"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.
--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.
No comments:
Post a Comment