Since its inception in 2001, No Child Left Behind, the centerpiece federal education law, has injected long-needed accountability into our education system and invested in kids and schools that weren't meeting standards. As a result, over the last decade, the bi-partisan law helped millions of kids who, otherwise, would have lagged academically.
The law, though, wasn't perfect in design, and it is starting to show its age. One of the lessons we've learned is that, like many other federal laws, it was disproportionately weighted toward the needs of suburban and urban kids and left far too many children in rural school districts, well, behind.
This week, Senators Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) released a draft bill that would modernize the No Child Left Behind law to include more kids in rural America.
These measures aren't just Washington policy talk. They would have a real impact in real classrooms that desperately need real investments.
Take rural Booneville, Kentucky, home to some of the highest numbers of struggling families in the nation. If the Harkin/Enzi reforms were in place, students there might have access to cutting edge in-school and after-school reading programs, be reading 68 additional books a year and have more in-class instructors.
Instead of being more than half as likely as other kids to never attend college, more Booneville high schoolers might be taking their SATs rather than dropping out.
Senators Harkin and Enzi are showing thoughtful and strong leadership on behalf of their constituents and kids living in rural America. Now we need all members of Congress, even ones who represent the suburbs of New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, to join them. If they do, we will score a big win, not just for rural kids, but for the future of our nation.
Neil J. Young: Studying Conversion: What Stories Count?
Continuing to punish schools and teachers when parents fail is not.
Multiple choice tests are used because they are cheap and easy to administer to thousands of kids. But if your purpose is to evalute a state, a district, a school, or a teacher you do not have to test every child. A thorough portfolio evaluation of 1% or %5 of the kids would be far more accurate and effective.
I don't agree with you on the 1 percent or 5 percent, because that makes it too easy to game the system. Multiiple choice tests are better than nothing. The key is to use standardized tests, and with all this mandatory testing, we should be able to have a single sert of standardized tests for all grade levels and all States within two years. The States want to do their own individual tests specifically to avoid standardization. This loophole should never have been allowed.
I know in my own State, and many others, when kids fail to achieve progress the State goes back to the federal government and gives them some BS story about how they made the tests harder that year. The federal oversight people always buy this stupid story, year after year.
That said, I'm a little confused as to why you need to call out Booneville, or Kentucky in general. There was no real detail or backstory for this particular school district, and it seems as though a generic reference to poor rural schools would have sufficed.
Perhaps it's just my Kentucky pride, but I say give me a better glimpse into the place you're specifying. It would make for a better, more powerful article. It's like you threw a dart at a list of poor schools and put that location in the article.
Last night I watched a special by Diane Sawyer about Native American children who live in South Dakota, also a rural and poor area. The pride and resilience and tenacity of those children reminded me of some of my first students and their parents. Sawyer did a similar presentation of children in rural Appalachia a year or two ago. We need to remember all the children in our nation, not just those we often see and hear about.
My first two years of teaching were in a very remote small town. You had to drive at least an hour to get to a highway. It was a peninsula that many of the residents where most of the residents had been born and grew up and married and stayed. I talked with one person who talked about the "big trip" after for her honeymoon--they went 14 miles away to another town across the river. Most of the residents there were so poor they rarely, if ever, left he peninsula. It is a very beautiful, very remote, very poor area.
Our physical and occupational therapists had to drive for two hours to reach us, so they only came once a month. There are services and resources available in cities that people in rural areas can only dream about. They often have no way to get to the cities without a long ride, many don't have cars and depend on the bus schedule. To get to the city by bus, get to the place offering the service, and back again would take an enire day that most can't spare from their jobs.
I'm glad it all worked out well for your son and that he has such a dedicated mother with the ability to take the time to do all he needed. There was a small hospital on the peninsula but the major ones were hours away. As you know, small town are often surrounded for many miles by other small towns. Mobile clinics are great, but there are too few of them for all those who need them.
Congratulations to your family about the baby soon to be born!
My first two years of teaching was in a very remote small town. You had to drive at least an hour to get to a highway. It was a peninsula that many of the residents where most of the residents had been born and grew up and married and stayed. I talked with one person who talked about the "big trip" after for her honeymoon--they went 14 miles away to another town across the river. Most of the residents there were so poor they rarely, if ever, left he peninsula. It is a very beautiful, very remote, very poor area with very few services of any kind.
The author seems to be the only one optimistic about NCLB. The solution proposed (throw money at the problem) is probably the worst way to make improvements. Wake up folks, throwing money at a problem never works (Iraq, Afghanistan etc etc). Instead, it only serves to line some thief's pockets.
The first thing that needs to be done is figuring out why urban schools are "better"? Is it the teachers? Students? Parents? I have yet to see anybody lay out anything remotely resembling a systematic argument a)defining the problem b)formulating a solution that goes beyond throwing wads of cash at it.