Thursday, March 03, 2005
NCLB v. The Lone Star State
This just in the InvisiblE-Mail from my friends at The Sleeper Cell, who are always keeping their ears to the ground for news related to matters political. It seems the No Child Left Behind Act is being opposed in the some most unexpected places!
Read below to learn more:
"Houston Miracle" Comes Home to Roost
Before President Bush touted himself as the "war time" president, he
touted himself as the "education president." The main basis for the
self-congratulation was the so-called "Houston Miracle," referring to
the startling improvement in dropout rates under Houston School
Superintendent Rod Paige - who was then promoted to Secretary of
Education where he would refer to one of the nation's largest
teachers' associations as "terrorists."
In the furious pace of the election battle, this whistleblower,
reported on by CBS News, was barely noticed:
"I was shocked. I said, 'How can that be,' says Robert Kimball, an
assistant principal at Sharpstown High School, on Houston's West Side.
His school claimed that no students - not a single one - had dropped
out in 2001-2002.
"But that's not what Kimball saw: 'I had been at the high school
for three years, and I had seen many, many students, several hundred a
year, go out the door. And I knew that they were quitting. They told
me they were quitting.'
[...]
"All in all, 463 kids left Sharpstown High School that year, for a
variety of reasons. The school reported zero dropouts, but dozens of
the students did just that. School officials hid that fact by
classifying, or coding, them as leaving for acceptable reasons:
transferring to another school, or returning to their native country.
"'That's how you get to zero dropouts. By assigning codes that
say, 'Well, this student, you know, went to another school. He did
this or that.' And basically, all 463 students disappeared. And the
school reported zero dropouts for the year,' says Kimball. 'They were
not counted as dropouts, so the school had an outstanding record.'"
This week, however, the "Houston Miracle," having already gone
national through the underfunded No Child Left Behind bill, came back
home to roost. Again from DeLay's hometown paper, the Houston
Chronicle:
"Faced with the prospect of tagging nearly half of the state's
school districts with failing grades under the federal accountability
system, Texas Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley instead changed
the rules to reduce the number of failing schools sixfold.
"The move, described by some as a direct challenge to the U.S.
Department of Education's enforcement of the controversial No Child
Left Behind Act, sets up a potential showdown between Neeley and the
Bush administration.
"National education observers said Neeley's move makes Texas the
first state to outright refuse to follow the law's requirements."
Two points of clarification:
1. Sourcing--This material does come from a a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee e-mail, however the quoted sections are from legitimate news sources. (Though some might argue CBS News has lost some of its prestige as of late...)
2. NCLB...all bad?: No. Mostly bad? In its current form, almost certainly. I recently attended a conference to discuss my district's recently implemented NCLB-compliant core curriculum and the universal assessment among teachers from all departments is that NCLB overemphasizesstandardized tests that reward breadth of knowledge rather than depth of understanding. How else to explain the 16 day unit on environmental science shoved into a physical science course. 5 full days on wetlands, but Newton's laws are given 2? (3 maybe, if you can get the lab to work out) Standards based education is not a bad thing, but the name of the game is prioritizing. What is crucial knowledge for a student to take away from a high school science class? What will they find most useful and effective later on, either in college or in everyday life? This needs to be laid out clearly, and ideally given a level of universality across the country, especially so far as the sciences and mathematics are concerned. Given a fundamental reform of these standards and the testing requirements, then theoretically NCLB might have some potential to reduce the achievement gap. Even then however, I would still have questions about the proper response to take towards schools that do NOT for some reason make yearly progress goals in accordance with NCLB. Especially given that Underwood may be in that category soon if the rumors are to be believed...
This just in the InvisiblE-Mail from my friends at The Sleeper Cell, who are always keeping their ears to the ground for news related to matters political. It seems the No Child Left Behind Act is being opposed in the some most unexpected places!
Read below to learn more:
"Houston Miracle" Comes Home to Roost
Before President Bush touted himself as the "war time" president, he
touted himself as the "education president." The main basis for the
self-congratulation was the so-called "Houston Miracle," referring to
the startling improvement in dropout rates under Houston School
Superintendent Rod Paige - who was then promoted to Secretary of
Education where he would refer to one of the nation's largest
teachers' associations as "terrorists."
In the furious pace of the election battle, this whistleblower,
reported on by CBS News, was barely noticed:
"I was shocked. I said, 'How can that be,' says Robert Kimball, an
assistant principal at Sharpstown High School, on Houston's West Side.
His school claimed that no students - not a single one - had dropped
out in 2001-2002.
"But that's not what Kimball saw: 'I had been at the high school
for three years, and I had seen many, many students, several hundred a
year, go out the door. And I knew that they were quitting. They told
me they were quitting.'
[...]
"All in all, 463 kids left Sharpstown High School that year, for a
variety of reasons. The school reported zero dropouts, but dozens of
the students did just that. School officials hid that fact by
classifying, or coding, them as leaving for acceptable reasons:
transferring to another school, or returning to their native country.
"'That's how you get to zero dropouts. By assigning codes that
say, 'Well, this student, you know, went to another school. He did
this or that.' And basically, all 463 students disappeared. And the
school reported zero dropouts for the year,' says Kimball. 'They were
not counted as dropouts, so the school had an outstanding record.'"
This week, however, the "Houston Miracle," having already gone
national through the underfunded No Child Left Behind bill, came back
home to roost. Again from DeLay's hometown paper, the Houston
Chronicle:
"Faced with the prospect of tagging nearly half of the state's
school districts with failing grades under the federal accountability
system, Texas Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley instead changed
the rules to reduce the number of failing schools sixfold.
"The move, described by some as a direct challenge to the U.S.
Department of Education's enforcement of the controversial No Child
Left Behind Act, sets up a potential showdown between Neeley and the
Bush administration.
"National education observers said Neeley's move makes Texas the
first state to outright refuse to follow the law's requirements."
Two points of clarification:
1. Sourcing--This material does come from a a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee e-mail, however the quoted sections are from legitimate news sources. (Though some might argue CBS News has lost some of its prestige as of late...)
2. NCLB...all bad?: No. Mostly bad? In its current form, almost certainly. I recently attended a conference to discuss my district's recently implemented NCLB-compliant core curriculum and the universal assessment among teachers from all departments is that NCLB overemphasizesstandardized tests that reward breadth of knowledge rather than depth of understanding. How else to explain the 16 day unit on environmental science shoved into a physical science course. 5 full days on wetlands, but Newton's laws are given 2? (3 maybe, if you can get the lab to work out) Standards based education is not a bad thing, but the name of the game is prioritizing. What is crucial knowledge for a student to take away from a high school science class? What will they find most useful and effective later on, either in college or in everyday life? This needs to be laid out clearly, and ideally given a level of universality across the country, especially so far as the sciences and mathematics are concerned. Given a fundamental reform of these standards and the testing requirements, then theoretically NCLB might have some potential to reduce the achievement gap. Even then however, I would still have questions about the proper response to take towards schools that do NOT for some reason make yearly progress goals in accordance with NCLB. Especially given that Underwood may be in that category soon if the rumors are to be believed...
