A well written post by Gerald Bracey on the Huffington Post Blog comments about how the “No Child Left Behind” is imploding:
NCLB would funnel large sums of public funds into the private sector through vouchers, transfer much control of public education to private companies, and to reduce or destroy the influence of two Democratic power bases, the teachers unions. Congress killed the voucher provisions, substituting “Supplemental Educational Services” (SES) through which mostly private firms currently gobble up about $2 billion a year. SES consists mostly of tutoring programs or small group instruction that must occur outside the normal school day.
But as the law enters its fifth year, even its supporters can no longer ignore that the law is imploding. On November 30, Frederick Hess, Education Director for the American Enterprise Institute and Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation convened a conference, “Fixing Failing Schools: Are the Tools in the NCLB Toolkit Working?” I attended.
After the first four presentations, moderator Finn declared that instead of providing sweet cakes and coffee, “I should be handing out mood altering pharmaceuticals, those that deal with depression.” No later presentations offered anything to elevate Finn’s mood as one scholar after another delivered evidence on this failed provision or that failed provision and the law’s failure to accomplish its stated goal: to elevate the achievement of poor children and minorities.
Charged with summarizing the day, former assistant secretary of education for Bush I, Diane Ravitch, declared that the answer to the conference title’s question was clearly, “No!”
I’m about to jump on a Soapbox, so I’ll warn you ahead of time if you don’t want to click…
I’d say it’s worse then imploding. Schools in Napa took to the privatization like mad with most* elementary schools in the Napa School District becoming Charter Schools. A number of top schools failed to bring students up to speed after the change.
We have a large Hispanic population in Napa, but rather then teaching the students standards to help them move on in life and prepare them for higher education, (Middle School, High School and beyond), some districts have initiated “Immersion Language Schools” where the first few years of schooling are taught solely in Spanish. All children, even English speaking Hispanics, are forced to learn Spanish the first couple of years and then learn English and reading. This has left a larger number of students behind in their learning when they move to Middle school. These student’s parents inherit the job of picking up the pieces left by these schools. The parents do have the option to move their student to a over populated school far from their home to get a better education, but that shouldn’t be the answer.
In a number of Hispanic families, (I’d love to say most since it seems this case every time I run into a Hispanic child), the parents force their child to learn English and quite often the child knows it better then the parent, so the child acts as a translator. I also know parents that do this only to find themselves in a bind when their child starts elementary school and the child isn’t taught any English there. Then they wonder why their child is behind in Middle school and drops out in High School. They would be right in blaming the schools. But not right on blaming the government.
The Government meant well when they opened it up to give parents options for their children’s schooling. I approve of testing, though failing an entire school because of one sub-area seems strange. The one thing I’d love to have is mandating schools that consistently fail be required to re-evaluate their learning processes. The Language Immersion schools would probably be required to start doing sessions where they teach Spanish for the English speakers and English for the Spanish speakers,and, then teach the basics the state requires. It’s amazing too me how long some schools have been running with no changes, even though they have the worst grades, the highest number of drop outs (later in life) and the most students with issues in Middle and High Schools.
There are schools that have other issues and low ratings because of silly stuff, such as an art-centered school that had math issues. What student wouldn’t have issues with math in a school centered around art? We’re talking about two totally different sides of the brain. The art would work the right, artistic side and the math would work the left, analytical side. Does that mean the school is a failure? No, it means they have a larger challenge teaching math then most schools. Challenge yes, problem no.
In the long run art and a foreign language do have commonalities. In testing they are not as important as the reading, writing, and arithmetic subjects. In schools where they (art and foreign languages) are the main focus, testing scores may suffer a little. The difference is, how does the school adjust? The art focused school will find unique ways to teach math, or if English is suffering, they would do a push on writing as an art. Foreign language schools need to also remember that, yes, it’s important to teach the second language young, but if its at the detriment of ALL their other studies, then it would be bad. Not changing your curriculum and patting yourself on the back that the students graduated from your school, even though they drop out of school later in life because they were not prepared, is idiotic to me.
* I got asked strongly in an email if every Elementary School in Napa became Charter Schools. And no they haven’t. But a large number has. Name any school here, and there is a good chance that it’s either become an Edison School, Language Academy, Art School, or Tech School. And the ones that haven’t have adjusted. For example my son is in a public school, they have class limits at around 20 per teacher. And in my son’s case he’s in a combination Kindergarten/First Grade Class. I don’t remember hearing of that occurring earlier. Plus they split the ones according to the English skills for a part of the day, so that those learning English get a little work, those who know English but need work get that, and those who are considered advanced work on more complicated stuff. Each learns at their own speed, but no one student gets left back and this is only 1 hour (or less) of the day.
Tags: College, Interesting, Knowledge, OpEd, Politics, School
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