![](http://www.crosscity.org/images/left_col_dotted_line.gif"){kind=small}
To add your input about NCLB to any of the statements made below, simply click on the "comments" link at the bottom of each post.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
The role of central office
The missing ingredient in the national debate about helping all children be successful learners is the role of central office. In our twelve years of work with schools to improve performance we have found that it is essential to work in parallel with central office departments to improve their performance. Whole district improvement is in some ways easier and certainly more efficient in achieving the gains desired and having them sustained over time. Given the scope of need in most urban settings across our country, it is essential to look more broadly than one school at a time and to focus on deep system-wide improvements. From our perspective, this may just be the missing ingredient in NCLB. http://www.focusonresults.net/improving_performance_in_central_office.pdf . For more information about Focus on Results, visit their website at www.focusonresults.net or call 888.743.1076.
Related Link >
Related Link >
Thursday, May 11, 2006
There must be more support for school efforts at systemic change
There must be more support for school efforts at systemic change to improve instruction at the classroom, school and district levels. On-going professional development geared to the specific needs of each school and each school population is essential if student performance is to improve as dramatically as NCLB demands. There should be reconsideration of some of the edicts in NCLB, especially the cohort groups, the non-allowance of proven instructors outside of their college major as qualified teachers [how do you offer physics or Latin if there are no physics or Latin teacher candidates graduating in your state?], and the testing of special ed students. Test results in each state should be periodically compared to NAEP scores for validity. And FUNDING is a integral part of accomplishing school improvement.
Parent
Jackson, Mississippi Parent
Parent
Jackson, Mississippi Parent
The Jury Is Still In on Privatization
The jury is in on privatization. Children in private schools perform better than children in public schools on standardized tests. But when you use multivariate analysis, the data show that the signifcant variables are not private v. public, but the average price of the home from which children come to school. The winnetka Illinois Public Schools, for instance, score as high or higher than any school in the country private or public.
Notice that National standards are general and liberal in tone, but state standards are specific and rigid, and local tests are even more narrow and arbitrary. This is a well known phenomenon in programs devised by authoritarian structures -- and NCLB is an authoritarian structure -- the people with power write general guidelines, but the people who need to implement the guidelines and who will be judged by the people in power become overly rigid in their implementation of the program. It is called by the technical term "covering their asses."
We are doing much worse than spinning our wheels, we are doing great harm to teachers and students. The testing regime does two things to teachers: oppresses them with irrlelevant work, reducing the quality of that work and vilifies them with the stigma of failure especially if they are teaching children of the poor.
School reform ought not be built on testing. It ought to be built on respecting the traditional curriculum of language, mathematics, science, and the arts, actualizing the connections among those subjects that have been so tellingly supported by research in history, anthropology, psychology and neurobiology -- read Antonio Damasio's "Descartes Error." In the face of all this research, NCLB is a testimony to the ignorance and uncaringness of our representatives in Congress.
Moreover, NCLB is written and practiced on the assumption that teachers are mere robots in the process of producing "scores" on tests. (In fact, educational literature talks of teachers as "deliverers" -- what does "BROWN do for you?-- of instruction, reducing them to the level of UPS drivers.) School reform ought to be built on the assumption that teachers are educated and committed professionals who care about the curriculum, and who, in fact build curriculum in community with each other and with the support of sound professional development programs. If this were the centerpiece of school reform rather than accountability, we would find true progress in education in this country. We would find a cooperative and eager teaching force, which, if teachers were paid as real professionals would attract the best and the brightest.
So rather than merely focusing on the techniques of teaching, reform needs to be built on the moral force of a community of teachers who, naturally enough would seek and work with the best techniques available. Funding, then would be centered upon the teaching force, increasing by half the income of teachers working in the most challenging areas.
If this were done, we could probably get rid of most of special education and reduce class size to 15 students maximum throughout the country, training all teachers to deal with high-incidence learning problems, and leaving low-incidence children with severe learning problems to highly trained special educators. In a class of fifteen, most teacher who were properly trained could deal with one or two high-incidence special children. Currently, some must deal with up to fifteen such students in a class of thirty.
Teachers Unions are not blameless in this problem. They tend to organized as industrial rather than craft or trade unions. Industrial unions are organized on the assumption that their workers are unskilled, and the main purpose of the union is to protect jobs. Were they organized on the assumption that teachers are professionals, they would institute staff development and peer review programs like other professions, and it would be possible to have the community of teachers grow and discipline rightfully teachers who are uncaring or incompetent. Of course such a change would be open to abuse, but that potential is no reason to continue the current practice of inflicting students with lazy and incompetent teachers.
Data on gender and race ought to be used by the community of teachers in the local setting as a careful and detailed description of the challenges they face. Relying upon teachers rather than "scores", in my view would vitiate the nasty effects of accountability-focused reform. This, of course, would require the community of teachers to conduct on-going quantitative and qualitiative studies of their work in the school.
I work with teachers all the time, and have for over thirty years, and I have yet to meet a teacher who thinks NCLB is a good idea. The current program, standards and all, was made by people long in time and far in distance from the classroom. I doubt if many of our congressmen could pass many of the tests they have been mandating -- if there were a law that they would have to take these tests, NCLB would disappear.
Timothy Leonard
Notice that National standards are general and liberal in tone, but state standards are specific and rigid, and local tests are even more narrow and arbitrary. This is a well known phenomenon in programs devised by authoritarian structures -- and NCLB is an authoritarian structure -- the people with power write general guidelines, but the people who need to implement the guidelines and who will be judged by the people in power become overly rigid in their implementation of the program. It is called by the technical term "covering their asses."
We are doing much worse than spinning our wheels, we are doing great harm to teachers and students. The testing regime does two things to teachers: oppresses them with irrlelevant work, reducing the quality of that work and vilifies them with the stigma of failure especially if they are teaching children of the poor.
School reform ought not be built on testing. It ought to be built on respecting the traditional curriculum of language, mathematics, science, and the arts, actualizing the connections among those subjects that have been so tellingly supported by research in history, anthropology, psychology and neurobiology -- read Antonio Damasio's "Descartes Error." In the face of all this research, NCLB is a testimony to the ignorance and uncaringness of our representatives in Congress.
Moreover, NCLB is written and practiced on the assumption that teachers are mere robots in the process of producing "scores" on tests. (In fact, educational literature talks of teachers as "deliverers" -- what does "BROWN do for you?-- of instruction, reducing them to the level of UPS drivers.) School reform ought to be built on the assumption that teachers are educated and committed professionals who care about the curriculum, and who, in fact build curriculum in community with each other and with the support of sound professional development programs. If this were the centerpiece of school reform rather than accountability, we would find true progress in education in this country. We would find a cooperative and eager teaching force, which, if teachers were paid as real professionals would attract the best and the brightest.
So rather than merely focusing on the techniques of teaching, reform needs to be built on the moral force of a community of teachers who, naturally enough would seek and work with the best techniques available. Funding, then would be centered upon the teaching force, increasing by half the income of teachers working in the most challenging areas.
If this were done, we could probably get rid of most of special education and reduce class size to 15 students maximum throughout the country, training all teachers to deal with high-incidence learning problems, and leaving low-incidence children with severe learning problems to highly trained special educators. In a class of fifteen, most teacher who were properly trained could deal with one or two high-incidence special children. Currently, some must deal with up to fifteen such students in a class of thirty.
Teachers Unions are not blameless in this problem. They tend to organized as industrial rather than craft or trade unions. Industrial unions are organized on the assumption that their workers are unskilled, and the main purpose of the union is to protect jobs. Were they organized on the assumption that teachers are professionals, they would institute staff development and peer review programs like other professions, and it would be possible to have the community of teachers grow and discipline rightfully teachers who are uncaring or incompetent. Of course such a change would be open to abuse, but that potential is no reason to continue the current practice of inflicting students with lazy and incompetent teachers.
Data on gender and race ought to be used by the community of teachers in the local setting as a careful and detailed description of the challenges they face. Relying upon teachers rather than "scores", in my view would vitiate the nasty effects of accountability-focused reform. This, of course, would require the community of teachers to conduct on-going quantitative and qualitiative studies of their work in the school.
I work with teachers all the time, and have for over thirty years, and I have yet to meet a teacher who thinks NCLB is a good idea. The current program, standards and all, was made by people long in time and far in distance from the classroom. I doubt if many of our congressmen could pass many of the tests they have been mandating -- if there were a law that they would have to take these tests, NCLB would disappear.
Timothy Leonard
What is NCLB's intended consequence and what is its covert agenda?
The questions Americans should be asking themselves about No Child Left Behind are, "What is NCLB's intended consequence and what is its covert agenda?"
NCLB's intended consequence was additional accountability for public schools to ensure success for all. However, having been created by the conservative right, perhaps its true intended consequence is for NCLB to serve as a tool to further privatize public education. Thus, the end result is a system of accountability purposely designed for public schools to fail. This is covert legislation at its best that will be used to further undermine the basic foundation of the public school house; the "value" that public education is the great equalizer designed to provide opportunity for all.
In a day and age when our youth feels compelled to walkout and protest the oppressive and suppressive views, and proposed legislative actions of our government, toward their cultural heritage, NCLB in its current form, with inadequate funding, only serves to further marginalize entire segments of our population that have historically been underrepresented and underserved.
History has shown us that many issues have been polarized as Black or White, usually with the White power structure winning out, while the before "invisible" Latino population has quietly grown and, in some areas the African American population has declined. Now, growing too large and too fast, the Latino population represents a new threat, no longer invisible and no longer able to be ignored. They are by many accounts one of the most undereducated populations in the country. Thus, legislation is introduced claiming to champion the child, and other children of need. Yet, in the end the legislation will serve only the elite as public education is dismantled and government dollars are sent to those who espouse their conservative right philosophy at the detriment of the basic value of education being an equalizer for all.
To reframe the NCLB issue the aforementioned, previously invisible, Latinos must continue to speak out. But, they must join together in solidarity through their actions and votes with all minorities and immigrants. All must work together to keep this issue current in the media. All must be willing to get involved on a local level by participating in voter registration and grass roots political advocacy. This can not be an issue carried by a few, for the many. Reframing the issue means calling NCLB what it is; a wolf in sheep's clothing: discriminatory legislation.
Al A. Rodriguez
UT-ELP - Cycle IV
NCLB's intended consequence was additional accountability for public schools to ensure success for all. However, having been created by the conservative right, perhaps its true intended consequence is for NCLB to serve as a tool to further privatize public education. Thus, the end result is a system of accountability purposely designed for public schools to fail. This is covert legislation at its best that will be used to further undermine the basic foundation of the public school house; the "value" that public education is the great equalizer designed to provide opportunity for all.
In a day and age when our youth feels compelled to walkout and protest the oppressive and suppressive views, and proposed legislative actions of our government, toward their cultural heritage, NCLB in its current form, with inadequate funding, only serves to further marginalize entire segments of our population that have historically been underrepresented and underserved.
History has shown us that many issues have been polarized as Black or White, usually with the White power structure winning out, while the before "invisible" Latino population has quietly grown and, in some areas the African American population has declined. Now, growing too large and too fast, the Latino population represents a new threat, no longer invisible and no longer able to be ignored. They are by many accounts one of the most undereducated populations in the country. Thus, legislation is introduced claiming to champion the child, and other children of need. Yet, in the end the legislation will serve only the elite as public education is dismantled and government dollars are sent to those who espouse their conservative right philosophy at the detriment of the basic value of education being an equalizer for all.
To reframe the NCLB issue the aforementioned, previously invisible, Latinos must continue to speak out. But, they must join together in solidarity through their actions and votes with all minorities and immigrants. All must work together to keep this issue current in the media. All must be willing to get involved on a local level by participating in voter registration and grass roots political advocacy. This can not be an issue carried by a few, for the many. Reframing the issue means calling NCLB what it is; a wolf in sheep's clothing: discriminatory legislation.
Al A. Rodriguez
UT-ELP - Cycle IV
NCLB -- No Corner Left Bureaucratless?
We are spending so much time proving to Big Brother that we're doing our job, that we can't carve out enough time to -- DO OUR JOB!
Punitive authoritarian centralization is far different than the supportive service-oriented "central services" model Cross City advocates. Unfortunately, NCLB fuels the former. I'm all for a unifying vision for education and common standards for excellence, but empower principals and their site-based teams with the decision-making authority to create the means to this end.
Punitive authoritarian centralization is far different than the supportive service-oriented "central services" model Cross City advocates. Unfortunately, NCLB fuels the former. I'm all for a unifying vision for education and common standards for excellence, but empower principals and their site-based teams with the decision-making authority to create the means to this end.
Recommendations Around NCLB
We recently put together some recommendations around no child left behind that are based on a public hearing we helped organize in austin in january with austin voices for education and youth. i think the recommendations address your questions to us about the law. so i am sending them to you in the hopes they are helpful. we also are considering hosting another hearing this fall.
Nan Powers Varoga
Director, Public Affairs
Houston A+ Challenge
**********
Recommendation #1
Testimony at the No Child Left Behind hearing suggested that the act has been effective in pointing out segments of the population that are not benefiting from the public education system. Students said they have been in classes where the lessons focused on the test instead of the broader curriculum.
We recommend that the lawmakers listen carefully to the students, teachers and community to identify what needs to be changed in order for the intent to become the reality of NCLB.
Recommendations #2
While witnesses testified that the idea behind NCLB is good, the implementation has resulted in an overemphasis on high stakes testing. Based on testimony, it appears that some schools, have created an environment in which test emphasis, test preparation, testing-to-precede-and-predict testing outcomes have replaced much of classroom time spent on teaching and learning.
We recommend, based on the comments from students and teachers, that systems put in place to assess the effectiveness of NCLB be geared toward informing and guiding schools to make the necessary changes for educating ALL students rather than to build fear into school systems, teachers, students and families.
Recommendation #3
As a result of the hearings, it appears students know little if anything about NCLB. They and their parents need to be partners in helping to carry out the intent of the law.
We recommend that students, parents, teachers, and community be made active partners in helping NCLB achieve its goal. It needs to be made explicit that they are integral and essential to implementing, assessing, and revising NCLB.
Recommendation #4
During a discussion subsequent to the hearings, the Houston A+ Challenge Board of Trustees was advised that the law requires schools to give military recruiters the names and addresses of students 18 and older. In addition, the Board was advised that the law requires schools to allow the military to recruit on campus.
Therefore, we recommend that lawmakers explore and assess these mandates are having on the education of students.
Recommendation #5
We recommend that Congress appropriate adequate funding to meet the requirements of NCLB and its achievement goals.
Nan Powers Varoga
Director, Public Affairs
Houston A+ Challenge
**********
Recommendation #1
Testimony at the No Child Left Behind hearing suggested that the act has been effective in pointing out segments of the population that are not benefiting from the public education system. Students said they have been in classes where the lessons focused on the test instead of the broader curriculum.
We recommend that the lawmakers listen carefully to the students, teachers and community to identify what needs to be changed in order for the intent to become the reality of NCLB.
Recommendations #2
While witnesses testified that the idea behind NCLB is good, the implementation has resulted in an overemphasis on high stakes testing. Based on testimony, it appears that some schools, have created an environment in which test emphasis, test preparation, testing-to-precede-and-predict testing outcomes have replaced much of classroom time spent on teaching and learning.
We recommend, based on the comments from students and teachers, that systems put in place to assess the effectiveness of NCLB be geared toward informing and guiding schools to make the necessary changes for educating ALL students rather than to build fear into school systems, teachers, students and families.
Recommendation #3
As a result of the hearings, it appears students know little if anything about NCLB. They and their parents need to be partners in helping to carry out the intent of the law.
We recommend that students, parents, teachers, and community be made active partners in helping NCLB achieve its goal. It needs to be made explicit that they are integral and essential to implementing, assessing, and revising NCLB.
Recommendation #4
During a discussion subsequent to the hearings, the Houston A+ Challenge Board of Trustees was advised that the law requires schools to give military recruiters the names and addresses of students 18 and older. In addition, the Board was advised that the law requires schools to allow the military to recruit on campus.
Therefore, we recommend that lawmakers explore and assess these mandates are having on the education of students.
Recommendation #5
We recommend that Congress appropriate adequate funding to meet the requirements of NCLB and its achievement goals.
We Need Your Input on NCLB
In a recent email to our e-bulletin subscribers we asked for input on how we could reframe the issues of NCLB (No Child Left Behind). We received several emails that provoked discussion here at the Cross City Campaign office. But rather than just keeping this discussion to ourselves, we thought it would be great to open it back up to the larger community.
So, we have listed some of the responses we received right here on our new blog! Now we invite you to make comments, speak your mind, and debate the issue.
With the reauthorization of NCLB looming it is imperative that we find new ways to reframe the issues around this act and increase its relevancy to community organizers, parents, and students -- but we need your input!
Eva Moon
Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform
So, we have listed some of the responses we received right here on our new blog! Now we invite you to make comments, speak your mind, and debate the issue.
With the reauthorization of NCLB looming it is imperative that we find new ways to reframe the issues around this act and increase its relevancy to community organizers, parents, and students -- but we need your input!
Eva Moon
Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform
