Diane Ravitch Research Professor NYU Steinhardt School of Education

Posted August 5, 2008, 9:10am

Every poll I have seen says that the overwhelming majority of teachers in the United States believe that No Child Left Behind is a failure. Any speaker who appears before a gathering of teachers will hear their negative appraisal of the law. Teachers know that the curriculum has been narrowed, that the time available for the study of the arts, history, science, geography, and every other non-tested subject has been reduced. They know that the law's laser-like focus on test scores in reading and mathematics has led to constant test-preparation, which has replaced instruction. When time devoted to testing the basic skills crowds out every other kind of learning, this is not good education.

If the people who are required to implement NCLB on a daily basis see its negative consequences and doubt its value, the rest of us should pay attention.

Diane Ravitch Research Professor NYU Steinhardt School of Education

Posted August 5, 2008, 9:11am

In fact, there is little to commend NCLB. This federal effort to micromanage the nation's classrooms has not worked. The test scores in states are increasing, but gains on the federally-sponsored national examinations called the National Assessment of Education Progress have not kept pace with the scores reported by the states. An examination of NAEP trends shows that achievement in reading and math increased faster before NCLB was passed than in the years since it was adopted.

The way the law is structured, schools and districts get credit for advancing students from below "proficient" to "proficient," so they can safely ignore the smartest children who are already proficient (and "proficient" is broadly defined by the states, in most states it is the equivalent of what the national test calls "basic"). Thus the law implicitly encourages teachers to disregard the most capable students who easily have jumped the bar to proficiency. We pay a heavy social price by disregarding the students who are likely to be our future leaders, scientists, and innovators.

The sanctions in the law are ineffective. Few students are taking advantage of the choice provision; great schools do not have lots of empty seats, and most parents don't want to send their kids cross-town to another school. There is no guarantee that conversion of a low-performing public school into a charter school or a privately managed school will lead to overall gains. Indeed, neither of these strategies has been proven effective by experience.

My own preference would be for Congress to authorize national testing (à la NAEP), based on coherent curriculum standards, but without stakes or sanctions. The federal role should be to provide accurate information about student performance. It should be left to states and districts to devise sanctions and reforms. These jurisdictions are closer to the schools and likelier to come up with workable reforms. If states and localities don't want to improve their schools, then we are in deeper trouble as a nation than any law passed by Congress can fix.

Chester E. Finn, Jr. President The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

Posted August 5, 2008, 9:22am

NCLB needs a major makeover but I surely concur that it isn't going away. It should be turned upside down. Instead of being "loose regarding ends and tight regarding means", as every management expert recognizes, it would be far more effective if it were tight as to ends and loose as to means. In other words, the proper federal role is to set the academic standards (or have them set via some suitable national or multi-state entity), administer the assessments and report the results--but then leave it to states, districts, schools and educators to determine how best to work to attain those standards and on what timetable. NCLB has it backwards, leaving it to individual states to set their own standards and give tests, but then being highly prescriptive regarding timelines and what to do with schools that don't measure up. That creates perverse incentives for states to set low standards, game the system, and do as little as possible to comply with the prescribed federal remedies.

Jerry Wartgow Former Superintendent Denver Public Schools (Fmr.)

Posted August 5, 2008, 9:25am

NCLB was conceived and drafted by a strong bipartisan coalition of bright and well-intentioned people who shared the noble goal of improving public education and raising achievement for all students through implementation of the theories of standards-based education reform. It was also a perfect illustration of one of the lessons that we should have learned from prior attempts to improve education through legislation. That is to "beware of the unintended consequences of well-intentioned people".

While NCLB was very successful in focusing the nation’s attention on setting high expectations, improving student performance and closing the achievement gap, one of the unintended consequences of the law was that the regulations necessary to implement this very complicated piece of legislation mired the schools in a bureaucratic nightmare that placed far too much emphasis on testing and compliance reporting.

The purpose and goals of NCLB remain as compelling and important as they were when adopted nearly six years ago and should be a moral imperative for the nation. Therefore, rather than throwing it out we should work to make it a less bureaucratic, slimmed down, healthier version of the law that includes provisions for capacity building among those who will ultimately be responsible for its implementation.

Thomas Rogers Executive Director New York State Council of School Superintendents

Posted August 5, 2008, 10:17am

With apologies to Dickens: “It was the best of laws, it was the worst of laws.”

The civil rights community considers NCLB to be one of its high water marks–for the first time in the long history of school desegregation lawsuits, a law was passed that requires a remedy without first finding negative intent. In other words, it is enough to observe the performance characteristics of subgroups of children (differentiated either by race or disability status) and to require schools to address the disparity in outcomes.

Moreover, the law has changed the dialogue in education from process accountability to one of outcome accountability. Most of the tomes of education law adopted by states like New York require adherence to process–presuming adherence results in achievement. Now we’re moving from “I taught it” to “they learned it”.

Unfortunately, there’s less agreement about whether we’re measuring the right outcomes and whether we’re measuring them well. Most states’ NCLB tests focus on basic memorization and computation, not the kinds of rich problem solving and cultural competency skills that seem more likely to boost students’ fortunes in a globalized economy.

Moreover, the tests are administered as summative snapshots and largely de-contextualized. We cannot readily see the challenges students bring with them to school because of poverty or disability, nor can we readily measure significant progress improving their achievement–the only thing really under schools’ control, and therefore the most important accountability measure.

Ryan Hill Executive Director TEAM Schools

Posted August 5, 2008, 10:30am

The philosophical mind-set shift that NCLB forced upon our country is not trivial and its importance should not be underestimated. Until NCLB, it was understood–not hypothesized, but understood–that students who are low-income, of color, or classified as special education students simply could not be expected to learn at the same levels as high-income white kids. NCLB said that it’s possible for our kids, of all income levels, races, ethnicities, or classifications, to achieve at a high level. This is a critical message to send to schools and to the general population.

The problems with NCLB, however, should also not be underestimated. First, there is the oft-mentioned problem of state tests that vary dramatically in their difficulty. In “Knowledge is Power Program” schools (KIPPs), this inability to compare scores on tests in California to scores in New York makes us resort to taking a national norm-referenced test in addition to the state tests; for our purposes–researching best practices, accountability, etc.–the state tests are virtually useless. Presumably, the Department of Education has similar aims, and NCLB’s mandates provide them with similar problems.

Ryan Hill Executive Director TEAM Schools

Posted August 5, 2008, 10:32am

The other major problems with NCLB are a) that it’s completely unrealistic, and b) it focuses too much on jumping over bureaucratic hurdles and not enough on objective outcomes. We all know it’s unrealistic to say that, in 2014, all students in America will pass a rigorous state test. Most states, capitalizing on the first problem I mentioned above, deal with this by simply making their state test easier to pass. There is real utility and inspiration in an audacious goal, but if Kennedy had proclaimed in 1962 that by the end of the decade we’d be traveling to Pluto, NASA would’ve thrown their hands up and accepted their inevitable failure. Many districts, with little chance of making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), have done the same.

As for the bureaucratic hurdles, nothing in NCLB is better-intended or makes less sense than the Highly Qualified Teacher provisions. Rather than attempting to discern whether a teacher is actually effective, HQT enforcement has simply meant that teachers have to take more classes, have a more specific educational background, and jump through more administrative hoops in order to get into a classroom. Some of the best teachers I know are people who have taken an alternate route to teaching, whether through Teach for America or another source, and though these teachers have not always been “highly qualified”, they have been highly effective. Certification needs to bring congruence to the terms “effective” and “qualified”; HQT does not do this.

On the solutions front, Checker is right. A national test is critical, and the prescribing of means (as opposed to enforcement of ends) should be dropped. If schools could get to an agreed-upon proficiency standard with no teachers who went through the certification process, we should celebrate that just as we’d celebrate it in a group that’s 100% highly qualified. This is the reason a lot of charter schools like ours are having success in closing the achievement gap: fewer restrictions on the front end, more accountability on the back end. If our principals see something that works in another school, they are able to move quickly in emulating it. District schools, with more prescription of their behavior, are in many cases much slower to adopt innovations that help kids. NCLB should be changed to mimic the spirit of flexibility and accountability that characterizes most charter laws.

Randi Weingarten President American Federation of Teachers, United Federation of Teachers

Posted August 5, 2008, 10:39am

John Merrow is right: Helping all kids achieve, particularly kids at risk, was always the main goal of federal education law. NCLB correctly set high standards, but it over-emphasized testing and sanctions at the expense of helping all kids achieve.

What we need is a federal education law to help poor and minority children get a well-rounded education that includes the arts and physical fitness, emphasizes critical thinking, and teaches the value of active citizenship. Instead, NCLB slammed the schoolhouse door on much of what makes up modern civilization and replaced it with multiple choice questions.

So let's focus on what we need to do now. Let's put in place a federal education law that, unlike NCLB, provides space and opportunity for children to be taught a well-rounded curriculum, with standards and accountability that support that curriculum. At the same time, let's address outside factors like nutrition and healthcare that affect a child's ability to reach her full educational potential.

Chester E. Finn, Jr. President The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

Posted August 5, 2008, 10:47am

NCLB is all about reading and math skills. That's only part of the curriculum, obviously, but to date is the only part that federal law seeks to "enforce". I'm all in favor of a broad, rich, liberal-arts style curriculum for all kids (see “Beyond the Basics: Achieving a Liberal Education for All Children,” for example) but am wary of Uncle Sam trying to say what that should be. Moreover, many teachers and principals have commented that "if they can't read, they're not going to learn much history or literature", i.e. that NCLB's priorities are sound. Can't we count on states and districts and principals and teachers to add the rest of the curriculum?

Sara Mead Senior Research Fellow New America Foundation

Posted August 5, 2008, 11:11am

I’m sympathetic to Checker’s concerns that NCLB is too “tight on means, loose on ends,” rather than vice versa. That’s one of the reasons New America has joined with the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in advocating high-quality voluntary national standards.

But given Checker’s very justified concerns that states have responded to NCLB by lowering standards, gaming the system, and avoiding compliance, I’m curious why he thinks giving states, districts, and educators more flexibility in how they identify and deal with underperforming schools is the way to go here.

It’s not as if we haven’t seen what happens when states and school districts have greater flexibility in how they identify and intervene in poor performing schools: That was the case under the 1994 Improving America’s Schools Act that preceded NCLB, and states largely used that flexibility to avoid identifying low-performing schools, or doing anything meaningful to help them improve. NCLB tightened up standards for AYP, the standard used to identify schools in need of improvement, as well as specifying sanctions for them, largely in response to the failures of states to implement the spirit of the 1994 law. Similarly, where states and districts have flexibility in intervening in schools under the current law, they’re doing everything in their power to do nothing about persistently poorly performing schools. Just look at how states have dealt with schools identified for restructuring under NCLB (these are schools that fail to make AYP for more than 5 consecutive years. In only a teensy fraction of cases have states and districts taken real action to reconstitute the school, close and reopen, convert to a charter school, etc. In most cases they’ve taken the law’s “other” option—a loophole that allows them to basically keep doing what they were already doing.

Certainly, there is a need for refinement in both AYP and NCLB’s mandated interventions in schools that fail to make AYP. The discussion draft put forward by the House Education and Labor Committee last year took some positive steps on this front, particularly in terms of differentiating consequences for different types of failures to meet standards. But handing it over to the states and districts is not the answer.

At the same time, the federal government needs to be much more active in building capacity at the state and district level to intervene effectively in poorly performing schools, as well as being much more aggressive in supporting meaningful research, development, and innovation that will generate solutions to radically improve the performance of these schools. I hope to discuss this further—and hear from others—later in today’s discussion.

Deb White Teacher and Founder Cody Teen Leadership Coalition

Posted August 5, 2008, 11:37am

Obviously the intention behind NCLB was positive; however the law itself is entirely punitive. Rather than focusing on successful models which struggling schools can emulate, all of the emphasis is on avoiding failure. This results in "teaching to the test", lowering standards on state tests, inaccurate reporting of drop out rates and "cheating" by states, schools and individual teachers. Accountability is essential, but you cannot punish schools into being successful. Success must be inspired.
 
We need to focus on what works. Small class sizes and small schools where caring adults know each student as an individual, curricula that are well designed and meaningful to students and experienced teachers who can mentor and encourage new teachers. All of the financial resources that are going into testing, testing and testing are resources that are not available to improve schools.

We know what works–unfortunately test scores are easier to explain to the public on the nightly news.

Sol Stern Senior Fellow Manhattan Institute

Posted August 5, 2008, 11:46am

I must disagree with some of my friends that it's NCLB's fault that the curriculum has been narrowed and that subjects like history, geography and science are being neglected. It's true that some states and districts are gaming the system, dumbing down the tests, spending an inordinate amount of class time on test prep, and even tolerating cheating. But there is nothing inherent in the federal law that produces such destructive effects and almost always it's the state and district education officials that are behaving irresponsibly and often for political motives.

Nowhere is that more clear than in New York State and New York City, the nation's biggest school district. The state education department has been dumbing down its tests in grades 3-8, and even more so on the high school Regents exams, to maintain the illusion of significant progress in academic achievement. As I have pointed out in City Journal, there are some districts in the state that recorded proficiency rates of close to 100% on this year's math tests. This Lake Wobegon effect is an embarrassment, to be sure, but why blame this on George Bush or the Democratic authors of NCLB? Meanwhile New York City's education department is trying to boost tests scores by any means possible (including bribing children, teachers and principals) in order to advance the political ambitions and the historical legacy of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Let's not let these state and city officials off the hook for their politicization of education.

On the other hand, there are districts in the country that have accepted the challenge of boosting the math and reading skills of disadvantaged kids in the early grades, without resorting to perverting the entire accountability system based on tests. We should honor those districts, while discussing ways of closing the loopholes in the current law and requiring total transparency for the districts and states that are trying to game the system.

Christopher Cerf Deputy Chancellor New York City Department of Education

Posted August 5, 2008, 11:59am

For all its flaws, NCLB transformed educational opportunity, especially for urban children. Other than at the extreme fringes of the debate, few would disagree with the simple and related precepts that:
1) we care about how much all children are actually learning, as opposed to other input-based considerations;
2) that we are going to track and be transparent about such learning, not only in the aggregate, but by subgroup;
3) that we are going to operate on the principle that all children, regardless of birth circumstances, can learn;
4) that we hold schools and districts accountable for student progress, and;
5) that there are real consequences for failing to discharge that accountability.
Transformative system change–and who could deny at this point that anything less is required for urban K-12 public education–begins with culture change. In my view NCLB accomplished that in abundance. Indeed, I attribute much of the whining, the calls for amnesty, the overhyping of the many serious problems in the statute, to precisely that. If we are honest, serious accountability for student learning–while much ballyhooed–historically has been anathema in public education. Elaborate bulwarks have been erected over the years to deflect accountability away from districts, schools, and educators alike. It is of no surprise to me, at least, that the forced imposition of such accountability has yielded the resistance it has. Moreover, as the report of the Koret Task Force noted, signed among others by Diane Ravitch and Checker Finn: NCLB's basic principles of "accountability, transparency, and choice are fundamentally different from the traditional guidelines of public education ... and there is strong evidence that the kinds of tough accountability measures adopted by NCLB have been raising student achievement in the states."

That said, I agree that the Act is in need of serious repair. I'll start with two. Checker and others are right that a national test is critical (I'd go with national standards myself) if we are to avoid the shameless race to the bottom many states are now pursuing. Second, by the time the noble idea of ensuring a "highly qualified teacher" (HQT) in every class room emerged from the legislative sausage-maker, it had become a largely meaningless, bureaucratic box-checking exercise. Again, somewhat along the lines Koret recommended, let's recast HQT as "highly effective teacher" and build from there. It is high time we stop measuring teachers by credentials and pathway-tests that research now tells us convincingly are not predictive of student learning.

Diane Ravitch Research Professor NYU Steinhardt School of Education

Posted August 5, 2008, 12:12pm

I never like to disagree with Sol Stern, but I will suggest here that the narrowing of the curriculum is the inevitable result of an accountability system that tests only reading and math (science is tested, but it doesn't count), and that threatens to sanction states unless their students are 100% proficient by 2014.

If the fed says the state must reach 100% proficiency in math and reading by 2014, then several things will happen: Districts will focus inordinate amounts of time on reading and math; will engage in constant test preparation; will figure out how to game the system, such as by closing low-performing schools and re-opening them with a new name, starting the sanctions clock over; and doing whatever else must be done to meet the goal. That is why we are very fortunate to have NAEP as an external monitor. And NAEP, as I said in an earlier post, shows very meager gains these past few years, especially when compared to the previous five years.

Ryan Hill Executive Director TEAM Schools

Posted August 5, 2008, 12:20pm

Sol’s and Deb’s comments further illustrate the need for national standards and a national test. Sol’s comments show us that even when states or districts do make dramatic improvements, many will view them suspiciously regardless of whether the gains are legitimate, as I believe they are in NYC, or gamed, as they are in many other places. A mandated national test would settle this in ways that NAEP doesn’t, because state tests have varying degrees of alignment with NAEP.

As for Deb’s comments, as a teacher I can attest to the fact that the smaller a class is, the easier it is to teach. As a principal, however, I also know that it is harder to find 30 teachers who can expertly teach 20 kids in a class than it is to find 20 teachers who can expertly teach a class with 30 students. The major class-size studies I’ve seen draw conflicting conclusions, and part of the problem is that we don’t have a common measure by which we can judge class-size initiatives.

Christopher Cerf Deputy Chancellor New York City Department of Education

Posted August 5, 2008, 1:00pm

Sol, showing uncharacteristic restraint, I'll not rise to the bait and respond to your well rehearsed critique of the Mayor and the Chancellor.  I must, however, state for the record that your hyperbolic suggestion that people are being bribed (merit pay for teachers and principals and a pilot student motivation program?) is not a characterization we would endorse.  Perhaps we can agree to refer readers who are not yet exhausted by the exchange to our e-debate on Eduwonk a few weeks ago.

John Merrow President Learning Matters Incorporated

Posted August 5, 2008, 1:07pm

Let's not lose sight of the central issue: what to do with NCLB. Is the country moving inexorably toward "Common Standards," and, if so, is this happening in response to NCLB? What exactly should the federal role in K-12 education be?

And I urge others to weigh in, because this is clearly not just a New York City issue.

Thanks…

Jerry Wartgow Former Superintendent Denver Public Schools (Fmr.)

Posted August 5, 2008, 1:13pm

I agree with Checker and other participants that the current system is upside down. In the law’s original draft the National Assessment of Educational Progress was to serve as a uniform benchmark for measuring progress. Unfortunately this plank fell victim to the political compromises necessary to get the bill passed. We have learned from the experience of the past five years that national standards and a national test would be far more valuable in measuring success and much less bureaucratically burdensome on the states and schools than the current system.  The challenge is to devise standards and a test that measure the entire educational experience, not just those that can be scored by a computer.  Einstein reminds us that “Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts”.

Sara Mead Senior Research Fellow New America Foundation

Posted August 5, 2008, 1:17pm

Chris makes an excellent point about NCLB’s “highly qualified” teacher definition—While clearly a necessary step to address the prevalence of out-of-field teaching in high-poverty, high-minority schools, HQT doesn’t come near ensuring that teachers are actually effective.

But we’ve been bogged down for too long in a debate over whether or not test scores are an appropriate way to measure teacher effectiveness. It’s time to move beyond that debate to look at validated, reliable measures that actually observe what teachers are doing in the classroom, determine whether or not they’re engaging in practices demonstrated by research to improve student learning, and provide feedback to help them improve. The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) developed by researchers at the University of Virginia is one such model which can currently be used to assess teaching in pre-k through third grade classrooms. The next version of Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) should encourage states and school districts to adopt CLASS and related models when available, and also fund research and innovation to catalyze the development of new, validated, reliable observational systems to replace current toothless teacher evaluations.

Charles Kolb President Committee for Economic Development

Posted August 5, 2008, 1:25pm

As I have for much of the last quarter-century, I find myself once again in agreement with Checker. I also share many of the concerns raised by Diane.

On balance I find that NCLB has been a positive development for many of the reasons listed by Chris Cerf. But why has it taken our country this long to get to where we are today? And is our debate/discussion today really penetrating to average citizens in a fashion that can generate and reinforce a true culture of learning (not just passing tests) in this country?

“A Nation At Risk” is 25 years old this year, and next year marks the 20th anniversary of the Charlottesville Summit between George H.W. Bush and the nation’s governors. Out of that summit grew the six national education goals with standards around five key content areas (English, science, math, history, and geography). We were going to meet all of those goals by … 2000. We had the National Education Goals Panel with all of its elaborate, detailed reporting (which put most people to sleep, unlike Bill Bennett’s flawed but otherwise galvanizing “Wall Chart”), and we even had a debate in the early 1990s about having voluntary national tests/testing, as opposed to a mandatory federal test. Where we are today in NCLB is the result of many of these past efforts, and that’s why I see the glass as more than half full.

But I remain frustrated at the pace of change, what Sol refers to as the politicization of education, and the ongoing efforts to resist real performance accountability that benefits our underachieving youth, those in the middle, and our overachievers.

Why is reform so difficult, and what can change this dynamic, especially as we contemplate NCLB reforms?

Gerald Tirozzi Executive Director National Association of Secondary School Principals

Posted August 5, 2008, 1:30pm

We are continually reminded that the world is rapidly changing and that educators must adapt their curricula and pedagogy to prepare students for jobs that do not yet exist. Global society, international competitiveness, technology-driven workplace–such phrases abound and shape our educational environment and the mission of our schools.

The future calls us to prepare students who are imaginative, creative, entrepreneurial, and who have the capacity for "high touch" abilities such as compassion, personal rapport, social interaction, and caring and helping others; yet, ironically, NCLB forces us to judge our schools on minimal technical proficiencies. The vacuous victory statements based on low level proficiencies in reading and mathematics are driving our schools in a direction diametrically opposite of where the future is leading.

Our test-obsessed education laws force educators to address only the skills that are being tested and to prepare our students, as one educator has noted, "for a life of tests" rather than "for the tests of life."

Deb White Teacher and Founder Cody Teen Leadership Coalition

Posted August 5, 2008, 1:46pm

Let’s talk about testing. I teach in a small school district with approximately 180 students per grade. We test in the 5th, 8th and 11th grades; however, students actually test every year from 5th grade on and must demonstrate proficiency by the 8th and 11th. I will focus on the 11th grade. Every year we are testing different students who just happen to be in the 11th grade. Students move in and out at the rate of about 20% per year–which is probably less than the national average. However, combine that with a small sample size, just a few students performing higher or lower than average, and results from one year to the next are essentially meaningless. We need to test students against the curriculum rather than against unrelated groups of students.

More importantly, we need to test the same students over time and look for improvement. Let me give a simplistic example–a student with a 1st grade reading level moves into a school in the 5th grade. By the end of the year the student is reading at the 4th grade level. A huge improvement and one to celebrate. BUT that student is not proficient, not reading at the 5th grade level! According to NCLB that student is a failure. If this is a state with "high stakes testing" like Texas, that student will not move on. I have a friend who teaches 5th grade at a Title 1 school in San Antonio. She has had students in her classroom who have been held back for 3 years. At what point does that "failure" label so discourage that student that they just give up and drop out?

It is important to remember that desperate people (and organizations) take desperate measures. Cheating occurs when there is no avenue to succeed legitimately. Teachers who are evaluated by their test results are in a no-win situation. There are so many factors beyond the control of both teachers and schools. There is no career more important than teaching, but also no career where the person held accountable for the outcome (or product) has less ability to control the variables affecting that outcome. A teacher is totally accountable for whoever shows up.

Philip Howard Chair Common Good

Posted August 5, 2008, 2:07pm

Perhaps NCLB should be radically simplified, imposing a uniform testing regime, without all the mandates and consequences that have transformed educators into idiot savants. NCLB suffers all the flaws of central planning because that's what it is.

Children aren't widgets, as Deb and others remind us. With information from national uniform testing, more nuanced judgments can be made about success of schools, taking into account all factors. This information can be a powerful management tool, but those judgments can't be prescribed in advance.

Deb White Teacher and Founder Cody Teen Leadership Coalition

Posted August 5, 2008, 2:21pm

Some concrete suggestions for improving NCLB–all focusing on the positive:

1. Fund National Board Certification bonuses at the federal level rather than leave it up to states. Some states reward teachers for going through the process and some do not. (Currently approximately 2% of teachers nationwide are certified. The process takes 200-400 hours and $2500 to complete. The first time success rate is about 33%–so it is obviously rigorous.) The process itself is highly introspective and results in even those considered master teachers to say their teaching improved dramatically.

2. Test for student improvement over time. (Compare students to their previous performance–are they still on track and improving?)

3. Use evaluation tools in addition to high stakes testing. Performance Assessments, portfolios, etc. Maybe a national test for minimum standards and then additional supporting materials designed "locally" for everything above that? Testing, like a snapshot, does not always give a complete picture.

4. Modify AYP requirements so that as schools approach 85% proficiency, improvement may level off as long as there is no statistically significant drop. (The idea of 100% proficiency is ridiculous. How can testing be both "highly rigorous" and "attainable by all students"? Definitely a contradiction.) Currently a school that moves from 35% to 40% is successful, but a school that has leveled off at 85% and is not improving is a failure.

5. Increase flexibility to allow for trade classes and school-to-work options. Not all students are college bound.

6. On the other hand, stop shortchanging the high achieving kids. As school district resources are focused on remediating the students who might not pass the test, high achievers are largely ignored. A bored, gifted kid may be just as likely to drop out as a frustrated "failing" kid.

Randi Weingarten President American Federation of Teachers, United Federation of Teachers

Posted August 5, 2008, 2:47pm

Some would imagine a dystopian pre-NCLB world in which educators didn't care whether students were learning, hid the test scores of poor and minority students, and assumed poor children couldn't learn.

Yes, it's true that some of NCLB's  flaws have been "overhyped." That's what happens when a law is fundamentally flawed. But Chris Cerf and others may be setting up a straw man and using NCLB to knock it down. They credit NCLB with virtues that good educators have always possessed: a deep concern about their students and a desire to provide opportunities for every child. Educators not only believe that disadvantaged children can learn, they make it happen every day in their classrooms. They need some help to make it happen–whether that help is a good curriculum, good professional development, individual help for kids, or some of what we proposed this month in the community schools initiative. That's what we mean when we say let's build capacity, replicate what works and level the playing field.

Meanwhile, all the folks that talk about teachers should actually teach one class a day, or a week with the same kids, and try to achieve the same objectives I often hear about. Then they will see what it takes to convert their rhetoric to reality.

All of us have to take more responsibility, but that also means bottom to top accountability, not just top to bottom.

And, as far as Ryan Hill's comments go, I love when people talk about how research doesn't prove class size matters. If that is the case, why do so many charter schools, private schools and successful public schools lower class size as a means to differentiate instruction and ensure kids are not anonymous?

Chester E. Finn, Jr. President The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

Posted August 5, 2008, 3:40pm

Instead of ganging up to clobber NCLB, let's at least acknowledge that it's done a better job than anything before it of beaming sunshine down on the academic performance of every public school in the land and equipping parents, educators and state/local policymakers across America, as well as journalists and community leaders, with valuable information about how kids are doing in their own and other schools. Moreover, it hasn't settled for school-wide averages but has also reported results by grade and sub-group. This is a vast trove of crucial data that can be mined for diagnosis, school improvement and school choice in the places that still matter most, i.e. everywhere outside the Beltway. There's plenty about NCLB that needs fixing but this law has also made a historic contribution.

Christopher Cerf Deputy Chancellor New York City Department of Education

Posted August 5, 2008, 3:49pm

Some good ideas brewing. I am always leery, however, when the inevitable problems with tests, which undoubtedly include some cheating and some anti-educational test prep (as distinct from teaching the content on the test) leads to the conclusion that a regime predicated on high stakes tests must be irremediably flawed. Common assessments, whether old fashioned chapter tests or newfangled criterion-referenced tests, are critical to sound instruction. They allow good teachers to differentiate instruction, adjust pedagogy, and candidly assess what is working and what is not. Moreover, they provide some way to form a relative judgment about how students are progressing compared with others across a large population. Sometimes I try to imagine the world as the more radical "anti-testing" crowd would have it. I am confident it is not a place where children are attaining the knowledge and skills we can all agree are necessary to have a reasonable chance at competing in today's world. NCLB got it right in holding schools accountable for getting all students at least to a minimal level of proficiency on objective tests. Now the real work begins: 1) improving the tests; 2) norming them to national standards or keying off a single national test; 3) teacher development around sound teaching of content rather than test-taking skills, to name a few. But let's not fall into the trap of believing that the whole enterprise is beyond repair.

Diane Ravitch Research Professor NYU Steinhardt School of Education

Posted August 5, 2008, 4:03pm

OK, so NCLB is historic. No doubt about it. Never before has the federal government reached so deeply into each and every public school in the nation. There was a fundamental error, however, in allowing states to define their own standards and write their own tests. As a result of this error, the public does not have the information that Checker speaks about; instead, in most states, the public gets a wildly inflated picture of student performance. Let us not praise those states that falsely claim that 80% or more of their students are "proficient," when the states define "proficiency" as hopping across a very low, very basic bar.
 
And let us not forget that accountability, however it is defined, may have perverse consequences. On this score, I commend to you Richard Rothstein's compelling narrative "Holding Accountability to Account," which describes how accountability works in a variety of fields and how it distorts goals and leads to gaming the system.
 
We really must do better or we will harm the kids and drive out many of the best teachers.

Ryan Hill Executive Director TEAM Schools

Posted August 5, 2008, 4:10pm

Perhaps not all those schools are basing their decisions on research. My point, however, was not about the wisdom of lowering class size, it was about the difficulty of making informed decisions without a strong enough data set. I pointed to the conflicting studies on class size as an example of that, and as an example of one of the benefits of administering a national test. Whether class size reduction is a good idea is another important topic that the folks at NewTalk should consider for another time.

Having taught in both large, urban, district schools and in high-performing charter schools, I’m with you, Randi, on the optimism and the dedication of educators throughout the country. I’ve seen them in every setting, and the success of our schools depend on them. And among those dedicated practitioners, as in any field, there are outstanding educators who we can identify and mimic if we have the right measuring sticks; folks who successfully overcome even the lack of help and guidance that characterizes many big schools like the one in which I used to teach. As you said, there are also ways that schools can assist other teachers in becoming even more effective, and a common measuring stick similarly allows us to identify those that do this well, in order to spread their practices to other schools.

To improve the data set, we need a national test, and we also need to follow Deb’s suggestions – tracking cohorts longitudinally, adding more nuanced appraisals of student performance, and focusing on scale scores in addition to proficiency targets (which would reduce NCLB’s negative impact on gifted students), are all approaches that would give us a better sense of which are the most exceptional teachers and schools.

Gerald Tirozzi Executive Director National Association of Secondary School Principals

Posted August 5, 2008, 4:12pm

I think we need to return to John Merrow’s comment about common standards and the federal role in K-12 education.

If Congress truly wants to drive an education agenda for higher academic standards, it must not be content with a “tinkering” reauthorization of NCLB. If the goal of Congress is to be competitive in a rapidly growing global economy and address the inequality that exists for low income and minority students, it should shake the law at its foundation to institute national standards and a national test in reading and math. I fully appreciate the myriad and complex issues related to national standards and testing, and I expect that such a movement would be impalpable to policy makers (both Democrats and Republicans). But if Congress persists in its quest to have a significant federal role in public education, it must comprehend the major shortcomings of a national accountability system that allows for 50 different definitions of success. The reality is–absent a movement to national standards–in 2014, all 50 states will steer their vessels to Lake Wobegon to celebrate their students’ universal proficiency in reading and math.

We as a nation have no aversion to national standards; we set them for everything from food to cars to toys. Why not national standards for all students in reading and math? There are, of course, a number of problems that national standards and assessments won’t solve. The mere establishment of standards and tests won’t lead to attainment. Dollars need to accompany the mandates, and we continue to hope against historical precedent. But at least we’ll know that, come 2014, whatever success we’re celebrating is genuine success.

Sol Stern Senior Fellow Manhattan Institute

Posted August 5, 2008, 4:20pm

I agree with John Merrow that this is "not just a New York City issue." What the New York case does demonstrate, however, is that it is impossible to have a fair national accountability system if the people in control of school districts and state education departments–and who are supposed to be held politically accountable for the performance of the schools as measured by test results–are the same people who have control of creating the tests and reporting on and interpreting the results to the public. One reason that we can have a rational democratic debate about the performance of our national economy and the degree of accountability of elected officials for that performance is that we can all agree that the basic economic data put out by the federal government is reliable. The section in the US Labor Department that releases employment figures is insulated from politics. Thus we can trust the basic economic data and then go on to have our political arguments about the best policies to follow. That confidence is almost entirely missing from the discussions around NCLB and its accountability system. Until we have a system of completely independent agencies (insulated from politics) to validate the reliability of test scores there will always be the suspicion that reports of education progress will turn out to be a chimera. As I said in my earlier debate with Chris elsewhere, and that he refers the other panelists to, "what our experience in New York proves is that politically ambitious mayors and school leaders will try to use their power as keepers of the data to advance their personal agendas at the expense of the public’s need to know the truth about student academic performance." This undermines public confidence in NCLB and feeds the cynicism of commentators like Charles Murray who deny the possibility of narrowing achievement gaps. Eventually this will turn into a disaster for the nation’s education reform movements.

Deb White Teacher and Founder Cody Teen Leadership Coalition

Posted August 5, 2008, 4:24pm

A quick aside on the "highly qualified" teacher concept. To be honest–a lack of content is not usually what makes a poor teacher with the possible exception of upper level high school classes. (Please don't ask me to teach calculus!) Anyone capable of graduating from college with a teaching degree can learn the content in 9th grade science. A good teacher is the person who is passionate and engages and excites students. Master teachers need time to mentor and encourage new teachers, principals need to get out from under their paperwork and observe classes and give constructive feedback, subject area or grade level teachers need time to work together to develop activities and share their best ideas. Time is money and all the money that is being spent on testing and paper pushing is not being spent on teaching and learning.

Ultimately–teaching and learning is an inexact science–not easily evaluated. Like great art–you know it when you see it.

Sara Mead Senior Research Fellow New America Foundation

Posted August 5, 2008, 4:47pm

To Checker’s earlier point: absolutely. Disaggregated data, and disaggregated accountability, are essential to advancing equity for disadvantaged kids, and the reauthorization must preserve them. But I’m concerned many proposals to give states added flexibility in identifying or intervening in low-performing schools would undermine accountability for how schools serve all student subgroups.

John Merrow President Learning Matters Incorporated

Posted August 5, 2008, 4:52pm

So, Deb, is it that we test too much or that the tests are crummy, or both? And let me throw into the mix Education Sector's finding–that we spend 15 cents of every $100 education dollars on NCLB testing. I know from conversations with the folks who make kitty litter, flea powder and other Hartz pet products that it spends at least 10 times that much testing its products.

Arthur Levine President Woodrow Wilson Foundation

Posted August 5, 2008, 5:20pm

I spent much of the day on an airplane and just read through all of today’s postings in succession. I was surprised at the commonality of views the group shares, given the broad diversity of our politics and positions. Most of the writers were supportive of the purposes of NCLB and wrote positively of seeking an education system which is outcome-based, accountability-driven and inclusive of all children. These are not apple pie areas for agreement. The criticisms dealt largely with the familiar and widely agreed upon short-comings of NCLB such as AYP, highly qualified teachers, dumbing down testing, the diversity of standards, the narrowing of the curriculum and the like. Most called for revision rather than elimination of NCLB.

I take Randi’s observation regarding the dystopian view of schooling as very important. I don’t believe it is necessary to say that schools have failed to make the case for NCLB. Our entire world is changing-economically, demographically, technologically and globally. We live in a time which Checker alluded to. Information economies focus on common outcomes and industrial societies emphasize common processes. America’s shift to an information economy meant learning replaced teaching as the principal concern of schooling. This meant standards-based education, assessment and accountability. The information economy also made it essential that students have higher skill and knowledge levels than ever before. Moreover, this became true for all children if they were to be able to get decent jobs. Our schools, like every other social institution in America, were created for an earlier time and the challenge before us is to refit–government, healthcare, media and schools–for a new era. None should be accused of having failed, but each needs to change. NCLB recognized these new realities for the world of education, but sought to address them in a very imperfect fashion.

On outcomes, I can’t imagine federal action or national standards. But in recent conversation with governors, more and more seem to be talking about common standards across states and would be eager to join such an effort.

Frederick Hess Resident Scholar and Director of Education Policy Studies American Enterprise Institute

Posted August 5, 2008, 7:15pm

Like most others engaged in this discussion, I’m of two minds about NCLB. I have great respect for its soaring ambition and its ability to emphasize a culture in which achievement and outcomes are central to the public debate (Let’s remember that, less than a decade ago, such a focus was far more controversial). Moreover, as Checker has noted, the copious sunlight that NCLB has cast on achievement is an unmitigated good. Of course, this is little more than ESEA and IASA had sought in 1994—and one regrets the foot-dragging and inertia that made the statutory overkill of NCLB necessary.

More significantly, though, I’m troubled by the manner in which NCLB’s authors took the “reinventing government” playbook and deployed it in ways that showed little regard for the lessons or limits of public policy. In place of tough, neutral scoring and sensible goals, they adopted heroic goals coupled with easily manipulated standards, testing, and scoring machinery. In lieu of combining increased outcome accountability with increased operational flexibility, NCLB largely kept the old regulatory framework in place and even imposed an array of new awkward compromises (can we spell “HQT”?). Rather than judging school or district quality (e.g. how much students are learning in the subjects of interest during the academic year), adequate yearly progress and the remedy cascade are oriented on where students stand at a particular point in time—with all the attendant problems of misaligned incentives. 

The result is a law that embraces the language of “outcome-based accountability” but that looks much like its ancestral Great Society legislation—larded with new mandates, awkwardly conceived testing requirements, and an ambition that casually ignores the constraints of federalism, statute, or bureaucratic competence. Indeed, the incentives for states to dress up outcomes and for schools and districts to carefully follow rules rather than necessarily deliver real results has arguably led to a budding new compliance mindset.

Consequently, I see a strong case for setting clear and coherent metrics for measuring achievement, demanding that states identify particularly low-performing schools and identify strategies for addressing them, and reshaping NCLB so as to encourage new providers and delivery systems. This will likely mean moving away from the SEA/LEA framework that worked well as a mechanism for pushing out dollars, but not so well as a means for addressing mediocre schools or pioneering more effective solutions. Would this constitute a radical rewrite of NCLB? I’m not sure. I guess it depends on what one regards as the core precepts of the law. But either way, I do fear that standing by the law’s “bright-line” principles as currently understood has a real chance to not only unravel NCLB but to set back a quarter-century’s worth of thoughtful efforts to bring schools out of an era of input regulation and promote meaningful educational accountability.

Deb White Teacher and Founder Cody Teen Leadership Coalition

Posted August 5, 2008, 11:51pm

I think that for many kids, a multiple choice test is not the best way for them to demonstrate proficiency. In Wyoming we have created performance assessments at the state level for each grade level and subject area. Each subject area picks two to give during the semester. So, for example, all students in Physical Science complete a final exam and the same two performance assessments that every other PS student in the school completes. This assesses the student in relation to the curriculum and to some extent to the teacher. The performance assessments are graded on a uniform rubric.

This is obviously more time consuming than a multiple choice test and in fact some of the performance assessments take multiple days. However, they are interesting and assess multiple real life skills. An example would be in Physical Science the students must complete a consumer report type project where they select two brands of a product, identify the five essential qualities of the product (i.e., absorbency for paper towels), design a controlled experiment to evaluate each quality, gather data, create tables and graphs and draw conclusions using a decision matrix. Is this a "better" assessment tool? YES! Is it easy and fast? NO.

All students do not learn in the same way and all students cannot be evaluated in the same way. In fact–we don't want to produce students who are all alike.

John Merrow President Learning Matters Incorporated

Posted August 6, 2008, 9:00am

Good morning on Day Two (less than 48 hours to solve all the problems!!)

Many of you seem to support 'National Testing,' and I wonder if we could explore that a bit more. Doesn't national testing assume the existence of national standards? And how far are we from that?

I am struck by the wisdom of Achieve, Eli Broad and others who talk about 'Common Standards,’ perhaps recognizing that 'national' and 'federal' are widely confused concepts and red flags to many Americans.

But who sets the common standards? Are they evolving before our eyes, thanks to the work of Achieve, the New England group known (unfortunately) as NECAP, and others?

If, say, 35 or 40 states adopt common standards and tests, will that be sufficient to push the rest to follow?

Is the federal role to enable, i.e., provide the money to develop demanding standards and tests?

I look forward to the day.

Chester E. Finn, Jr. President The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

Posted August 6, 2008, 9:16am

Multi-state standards are surely evolving before our eyes–Achieve, the CCSSO and others are hard at work on this–and at least one version is apt to evolve from an improved version of the "American Diploma Project" standards that are then "backward mapped" from high-school graduation to earlier grade levels. (Others may do likewise. It wouldn't be a bad thing to have several such projects.) I'm bullish about this approach and hope many states join in. I hope it also leads to multi-state tests that are aligned with the multi-state standards. This isn't quite the same as "national standards" but–assuming the resulting standards and assessments are sound–far better than today's motley array of individual state standards and tests. What is the federal role here (if any)? Extremely limited, I believe. Maybe grant (or even earmark!) dollars to underwrite these efforts. Maybe some favorable treatment (a lighter NCLB touch, say, or some extra money) for states that participate in them. Separate from all that, the feds should continue NAEP as the chief "external auditor" of academic performance by kids in states that do and don't join these voluntary multi-state ventures. But I don't know anybody who really wants the Secretary of Education or the U.S. Congress to write the standards for American schools.

Thomas Rogers Executive Director New York State Council of School Superintendents

Posted August 6, 2008, 10:19am

The problem is not that we’re teaching to the tests, it’s that we don’t have tests worth teaching to.

Perhaps that’s an overstatement. However, even in a state that gets top marks for our system of standards and assessments, the tests are largely measures of basic computation and memorization skills, basic literacy, and some common content. Contrary to others, I believe de facto national standards are coming–in the form of the increasing prominence of NAEP as an external validation, and the obvious tenet that tests are only valid when they’re aligned to curriculum and standards. Therefore, I agree with Chester Finn, that we should be bullish on the prospects for richer standards leading to better tests.

Globalization and the knowledge revolution have almost overnight reprioritized skills for the high-wage workers we hope our children become. Our standards have been slow to keep up, too focused on rote, and unable to measure problem solving, creativity, innovation, and aesthetic skills. The richer assessments Deb White describes panic policy-makers whose legal concerns force them to prioritize technical validity over authenticity. Right now, comfortable validity margins can only be achieved by narrow, right/wrong answer tests. But how many of the problems we regularly solve as adults already have right/wrong answers lurking in the back of a textbook?

Hobbled by these considerations, the states are a poor laboratory for assessment innovation. Thus the obvious federal role is to invest deeply to research and develop the next generation of assessments. They in turn will drive practice, teacher preparation and professional development, and accountability.

Jerry Wartgow Former Superintendent Denver Public Schools (Fmr.)

Posted August 6, 2008, 10:22am

It was encouraging to see the support for “Common Standards” during yesterday’s discussion. And as difficult as it might be for this idea to become politically palatable in Washington, setting the standards is the easy part of the equation. The more difficult part is building the capacity that will be necessary to attain them. We’ve been down this road before. We adopted National Education Goals in 1990 with overwhelming agreement that by the year 2000, US students will be first in the world in math and science achievement; the high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90%; all students will leave grades 4, 8 and 12 having demonstrated competency in a wide range of subject matter. Not only did we not attain these goals, we lost ground on many, and they could be reissued today with no changes and would likely again be supported with the same level of enthusiasm exhibited 18 years ago. With the same type of hype, we adopted NCLB in 2002 with the goal of having every state bring 100% of its students to proficiency in designated subject areas by 2013-14. It is clear that if current trends continue we will fall far short on this goal as well. If we do establish national standards I’d be interested in suggestions for what else might be done this time around to prevent history from repeating itself.

Sara Mead Senior Research Fellow New America Foundation

Posted August 6, 2008, 11:12am

Jerry is absolutely right about the need to build capacity. NCLB, and really the Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA) before it, asked state departments of education to do a whole bunch of new things, such as implementing high-quality assessments and overseeing and supporting intervention in chronically low-performing schools, for which they were totally unequipped. We need to radically rethink the structure and functions of state departments of education so that they can become partners with districts and schools in improving student achievement, not the compliance monitoring and check-cutting agencies they are now. The impetus for this needs to come primarily from the states themselves and from private philanthropy, however—although the federal Department of Education could help by shifting some of its own capacity in ways that model this better—it also needs to change.

What we really need the feds to do on the capacity side, however, is to be much more aggressive in supporting high-quality research and development, as well as catalyzing innovation to develop solutions to the educational problems that NCLB has laid bare. If we’re going to educate students for the demands of the new economy, we need much better tools, curricula, and instructional strategies, as well as ways to use technology to get efficiencies in education—but right now we’re not investing in the research and innovation needed to develop those tools.