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Presidential Campaign Prevaricating Goes Viral, Infects Education Debate
10/13/08
03:10:48 pm, Categories: Announcements [A] Academic Nonsense - Fourth in A Series
Is Bob Linn stupid or just intellectually dishonest? Let’s put it this way: we don’t think he’s stupid.
From today’s New York Times on Prairie Elementary School in Sacramento:
When [NCLB] took effect in 2002, 22 percent of all students and 19 percent of blacks were proficient in reading. [Prairie’s principal] Ms. [Fawzia] Keval has for several years used federal money to hire extra reading teachers and to organize additional instructional time for low-scoring students after school and during vacation periods. As a result, reading proficiency has increased on average by nearly four percentage points each recent year, although black students have improved more slowly. On California’s state tests this year, 42 percent of Prairie’s students schoolwide and 40 percent of Hispanics demonstrated reading proficiency. But only 29 percent of blacks demonstrated proficiency, and since California schools were required to raise the proportion of proficient students in every group from 24 percent to 35 percent this year, that was not good enough. The school has been put on probation. “I know we’ll continue to make gains with our students, but whether we can meet the next No Child target remains to be seen,” she said. “In one year, its hard to make an 11 percent impact.” Dr. Linn said Ms. Keval had good reason to worry. “An 11 percent increase from one year to the next, that is pretty gigantic,” Dr. Linn said, “compared to how most schools improve from one year to the next.”
As we have explained here before, the school does not have to meet the 35 percent target. It would have had to increase the percentage proficient by 6.6 percentage points, not the 11 Linn asserts. Put another way, 30.6% of black students could be proficient (and 69.4% not) and the school would still have met the requirements of the law that’s causing so many adults such stress. The school missed the mark here by just a hair, showing the goal is well within reach.
But of course, as someone who has been studying the law for almost seven years, Dr. Linn knows that. Doesn’t he?
And while we are on the subject of "pretty gigantic": 71% of black students, and 58% of all children at this school do not score proficient in reading? Unless I’m missing something, that’s a pretty gigantic write-off - of many, many children’s futures.
These are the schools that Dr. Linn and others do not want to be labeled as "in need of improvement"?
Update:
Andy Rotherham backs up to the bigger picture, and the broader problems with Dillon’s piece, and he’s right on the money. Does anyone see a pattern with Dillon’s writing here? Over the summer, there were big pieces on the op-ed pages (including the New York Times) about other (more positive) perspectives on the accountability-driven reforms of NCLB. We know Dillon’s not great with facts and numbers. But does he also not feel the need to go beyond liberal academics and administrators to get the perspectives of civil rights groups and others?
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3 comments
The last time I paid you a compliment, you responded with ridicule. If I remember correctly, you published a chart that showed the difference that Safe Harbor would make, and I said I wish we had had that graphic in 2002. Contrary to your response, I understand Safe Harbor, as I did in 2002 and as our lawyers did. We asked whether a school could perpetually make safe harbor or whether they would enventually have to meet the 100% proficency. We were told that presumably regulations would require them to meet the 100%. Presumably, you know what the Bush administration eventually decided, and I didn't question your facts.
But "facts are stupid things," and regardless, the facts on the ground made either goal impossible. You can blame people for the balloon mortgage APIs, but the fact is that more schools would have just failed earlier had goals been set that were more impossible.
Besides, what was so inflamatory about what I wrote about you except to use that word? Read your attacks on Dillon, and ask whether I should have used a softer or a tougher term.
So, here's my question. Whether its a 20% or a 40% increase per year, you don't really think that's possible do you?
I find the current situation at the school "in need of improvement". Don't you?
I think Bob Linn missrepresented the law. Do you?
I think reporters in school reform should ask parents whether they think a school needs improvement. Do you?
I can't remember Sam Dillon ever doing this. Can you?
Of course, educational numbers are shameful. The most grievous evils came from the legacy of Jim Crow, the breakdown of the family and our child-toxic culture. But there is plenty of blame to go around.
Before we complain about the mote in our neighbor's eye, we should attend to the logs in our own. That's why the AFT pushes for the Toledo Plan to get ineffective teachers out of the classroom while mentoring the rest.
Being a former historian, it drives me crazy that educational research does start with the standard two prose paragraphs explaining what the hypothesis is and isn't and what the evidence is and isn't. Being a former historian, I seek out the revealing prose passages that flesh out the portraits of education, as the CEP does. For instance, when the CEP explains the poor track record of turning around hardcore schools, they describe how educators - fearing charges of low expectations - have to go off the record to describe the difficulties in overcoming the home environment. Its great that Koretz's book is getting so much press. But I think the education press has missed his most novel point. One reason, says Koretz, that is is so difficult for researchers to determine what works is that systems have been so closed and unwilling to reveal their methodology.
But that get's me back to our disagreement. I'm just as frustrated by education's culture of compliance, but I don't see how you can get around it by imposing more compliance to accountability systems that are both primitive and arbitrary. To me, it was obvious that NCLB would worsen the culture of compliance, thus further damaging the honest flow of informative, and encouraging counter-productive policies.
Had everyone been upfront with the excellent graph you produced, and educators realized that they only had to move 10% of their underachieving students per year from Unsatisfatory to Satisfactory, NCLB's downside would have been less destructive and its upside would have been higher. With the less impossible goal, more outliers would have actually met those goals that were out of reach of the entire system.
Here's the issue that has always driven me crazy. Look at the big picture, and the enormous wealth and power of the US, these problems are solvable. But when you, or I, get frustrated, we have to remember that we are not just talking about the kids we have in front of us at any given time. If we could do what Geoff Canada did, and stop taking new students for awhile, we could devote more time for intensive interventions for our kids. But in neighborhood schools the pipeline of traumatized kids keeps flowing into our schools. Every year we get a new batch of kids who have been traumatized beyond anything we can contemplate. All through the year we get newly damaged students transferring in. If you saw the world from my perspective, you'd be stunned that The United States of America has inflicted so much damage on our children. And if you did, you would be more concerned with finding SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS.
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