Politics seems to demand simple messages – slogans so simple everyone gets it and goes along with it. Such is the simplicity of “No Child Left Behind.” Who could disagree with that? No child left behind: no child allowed to fail.
But life cannot be reduced to mere slogan; nor can public education.
The premise of NCLB is that every student, regardless of ability, should be evaluated, and the results should show annual yearly progress. And here’s where policy-maker’s flunked Biology 101:
- Year-over-year, this year’s third graders (for example) should always improve over the previous year’s third graders. They’re not comparing results from the same population year-over-year. Comparing this year’s third graders to the previous year’s third graders says nothing about the imrovement these third graders have made in their own performance over the course of the year. Think “apples and oranges.”
- Even at a district level, the sample size of these measurements are arguably too small to be statistically significant.
No Child Left Behind sets up a system in which high-stakes testing makes or breaks the school year, and districts serving Independence are feeling the strain. The Independence Examiner earlier this week reported on 2006-07 results for the Independence School District.
Blue Springs and Independence School Districts both have been classified as “Needing Improvement” due to the performance of Special Education and English as a Second Language students. As Superintendent Paul Kinder of the Blue Springs School District points out, there’s a definite Catch-22 built in to the system:
It’s ludicrous. It’s one of the major flaws of No Child Left Behind. You have to be below the mean as far as academic performance goes to even qualify for special education. Then once you qualify, No Child Left Behind requires you to be at the same grade level or above. If you are performing at the same grade level (as other students), then you should not be in special education.
It’s this “apples and oranges” flaw that’s really hurting our schools in the short term. In the long term, though, it’s our children who will suffer, and at the hands of high-stakes testing.
As most educators would tell you, high-stakes testing forces teachers to focus their energies to preparing those students for testing - developing test-taking skills - rather than preparing those students for life. But life is not composed of standardized tests. It requires social interaction, problem solving skills, and literacy - especially critical literacy.
Let’s all exercise our critical literacy skills to think beyond the sloganeering of No Child Left Behind, and demand a strategy for public education that doesn’t destroy the institution it claims to serve.
So here’s an alternative. Let’s design our public education policy around this principle: that each student should have the opportunity to learn to her or his greatest potential.
If you need a slogan, let’s call it “no child left to wither.”
