What's so bad about NCLB?

This summer, a friend asked me what was so bad about NCLB, after all (NCLB=No Child Left Behind). (A shout-out to Peter.) I was slightly taken off guard, and the first thing I said was, well, it makes fundamentally good schools look bad. They are identified as "in need of improvement" if they can't get their numbers up to a certain level for all their sub-groups. (I'm not going to try to explain all this lingo--or maybe I will in later comments/posts.) Even schools that everyone, and I mean everyone, will admit are good schools. Peter was unimpressed. He said, and I paraphrase, if their subgroups aren't proficient, then they are, quite literally, in need of improvement. So what, he continued, is the problem? Ah. Touche (I can't put the accent grave on the e). So I figured I would use my blog to talk about what is so bad about NCLB. Because it is a messed-up law.

First of all, we have to realize that NCLB is not just about improving education in America. First and foremost, it makes education a civil rights issue. This is not a bad thing. But we have to recognize this fact in order to evaluate NCLB appropriately, and in this way: if you are the federal government, and you want to even out educational opportunity because unequal access
to a quality education is a civil rights issue, what should you do? In other words, what can the federal government do that most improves educational equity? Is the best that the feds can do pass NCLB?

Here is what it should NOT do: impose requirements that guarantee that the execution of NCLB will involve one set of adult bureaucrats in conflict with another set of adult bureaucrats, with no real consideration given to the needs of students. What do I mean? NCLB has imposed a testing regime on schools and students that has, at least in most states, nothing to do with the success of the students in school, or in their post-high school career. Instead, the numbers generated by the tests matter only to the administrators/board members in their district, as proof that that
district still merits federal Title I money.

It's true that many issues are in play here. For one, everyone praises local control of education (though it's not clear how many people really mean it). For the feds (the Dept. of Ed) to do something really radical, like forcing students to pass achievement tests in order to graduate from high school, would be seen as an unacceptable infringement on both states' and local school
districts' turf. So, respecting local control, they don't do that. Instead, they simply require that a higher and higher percentage of kids score as proficient every year (in every subgroup)--and the states specify what counts as proficient--so that the local school district will continue receiving its Title I funds. The result, then, is that NCLB is more about how one set of bureaucratic adults (the Dept. of Ed) relates to another set of bureaucratic adults (state depts. of ed, and local school district administrators/board members) than it is about improving educational equity in America.

Let me try to find another way to say it: the federal Dept. of Ed avoids questions of educational content and substance, because those have to be left to the local (and state) level. However, they have to "do something." They have to make local schools (and states) accountable. So local schools are required to show improvement in their test scores every year, for every sub-group (every racial group, socioeconomic group, learning disability group, native language group, etc.). The states decide what the content of the tests will be, and what scores will count as proficient
or not.

But then, at the state level, the state can't do anything radical like require the test to count towards graduation, or to be passed as a prerequisite to graduation. At this level, too, local control is held up as a Holy Grail (and maybe it should be--we'll get to that), so the tests are simply seen as a means for measuring school and district performance. The decision about the educational substance of the test, viz., what effect it should have on the student's academic career, is left to the individual district.

At this point, then, we see that the federal government and the state governments are rigidly neutral about the educational substance of the testing regime that is being imposed on local school districts. Now, are local school districts going to take up these tests and make them an integral part of their curriculum? Well, in a way, they'll have to: they have to get enough of the right (aggregated and disaggregated) scores. But will the test scores be incorporated into the school curriculum such that they are seen as integral to a student's education? On the one hand, why would they? Why design your school's curriculum around a generic state-wide exam. Assuming you have talented, creative teachers, why would they accept the role of passive recipients of a curriculum?

And, if we're talking about requiring a proficient score on the exam in order to graduate from high school, why would a district do that, and put itself at a disadvantage with respect to other districts? For it's not enough to get the right scores: you must also have a high enough percentage of your students graduating. You would simply be insuring failure to meet the standards of NCLB were you to require proficiency on the achievement tests as a condition for graduation.

So here's the situation: you have tests that supposedly determine the quality of a district or school that nobody (not the federal government, no state governments, and no local school districts) will stand behind as educationally choiceworthy, or educationally substantive enough to anchor a curriculum or education. But it's how our students perform on these tests that determine if our school needs improvement, needs to offer extra tutoring and other help, or needs to be entirely restaffed!!!

In other words (I'm afraid this isn't getting clearer, but maybe this will help): when the feds talk about "accountability," about making schools accountable, they seem to mean: "Prove to us that you deserve your federal Title I money. And what counts as proof, by the way, is test scores." So the local bureaucrats go to work producing test scores. With the numbers generated by test scores, you can quantify the determination of accountability. Instead of teachers' going to work to show the substance of the education that happens in a district or school (for any and all sub-groups!!!), which could then be shared with a federal representative from the Dept. of Ed, who also could discuss the substance of the education going on in that district or school, administrators and teachers have to work together to make sure that the numbers come out right when all the tests have been taken.

I think I'm going to have to rewrite this; it's getting clearer to me as I write, but what is written above might show more the struggle for understanding than the finished, clear, and transparent product.

By the way I just heard two cats fighting outside my window.