The consequences for a failing school, intended and unintended, can be dire, Wilson said. At one “failing” Colorado school, the parents of higher performing students took their children out of the school, and its student population fell from 650 to 400 students in two years—leaving the lower performing students and the less involved parents behind. Such parents, even when they are involved in their children’s education, are less likely to have the resources to seek out and move their children to better schools. The better teachers also started to leave, endangering new enrichment programs. Wilson called this “the new segregation”—one not based on ethnicity or skin color but on test scores. “I taught at one middle school in Austin with a high-risk population where almost all of the kids were eligible for free lunches, where kids were being shot and killed,” she said, recalling that the school’s computers were twice riddled with bullets by students who knew that records and grades would be lost. “Yes, there was money for a projector or a science project, but what could I do for the student whose mom was a prostitute with heroin marks up and down her arms? There was no way for me to help that family. And we’re supposed to test these kids and expect them to perform at the same standard as a child from a family with resources?” Such social problems won’t be solved by NCLB as it stands, Wilson argues, citing the need for support services in poor and high-risk populations as well as the recognition of “good schools” and “good teachers” in such high-risk areas. “If an 11-year-old comes into a classroom reading at the first-grade level and the teacher can move him or her four grades ahead in reading in one year, that’s a huge achievement.” But that teacher, student and school would all get a failing grade under NCLB, Wilson pointed out, recommending more flexible and broader assessment standards. “In any case, unless we address the social issues affecting [poor and at-risk] students in a systematic way, we’re never going to have academic success at the targeted NCLB levels on a large scale,” she said. As for the Austin school where the computers were shot out, Wilson quit after two years. “It was like teaching in a war zone,” she said. Retaining good teachers is also on the mind of Cassandra Pinkney, founder and executive director of the Eagle Academy, a Washington, D.C., public charter school that serves children ages 2 to 5. She said No Child Left Behind “has affected the staff and created some turmoil.” According to Pinkney, under NCLB, the District of Columbia is not accepting existing early childhood credentialing for class assistants (who do not need college degrees) and is not giving them credit for the experience, professional development courses they’ve taken, or for their employer evaluations. Instead, it is requiring a standardized test that evaluates, among other things, their proficiency in algebra. She asked in exasperation: “Why do you need algebra to teach a 3-year-old?” As a result, Pinkney may lose an “exceptional teacher assistant who doesn’t test well.” Many of the NCLB requirements are “all paper and not practical,” she charged, and in too many cases these requirements are forcing educators to “teach the test and not give children the well-rounded education they need.” Pinkney recommends that legislators “use the existing NCLB as a skeleton” and build a better accountability system around it. “It needs to be improved.” Carolyn Cosmos is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat. Ideas for Improvement There is no lack of proposals to improve upon the controversial No Child Left Behind legislation. Leaders of the National Education Association (NEA), with a membership of 3.2 million public school educators across the United States, have testified before Congress and recommended reforms. NEA President Reg Weaver told a congressional committee in March that the law, though admirable in intent, was “overly prescriptive and punitive” and “has had many unintended consequences, such as narrowing of the curriculum.” NEA recommendations include: • Shifting to multiple research-based methods of evaluating schools and school progress and not limiting evaluations to standardized test scores. • Using growth measurements in school evaluations that would, for example, give credit to schools that move students from below-basic to basic levels of achievement or that boost student performance from proficient to advanced levels. • Providing “common sense” flexibility in testing students with disabilities and those who speak English as a second language. Requirements for students with disabilities should be decided by the professional team already assigned to each student, and newly arrived immigrant students with English as a second language should be allowed three years in school before their test scores are included in NCLB assessments. • Introducing more flexibility to assess whether or not a teacher is deemed “highly qualified” under NCLB. • Helping schools in high-poverty areas in several ways, such as giving priority to funding reduced class sizes and to attracting and retaining good teachers at these schools. — Carolyn Cosmos

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