You go Gem Girls!

Vicki- you are the BEST summarizer and illustrator!!! Please make sure you have these great illustrations saved for our presention at the end of the semester. The book is a great read. I so don't approve of the high-stakes testing that my students will endure for reading on May 20. I'm researching our authors to be ready for my Investigator role. Dr. Zimmerman and I already talked, since Debbie Meier is already done on the AET Zone I'll be looking into the other authors instead. What do you think ladies-- PowerPoint good for the final presentation? I'm going to do my FrontPage and Expression work to do my Position Paper for Steve in hypermedia.

Questions for Chapter 1

Isn't NCLB a performance goal (Ch. 4 Brophy)? It is exactly the kind of thing our book talks about as being what we shouldn't do if we want our children to actually value learning.

NCLB also requires schools with the lowest proficiency to make the largest gains? Again, isn't this contradictory to 'Brophy', in that a student should make progress based on where 'they' are not where everyone else already is?

Many Children Left Behind: Chapter 2 Summary

"A View from the Field: NCLB’s Effects on Classrooms and Schools"
--George Wood
Summary

With NCLB and the pressures of high-stakes, severe sanction testing, “We have embarked on one of the greatest social engineering experiments ever to be conducted on our children.” (44) The most devastating effects of this “blame-and-shame” experiment are found in classrooms today.

Negative effects include a rise in pushouts, dropouts, and retention; less fulfilling classroom practices including joyless worksheets, drill-and-kill, and a focus on easy-to-test facts rather than complex thinking; and a narrowing of the school experience through elimination of “extras” like naptime, recess, art, music, shop, and computer class. Schools that serve economically disadvantaged or minority populations are most negatively affected by NCLB; conversely, “Blue Ribbon” schools are ones that are already better funded and serve a less diverse population than state average.

Test scores are the driving force behind NCLB, but as the author says, “the only evidence that things are improving as a result of testing is that test scores are gradually going up.” (35) Science has so far shown no correlation between increasing test scores and turning students into better citizens, neighbors, employees, or college students. The current test rush ignores what we know about how children learn. Nevertheless, schools are punished for failing to meet testing criteria. As a result, they are sometimes forced to choose between the school and the child, as the examples of Angelica and Perla show.

In order to fix the imbalances that NCLB creates, the author offers three suggestions. First, we should call a moratorium on testing until we can figure out what the scores DO predict. Second, we should institute more complex models of school health to evaluate our schools. Third, we should target intervention funds and support to the schools that are farthest behind—those that serve large minority and economically disadvantaged populations.

Many Children Left Behind: Chapter 1 Summary

Many Children Left Behind
Chapter 1: “From ‘Separate but Equal’ to ‘No Child Left Behind’; The Collision of New Standards and Old Inequalities”
--Linda Darling-Hammond

Summary
No Child Left behind as it is currently implemented is more likely to harm than help, especially for the very students who are the targets of its aspirations: the poor, the special needs population, and children of color. It puts unmeetable test score targets on top of an existing unequal and underfunded system, complicating problems that already exist. It does not provide enough money to remedy the problems in the poorest schools, and it ignores other inputs that affect school quality.

Some have referred to the “diversity penalty” of NCLB, whereby schools with more diverse populations (and thus more subgroups) are more likely to be labeled inadequate due to testing failure in a single subgroup. Because of this requirement, most of our schools are likely to be labeled failures within a few years. High groups will hit ceilings, and low students will struggle on with still inadequate resources.

High stakes testing as mandated by NCLB is leading to a drop out / push out / disappearing student phenomenon. This is particularly true of those who score at the bottom of their subgroup. Students are leaving school without diplomas and without the skills to be able to join the economy—the “school to prison pipeline.”

NCLB must be amended to allow states more flexibility in performance assessment. Standardized tests need to be used diagnostically, not as punishment. Individual improvement formulas rather than school averages should be used. Goals for EC and LEP subgroups should be sensible but challenging (rather than impossible). Finally, the federal government must fully fund the mandate and offer extra help for failing schools.

We must also ensure that students are taught by qualified teachers. Many incentives would help with this, such as loan forgiveness to attract potential teachers to the profession, but mentoring and other programs designed to keep teachers in the profession are also essential.

Many Children Left Behind: Preamble Summary

Many Children Left Behind Preamble
“A Reminder for Americans”
--Theodore R. Sizer

Summary

We are long on rhetoric about public schools, and short on action. We cannot just continue at our comfort level; we must endure some discomfort for the sake of helping the materially insecure. Free public education has long been the “primary engine for social and economic health and for individual social mobility” in our society, and as such it is our responsibility to deal with the threats to it.

These threats include the following: poorly funded and equipped schools; poor communities whose taxes cover needed expenses, and state / federal funding which does not equalize the deficit; detailed state and federal direction of school routines; de facto segregation by social class in neighborhood schools; and the narrowing of teacher and principal authority. All of these are made worse by the demands of NCLB.

The original ESEA (1965) gave state and local authorities federal funds to be used creatively as they saw fit to improve local education; NCLB’s 2002 reauthorization instead centralizes, depriving LEAs of local authority—and giving insufficient funding to accomplish its demands. Obsessive focus on test scores distorts the problem and ignores many reasons for school and student failure.

Many Children Left Behind: Introduction Summary

Many Children Left Behind
Introduction
--George Wood

Summary

No Child Left Behind sounds like a good idea. It has its origins in our proud and hard-won tradition of improving access to and quality of education for all learners. As the reauthorization of 1965’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act (which gave us Title 1, among other things), it is designed to close the achievement gap by targeting areas of high need. However, despite forty years’ trying, the achievement gap is still there, and the reauthorization we call NCLB is actually making things worse.

NCLB calls for increases in money for schools that serve poor students, insists that teachers be highly qualified, and forces school districts to disaggregate data so all subgroup scores can be seen. These are not in themselves bad things—but the ways they are implemented are damaging. The mandate is underfunded by an estimated $12 billion dollars, and hits a low blow to underperforming schools (usually the poorest to begin with); restrictive definitions of teacher qualifications make it difficult to hire teachers in rural or multi-subject positions; subgroups like EC and ESL are virtually set up for failure with impossible proficiency targets; and the bill is full of special interest provisions.

NCLB cannot be fixed. Fixation on test scores causes declines in school quality, not increases; equity vanishes as nontested subjects get shunted aside; and the threat of federal takeover erodes local support for and trust in schools. We need instead to look at other types of school reform to increase the quality of education for all children.

Many Children Left Behind

Let's try this again Gem Girls-- Vicki want to post here?