLB's narrow focus on "high stakes" testing and its overreliance on sanctions that punish struggling schools encouraged states to lower standards, districts to narrow the curriculum, schools to push at-risk children out of school by suspending or expelling them prior to test day, and teachers to teach to the test. No child—regardless of background—benefits from mindless test preparation day in and day out at the hands of often overwhelmed, underprepared, and poorly supported teachers.
Under NCLB, most children in America have been left behind.
U.S. students, who once led the world in academic achievement, are behind their counterparts in other countries, performing in the "average" or "below average" range on the most recent (2010) Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA ). The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results are equally discouraging: more than 60 percent of students in grades four, eight, and 12 are unable to perform at grade level. More than 25 percent of all high school students drop out or do not graduate on time. For minority students the results are far worse: 80 percent in grades four, eight, and 12 cannot perform at grade level, and more than 40 percent later drop out or do not graduate on time. Many students who do graduate lack the skills necessary for college or entry-level jobs in civilian and military life.
Our country is falling behind in the globalized, competitive economy as well. Citing our comparatively poor graduation rates and weak academic performance, Stanford Professor Linda Darling-Hammond predicts that America's workforce will not qualify for many U.S. jobs in the very near future. In The Flat World of Education (2010), she writes: "If these trends continue, by 2012, America will have 7 million jobs in science and technology fields, 'green' industries, and other fields that cannot be filled by U.S. workers who have been adequately educated for them."
If NCLB is not changed and changed soon, the outlook for America and America's children is grim indeed.
Fortunately, we do not need to "wait for Superman" to turn American education around and provide all America's children a high quality education. The 112th Congress can and must save the day by enacting a bipartisan reauthorized ESEA that strengthens the law's focus on accountability and does away with its disabling sanctions, replacing them with incentives for states and districts to dramatically improve student learning.
The administration's Blueprint for Education Reform provides a framework for a reauthorized ESEA that does just that, and the Children's Defense Fund urges Congress to use the Blueprint as a starting point.
To ensure that the new law truly leaves no child behind, Congress will need to go beyond the Blueprint and include provisions for education excellence for our most vulnerable children: children in concentrated poverty, children in need of full-day kindergarten, children at risk of dropping out or being pushed out of school, children in juvenile detention, and children in foster care. These children are most at risk of dropping out of school and into the cradle-to-prison pipeline which leads to dead-end lives, costing their families and communities heartache and costing the nation billions of dollars.
NCLB was enacted with overwhelming support, and its framers dreamed of a law that would give every child an even start with a good education as a foundation. But the law's unintended consequences have undermined our children's learning and America's standing in the world. Now, in 2011, it is time to turn American education around and make the dream a reality. Join us in urging Congress to act now to reauthorize ESEA in a way that truly leaves no child in America behind.
Follow Marian Wright Edelman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChildDefender
Margaret Spellings: It's an Outrage
Diann Woodard: Test-Driven Education Reform Could Set Up Kids To Fail
Sound familiar? Testing is a diagnostic technique used to tell you that you have a problem or not, when it is not clear. But the hard work comes with interpreting the test results, and then devising a plan to correct the illness. This is hard work that isn't glamorous, but it is essential.
Yet little of the debate involves informed and critical analysis. Edelman Wright correctly assesses the chronic impact of poverty on child education. Her endorsement of the Blueprint suggests that she has not carefully read it. Perhaps she is so far from the classroom that she does not comprehend the nature of teaching to the test.
"Accountability" is a fallacy driven by a corporate and capitalistic ideology. The proper goal should be "responsibility." Holding teachers or schools accountable without flexibility, authority and resources is a specious and failed agenda. Responsibility, on the other hand, implies performance, but also provides necessary flexibility, authority and resources to accomplish the tasks that are demanded.
This is not to dispute concerns about allocation of resources toward a purpose, assuming that we can define that purpose, requiring some assessment of the degree of movement toward that end. However, relation of means and purpose must be connected and proportional. Providing a teaspoon and demanding a mountain be moved in two months sounds absurd. But that is largely the demand of current standardized testing regarding "educational excellence." Teachers who ask why the mountain needs to be moved and whether a different strategy might serve to accomplish that purpose are castigated as obstructionist. Those who pick up teaspoon and fail to move the mountain are "bad teachers."
We are a country that was able to stand out in the world for a time because we trumped the rest of the world in natural resources and military might. Because of some factors that had very little to do with the natural productivity of our population, we jumped ahead of the rest of the world for a time.
What is obvious to me no matter who wants to drive themselves nuts denying it, is that large segments of our population will never be competitive on the world scene.
Public Education continues to reinvent itself daily to try to figure out the magic wand it thinks it needs to motivate children, who are not naturally talented in science and math, to fall in love with these subjects.
Spend money, pass more laws, spend more money, that'll create equality for all and competitiveness for our country. Hurrah!
Yawn, get realistic. Be logical. If education is not important to all of our people, then its just not. If science and math aren't talents that a large number of students have, THEN THEY DON'T HAVE IT. Let people be who they are.
In a privatized market, parents would have the freedom to obtain only the training they thought would truly benefit their children. This would be cost-efficient and is the only true solution.
Nothing, not even education, can get in the way of these MASSIVE bonuses to Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, and if that means keep bailing out their hoplessly bankrupt banks, then dog-gone-it, do it.
It's like Warren Buffet yesterday said: "...TBTF (Big Failed Banks) is here to stay" and that means the taxpayer will forever back their unlimited trillions in worthless derivatives and credit-default swaps.
Therefore, that leaves no room to bail out the states, or invest in education, let alone the MASSIVE INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS needed to put people back to work and generate the tax revenue required to maintain community schools.
It's like a permanent "boot" of debt stomping on the necks of third-world countries you see in Latin America and Africa.
As long as Americans believe that a "retail-consumer-economy" is productive, then they will defend the bail outs of these failed banks who give them credit-cards to go shopping for usurious interest rates.
It's sad but this is the reality behind the excuses you hear from both Democrats and Republicans on why the Elementary and Secondary Education Act cannot be saved.
The public is blaming the teachers who have been cast as "lazy incompetents". The teachers have taken to blaming the parents who have been cast as "disinterested, over-indulging incompetents". The politicians have managed to cast themselves as the "advocates of the students". They have skillfully manufactured a feud in which they keep their hands mostly clean and the political interests of both sides are served.
Neither parents nor teachers are trying to undermine, destroy, or neglect the education of children. Unions would rather be focusing their time and money on other things. And for those who hold the jaded view that unions are only interested in serving themselves, you might be surprised to find that teachers' unions would much rather be trying to improve educational practices than defend teachers from political attacks. Sadly, it's been a long time since they have had the breathing room to engage in those activities.
The learning gap mirrors the earnings gap. When the tax structure and economic practices of the country are reformed to shrink the earnings gap, educational success will follow.
Don't fall for the Clintonian scam that the Obama Administration is trying to run. It doesn't matter how many soul-killing Algebra classes students are forced to suffer through, the fabled innovation jobs will always be shipped to Asian before the American students get a chance at them. This is what happened in the 1990's when the Clinton Administration told the American manufacturing worker to drop dead. Parents put their kids through computer programming classes only to watch those "innovation" jobs be outsourced to Asian countries before the ink on the kid's over-priced college degree had dried.
Tariffs slapped on anything entering the United States for an Asian country and not more math courses is the only way to reverse the decline of American workers and their pay. Of course, that would make me an anti-globalist (you bet I am) and therefore a bad person in the eyes of Ms. Edleman and her Clinton cronies. Its so much easier just to blame the kids then the failed Democratic Party policies that have constantly worked against the interests of American workers since the 1990's.
There are also a lot of healthcare jobs available (both clinical and technical) which need basic science training and knowledge.
There are a lot of vacancies in the teaching profession to teach math and science in schools and colleges.
The above post is the same old mantra of someone not willing to go out there and do what is needed to get ahead. Then we blame everybody else except ourselves.
Yes, the million dollar IT jobs, with stock options, may be in short supply.
The re-write of ESEA is "the opportunity" to move "towards equality and excellence for all children"...Yes
And I would add that to do that, this congress should not turn to the Obama Blueprint but back to the original 1965 ESEA and to the words of JFK, MLK, and LBJ, AND finish the work they started.
The reality today is that testing "every child, in every school, every year" has left us financially crippled. We have spent more money monitoring kids than nurturing them through the learning process. What happened to addressing their needs?
For some of us, the "unintended consequences" were foreseeable because NCLB set the wrong goal. The Blueprint doesn't change that or the heavy reliance on competitive funding that further contributes to inequalities...who is the poorer districts grant writer? What if they aren't as good as the ones Mr. Gates paid for?
The Blueprint, I've pick it apart! Are there some good things? Sure, but not enough and they aren't good enough to "fix" the mess created by NCLB and our financial fiasco...it has trickled down in case no ones noticed. It is now at the level of our classrooms.
Surprised by where this path led us? Time to consider what we are racing towards? It's a good thing to know when you start down a path.
Besides which if we are dumbed down and can't read - we are more likely to vote without sane reasoning .
The biggest changes to NCLB in the proposed Blueprint actually exacerbate the greatest failings of NCLB: "Turnaround" mandates that destroy what good work has been done in struggling schools. Still more testing. Lifting charter caps and encouraging private support for "public" academies. Over-reliance on questionable data. Worst of all--competitive grant funding for states and districts that agree to jump through the administration's hoops, rather than equitable federal support for schools that need it most.
I find this post mind-boggling.
Schools and Hospitals are expensive, high technology places staffed by highly skilled and specialized people. These institutions are not centers to baby-sit our dependents.
I hope people in position of authority both in govt. academics and society (like the author of this blog) can bring this message across and realign the current priorites of two of this country's vitally important institutions. We have to admit that these institutions of education and healthcare have done poorly by America's and compared to international standards. No amount of spin can save us from our inadequate approaches to children and the sick of this country.
Earlier we understand this, the faster we can fix (improve) these institutions, solve many ... many problems and save money.
I think it is time teachers and healthcare providers make it clear that they no longer will be the communities' social workers. But rather they are skilled professionals who will concentrate on delivering their expertise and skilled services in a kind professional manner.
Such an attitude will immediately end the massive bureaucracy that has developed around these institutions; that does all, except what is really expected on them. Society will in the long-run benefit from such an approach.
How come we don't dialog on true cost, including economic (both short- and long-term) on the individual (child and parent) and society from a two-income or single-parent family?
Often we read glorification of anecdotal cases of success despite adversity. That's great for that individual. Yet looked as a whole group, there are serious short- and long-term effects on children, parents and society.
With computer modeling, cost-benefit information should be attainable, though the methodology will be debated, to eternity. Much of this analysis was done in the past with use of common-sense and intuition.
The point is: When does it make NO economic and social benefit (for child, parent and society) for one to sacrifice their child / children's (short and long-term) success to spend time to make near-minimum wage? And where does the curve of benefit v/s cost cross each other?
Surely there are zillion variables, including physical and mental issues. Unless we engage in such dialog, we are just going in circles trying to see who fails the education system.
Computer modeling will introduce individuals to 'trade-offs' in our choices; compared to the current thinking where we feel we 'can have our cake and eat it too'.