No Child Left Behind? Educators Say Law’s Good Intentions Override Common Sense by Carolyn Cosmos Ihe federal education law known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is up for renewal by Congress later this year, and it’s creating considerable controversy. The debate forums range from the faculty lounge and op-ed columns to formal lawsuits across the country. The states of Connecticut and Utah are currently battling NCLB requirements imposed by the law, and a bill in Congress called the A-PLUS (Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success) Act is proposing to let states opt out of NCLB requirements. And last month in Virginia, Fairfax County public schools backed off from their earlier refusal to meet testing requirements on the grounds that they were unfair to children who speak English as a second language, agreeing to give the regular reading tests to children who have been speaking English only one year, although the children can opt out if they say the tests are too stressful for them. Defenders of NCLB argue that the law was designed to upgrade “failing” public schools, hold all public schools accountable, and improve education throughout the country. The Department of Education claims the law is working and that student reading and math scores are going up nationwide. And even critics praise the concept of accountability in public education and like the bright spotlight that the debate has shone on the school system. Although No Child Left Behind has complex requirements, the basics at the center of the dispute are these: The 2001 law requires that all public school students be tested in reading and math from grades 3 through 8 and tested once in high school to make sure they are proficient in these subjects—and are progressing, year by year, toward mandated national learning goals. Although states create their own tests, they cannot stray too far from national requirements. The law also establishes teacher qualifications, and teachers who don’t make the grade get fired. Student test results and teacher qualifications along with other NCLB measures are published—that is, schools and school districts are given public “report cards” that show how they’re doing under the standards. If a school isn’t making “adequate yearly progress” toward universal proficiency goals and is not employing “highly qualified” teachers, students can transfer to other schools and that school can be “restructured” or subjected to other corrective action. So what’s the problem with leaving no child behind? “To an outsider, it sounds like a no-brainer—improving schools, teacher accountability. What could be wrong with that? Testing to find out how students are doing—who can be against it,” asked high school English teacher David Lopilato, wryly. Lopilato teaches at Thomas Wootton High School in Rockville, Md., which was labeled a “Blue Ribbon” or model school by the state of Maryland in 2001 and is considered one of the top 50 public high schools in the nation. It’s a successful school by any measure and a “high performing” one by NCLB standards. Yet a lot of its teachers resent what NCLB has done, Lopilato explained. First, even at such a school as Wootton, where students are good at taking tests, teachers must “teach to the NCLB test,” which is standardized, and thus spend precious time preparing students for the test and focusing on its narrow subjects and specific approach to learning. A standardized test is largely made up of multiple-choice and true-false questions that can be easily and accurately scored, usually by computers. This type of test, according to Lopilato and others, is squeezing out a broader approach to education in many public schools. Additionally, in some schools, non-quantifiable subjects that cannot be the focus of standardized tests, such as art, are being cut from the curriculum, Lopilato observed. Even where a subject such as English appears amenable to quantifiable testing, “the notion that English literature can be reduced to a standardized test is questionable. Advanced appreciation of literature is being lost,” Lopilato said. “It’s a cookie-cutter law.” Lottie Wilson’s students have other problems under No Child Left Behind. Wilson, who is now a teacher at J. Hodgkins Middle School in Denver, Colo., has taught science to students at “low socio-economic” middle schools in Texas and Colorado for the past 10 years. I’ve never been in a high performing school,” she said. A large percentage of her students have been poor, qualified for free lunches, and had English as a second language. “No Child Left Behind requires every student at a particular grade to perform at the same level. In theory that’s great, but there are factors such as poverty, English as a second language, and disabilities that make that impractical or impossible,” Wilson said, accusing the law of being illogical. “It’s like saying to a dentist: ‘None of your patients can have a cavity.’” Schools are assigned NCLB academic “targets” for specific student populations, such as boys’ math or special education reading for a particular grade level, Wilson explained. One school she was in had 85 such targets, and “if you miss even one target on the testing, you’re put on a ‘watch status’ as a school. We missed 14 as a district and were put on district-watch status,” the equivalent of “in danger of failing.” Next Page

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