MCLB Summary Chapter 6

MCLB Chapter 6: Leaving No Child Behind: Overhauling NCLB
--Monty Neill

No Child Left Behind cannot “fulfill its lofty promises” as it is written. The objectives of the law are laudable, but cannot be accomplished through heavy use of standardized testing and punitive sanctions. NCLB is underfunded, and promotes a public perception of widespread school failure where none exists.

Instead, schools must follow principles for authentic accountability. (They should NOT be held accountable for factors beyond their control, like poverty and “the historical consequences of racism.”) Ten principles include: a shared vision and goals; adequate resources used well; participation and democracy; prioritizing goals; multiple forms of evidence (the portfolio approach); inclusion; improvement; equity; balance bottom-up and top-down accountability; and interventions. Time must be allowed for any changes in schools to take effect, and severe penalties like “reconstitution” should only be considered if nothing else has worked—for there is no evidence that reconstitution improves the quality of instruction. A national campaign and a commitment to reclaiming quality educational practices will allow us to better achieve NCLB’s stated goals without the need to suffer from the law’s many negatives.

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.