Swift & Change Able

Comments on Universal Proficiency, No Child Left Behind, and Becoming a Part of the “Reformy Crowd”

by Margo/Mom

Among the big questions in education today is the question of whether Obama will turn out to be a “reformer,” or follow a path that satisfies a more traditional, allegedly Democratic, path. Will he stick to Bush’s plan (forgetting that the roots of NCLB go back to Clinton, and Title I goes back to Johnson), or soften up expectations of academic proficiency? Did Bush really intend to support proficiency for all, or was this just a set up for failure to open the door for a hostile take-over?

I have always suspected that Bush was naively sincere in allowing the addition of disaggregated reporting and AYP to No Child. In any case, I have urged NCLB naysayers on the left to make hay while the sun was shining in this regard, and use NCLB to put a focus in improved education for the kids who always get left out.

Putting aside the frequent characterization of (approaching) universal "proficiency" as "pie in the sky," the transparency of test scores and their disaggregation have had (what I have always assumed to be) unintended benefits in illuminating achievement gaps and moving away from “anything that keeps them away from the rest of us” curriculum for students with disabilities. The three schools in my district with greatest growth in test scores have been the three schools that formerly warehoused students with emotional disabilities. Surprisingly, kids with emotional difficulties can, in fact learn. Who knew?

There have also been great disappointments. The "highly qualified teacher" requirements have succeeded at the state level in creating a lower level qualification. Teachers who were never certified to teach subjects that they were teaching at the secondary level (particularly those teaching students with disabilities) have been grandfathered via HQT and some summer workshops. They are still not licensed to teach content–but they are "highly qualified" to to so.

It’s hard to fault the process of NCLB. For the most part, the process (of standard setting and determining levels of proficiency) has been left up to states and they in turn have left improvement planning, professional development, curriculum and the like to the local level.

There have been surprises. This movement towards freedom with responsibility turned out to be a sea change for educators. State-level decision-makers feared that setting an achievable level of proficiency would lead schools to do no more than what was required (which may very well be the case) and focused on rigor, making standards documents vast repositories for everything that anyone thought it important to teach. Administrators in schools who came in well below the mark responded with restrictive pacing guides and got tough with regard to anything except direct teaching of measured content (eliminating recess, arts, music, health, etc). 

Teachers sent the message to their unions that they couldn’t do any more than they were already doing and set about to ignore or subtly sabotage any possibilities for change that would demonstrate improvement (thereby helping to guarantee that this, like all other reform, would go away). The union talked it up about the poor stressed out children who couldn’t understand the vocabulary of the tests, or who couldn’t recognize content that they had learned when they saw it "in the test format." District administrators responded by ensuring multiple additional required tests to provide more data and to inure students to testing (since that had been defined as the problem–not the curriculum, or the teaching).

Also unforeseen was the lack of learning expertise prevalent among the teaching community. Rather than well-founded treatises on the things that might be needed in order to improve the education of those students found to be lagging, teachers presented long lists of reasons why these children would never be able to gain in knowledge unless they, their families and their communities became fundamentally different. Smaller classrooms and eliminating testing for students with disabilities and non-English speakers were advocated, if indeed the tests–and responsibility for outcomes–were to continue.

I came into the standardized testing realities as a liberal, singing in the liberal choir lamenting the effects of the tests on low-income students. This is because the first tests in my state were legislated by conservatives who sought to punish students for being the recipients of demonstrably sub-standard educations. They were implemented sans standards as guidance and the consequences fell exclusively on students–who were denied graduation if they could not pass a test of eight grade content prior to achieving a "12th grade" education.

I remained skeptical as NCLB introduced the availability of transfers or tutoring (having little faith in either). Frankly, I have been waiting for "sanctions" to arrive in any meaningful way at most of the low performing schools in the district. Not that I prefer sanctions. I much prefer a dedicated improvement process–but this is largely regarded as "more meaningless paperwork."

I don’t doubt the sincerity of our district superintendent, or most teachers–just as I don’t much doubt the sincerity of G. W. Bush wanting to bring about equality of educational opportunity.

But we have lived with dysfunctions for a long time. Moving away from the dysfunctions means an ability to trust that there is something better possible–and to give up whatever perks we have each been receiving from the dysfunctional system. Those perks may include a better school for "our" kids in another district. They may be the freedom to choose our own lessons and tests without having any idea if they are effective. They may be the ability of teachers to set their in-school hours and days around their preferences, rather than those of parents. Knowing that no one is going to judge an excellent teacher’s skill also means that the teacher down the hall who is in over his head won’t get any help.

So–I have moved into the "reformy" crowd, at this point. Pie in the sky or not, I like setting a goal of moving towards 100% proficiency. To do otherwise begins to beg the question of what level of proficiency ought we expect–and for whom do we lower the bar?

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Margo/Mom is a single parent of two students who attend public schools in a Midwestern urban school district

Her previous guest post, "Are Schools Christmas-Treeing Their Improvement Plans?" is: here. 

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Update: you can see Margo/Mom and others go back and forth on this debate over at Ravitch’s ironically named blog at Ed Week, "Bridging Differences": here. 

(i) be the same academic assessments used to measure the achievement of all children;

(ii) be aligned with the State’s challenging academic content and student academic achievement standards, and provide coherent information about student attainment of such standards; 

(iii) be used for purposes for which such assessments are valid and reliable, and be consistent with relevant, nationally recognized professional and technical standards;

(iv) be used only if the State educational agency provides to the Secretary evidence from the test publisher or other relevant sources that the assessments used are of adequate technical quality for each purpose required under this Act and are consistent with the requirements of this section, and such evidence is made public by the Secretary upon request;

(vi) involve multiple up-to-date measures of student academic achievement, including measures that assess higher-order thinking skills and understanding;

(viii) at the discretion of the State, measure the proficiency of students in academic subjects not described in clauses (v), (vi), (vii) [i.e., other than math, reading, and science] in which the State has adopted challenging academic content and academic achievement standards; 

(ix) provide for—

(II) the reasonable adaptations and accommodations for students with disabilities (as defined under section 602(3) of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) necessary to measure the academic achievement of such students relative to State academic content and State student academic achievement standards; and

(III) the inclusion of limited English proficient students, who shall be assessed in a valid and reliable manner and provided reasonable accommodations on assessments administered to such students under this paragraph, including, to the extent practicable, assessments in the language and form most likely to yield accurate data on what such students know and can do in academic content areas, until such students have achieved English language proficiency as determined under paragraph (7);

(xii) produce individual student interpretive, descriptive, and diagnostic reports, consistent with clause (iii) that allow parents, teachers, and principals to understand and address the specific academic needs of students, and include information regarding achievement on academic assessments aligned with State academic achievement standards, and that are provided to parents, teachers, and principals, as soon as is practicably possible after the assessment is given, in an understandable and uniform format, and to the extent practicable, in a language that parents can understand;

(xiv) be consistent with widely accepted professional testing standards, objectively measure academic achievement, knowledge, and skills, and be tests that do not evaluate or assess personal or family beliefs and attitudes, or publicly disclose personally identifiable information; and

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*Andrew Hart is a freelance artist and co-founder of the Philadelphia Cartoonist Society. 

To see more of his artwork, visit his website www.andre-whart.com.

This is Swift & Change Able cartoon #12 and appears exclusively at Swift & Change Able. 

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