A Whole School Left Behind

By Tom

There are good laws and there are bad laws. And there are some laws that seem to cause exactly what they were designed to prevent. This year I got to see what that looks like.

Eight years ago, No Child Left Behind dramatically amplified the federal government’s role in public education. In an attempt to eliminate the Achievement Gap, schools in which students do not meet “adequate yearly progress” are now subject to increasingly severe sanctions. Meanwhile, the target for all schools climbs ever higher, until the year 2013, at which point every student in the country is supposed to be reading and doing math at grade level; something that’s never happened in our country’s history, and probably never will, since “grade level” is essentially determined by finding the mid-point in a range of data.

Instead of supporting our struggling schools, this law punishes them. First they’re publicly identified. Then the parents are “invited” to send their students to a better-performing school, at the district expense. If that isn’t possible, the district is responsible for hiring tutors for the students. If these schools keep failing, they’re eventually shut down.

The law was well-intentioned. No one wants their child to perform below grade level, and no one likes the fact that poor children and children of color consistently under-perform on achievement tests.


But the law was ill conceived. It was conceived by people who see free market competition as the best way to rid the world of poor performance. It’s an idea that works great for business, and even better for sports. It even works pretty well for colleges and universities. But under the current law, as we get closer to the year 2013, schools that meet adequate yearly progress will be harder and harder to find. Eventually, there won’t be nearly enough room in well-performing schools to accommodate the need. And forget charter schools and private schools; they’ll have long since filled with the children of the disenchanted parents who have the resources to get their children out of public schools. In other words, our education system doesn’t have the capacity to sustain the need that this law is creating.

You can argue that competition itself will improve the education system. Schools will recognize good ideas and incorporate them as they become increasingly desperate. And to some extent, this is happening. Most teachers are pretty willing to try new ideas if they think it will improve student learning. But teachers aren’t stupid. They know full well that student achievement depends a lot on factors such as early learning and parental support; factors that are well beyond the schools’ control, making the “competition” inherently unfair.

My school hasn’t yet fallen under the sanctions of NCLB. But the next school over, the one with the 90% free and reduced lunch rate, where nearly every kid grows up learning English as a second language, has. To no one’s surprise, their scores have been pretty low for the last eight years. This was the year when they had to send letters home to each family, inviting them to move their kids to another school. My school. And many of them did. Unfortunately, the test scores, and the letters that followed, came less than a week before school started, resulting in the hasty departure of one of their teachers, a fairly traumatic event in the culture of a school. So one can only imagine the level of morale that greeted their students on that first sunny day of school.

But here’s the irony: This school has actually been doing a remarkable job with their students. In fact, many of their teachers have assumed leadership roles within the district, leading workshops on techniques that work for high-need English language learners. As a matter of fact, two summers ago, most of the faculty at my school, including myself, attended a week-long seminar on how to teach content knowledge to kids with low literacy skills. Guess where the workshop was held? But now they’re basically being punished because of who they teach, despite the fact that they’re good at teaching those very students.

And compounding the irony is the fact that most of the families that migrated over are actually far more literate, functional and stable than the bulk of their population. Remember, the parents have to read the letters and then figure out how to take advantage of the opportunity. That seemingly low bar actually eliminates a lot of high-need families. So our neighboring school not only lost a teacher, they lost their classroom leaders and their parent club.

And there you have it: A law that was supposed to close the Achievement Gap has actually made it wider.

11 thoughts on “A Whole School Left Behind

  1. Bob Heiny

    Thanks for asking, Mark. I mean this response respectfully as I know you also asked your questions. I argued against my point for decades, then finally decided to set aside what I thought I knew about teaching and focused instead on empirical experimental descriptions of how people learn. Some of my previous efforts did not result in student learning and learning efficiency rates that matched teachers who used such learning principles.
    It’s easy instruction, but requires different lesson planning.
    No silver bullets. No mysteries. Parents do it. Missionaries do it. Camp counselors, tutors, and coaches do it. Interestingly, certified public school teachers only do it sometimes, even when it appears most useful for a student to increase learning promptly.
    It comes with various pedagogy names ranging from direct and indirect instruction to direct learning to precision teaching to the 3-Ts (tell/show-them-how to do whatever it is the teacher ask students to do, …), … It doesn’t necessarily require special training. Some of us have noticed it requires “untraining” certified teachers who know lots “about” teaching and relatively little of how to use descriptions “of” how people learn.
    Does this address your questions?

  2. Mark

    I still don’t understand this part of your comment, Bob:
    “Teachers know what pedagogy to use in order to raise measured student performance scores with whatever we have in whichever conditions we work. Some don’t appear to choose those.”
    I genuinely believe that many teachers, well intended and hard working ones included, don’t know the magic pedagogical bullet of which you speak. When I read that, it struck me: I don’t know what that pedagogical approach is. I know what I do (based on my own learning, research, and trial and error) but I don’t know if that’s the same magic bullet to which that comment refers.
    And the idea that any teacher knows of a better practice and willfully chooses not to use something that works in their context? I struggle with that. Sure, there are some ineffective teachers out there, but to assert that teachers are willfully choosing not to use the magic bullet? If there’s the perception that teachers are not using those pedagogical approach, is there evidence that they even know about it? That they’ve practiced it? That they’ve been trained in it? That they’ve been given the tools to implement it?

  3. Bob Heiny

    Thanks, Tom, for describing your beliefs. I join you in hoping that they lead to increasing student learning rates. Federal public education policy makers use a different, databased position.
    Since public schools are a state function that authorizes local operations, perhaps a charter school would let your district operate without concern for NCLB (arguable) rewards?

  4. Tom

    To pretend that NCLB is a “reward system” is utterly disingenuous. The “reward” is actually the continuation of Title One money that schools have become dependent upon for the past several decades. You know this as well as I do, Bob. My district actually looked at the possibility of declining NCLB’s “reward” and quickly determined that t would be a financial disaster.
    Teaching is more complex than knowing which pedagogy to use. And even if it were that simple, other factors would still have an influence on test scores.
    In other words: no. I disagree with every aspect of your comment.

  5. Bob Heiny

    You did a good job of offering an objection to NCLB. Yet, respectfully, I’m curious why you say no to my comment. “No” to what? I summarized an alternative viwe too cryptically, misstated facts, teachers don’t know how to increase student learning, don’t have instructional choices, …?

  6. Bob Heiny

    Another view, Tom. The NCLB authorizes states to participate according to certain rules in a Federal distribution of money to schools. It’s a voluntary way to increase funding so educators can do more of what we say we need in order to increase learning for all students, with or without family etc. participation.
    No punishment exists in the law, although some choose to so claim. Actually, funding was conceived arguably as a “reward” for participation.
    Teachers know what pedagogy to use in order to raise measured student performance scores with whatever we have in whichever conditions we work. Some don’t appear to choose those. So, … others in the school share in the consequence.
    Yes?

  7. Brian

    “It’s an idea that works great for business, and even better for sports.”
    The Yankees keep making the playoffs. Can we please have the Mariners designated as a “Team in Progress”? (Just kidding, Tom. I hate AYP.)

  8. Tom

    And Kristin, keep this in mind: As we approach that magical point in time in which every kid is performing at grade level, more and more schools will not make AYP. Pretty soon it’s going to be “Adequate Heights Elementary,” the school where everyone has two parents and a zoo pass. And then that school is going to wave their flags and rally their troops. And that school, with its resources and its literate parents, is going to turn itself around. And everyone’s going to say soomething like, “See? The law works!”

  9. Cynthia

    The very same scenario in my city with the high school with a high immigrant population. So many kids have transferred that the school is likely to close. The irony for some that moved, they no longer have all the free services at the “better” school.

  10. Kristin

    Tom, a powerful example of why NCLB is not doing what it intended to do. Until families are seen as an equally important part of the equation, the continuing equity gap will prove that schools aren’t doing a good job. The ideal is that powerful teachers and engaging curriculum will excite students about learning. The reality is that if a child isn’t being told to work hard from his parents, he probably won’t. He MIGHT, and SOME do, but most won’t. Kids who are poor, who live with under-educated or uninvolved parents, or whose parents do not speak English, are at a disadvantage even if their parents tell them to work hard. As much as I’d like to wave my flag and rally the troops and yell “We can do it if we work hard enough!!!!” NCLB is proving we can’t do it alone, and it’s providing more evidence that the resources a child has at home make a difference in a child’s academic success. Hello, failure.
    On the other hand, there is an inspiring (I’m waving my flag) article – an excerpt really – that gives ways to draw parents into a child’s education. The fact that parental involvement increases a child’s success in school has been proven so many times you’d be ridiculous to say it doesn’t matter. It matters, and it’s been proven. But maybe teachers can do a better job of encouraging parental involvement. More work? Yes, but aren’t we taking that on anyway?
    Here’s the link http://www.parentinvolvementmatters.org/articles/engage-every-parent.html

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