No Child Left Behind Advocate Shifts Position

Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, Diane Ravitch, supported No Child Left Behind during her time with the Department of Education. Like many, including the late Edward Kennedy and George W. Bush, Ravitch saw No Child Left Behind (NCLB) as policy that would give much needed improvement to America’s lowest achieving schools. As almost a decade has passed since the bill was passed in May of 2001, evidence has come out against many of its components, and Ravitch has changed her tune entirely.

In her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, Ravitch details the ways NCLB has failed our students and our communities. It is refreshing that while many school superintendents, mayors, governors, and even a president, have spoken highly of many of NCLB’s policies and outcomes, such as last week’s mass firing of the Central Falls High School teaching and support staff, Ravitch is looking at the actual data, and concluding that in fact NCLB has not worked, that its policies are unrealistic, and that in fact it discourages improvement altogether.

In an interview Tuesday with NPR, Ravitch cited one of the major components of NCLB, standardized testing, and said it “lowered the standards” in schools across the nation. While certainly setting a standard for student achievement is important, Ravitch says NCLB’s strategy has encouraged cheating, “It turns out as a result of putting so much emphasis on the test scores, there’s a lot of cheating going on, there’s a lot of gaming the system. Instead of raising standards it’s actually lowered standards because many states have ‘dumbed down’ their tests or changed the scoring of their tests to say that more kids are passing than actually are.” The pressure put on everyone from the states to the superintendents to the teachers fosters this kind of result, and while standards are certainly crucial, the fact that students cannot graduate and teachers and administrators can be fired has not fostered the kind of change lawmakers expected when NCLB was signed into law. Using test scores as an indicator of needed attention and then providing necessary funding, aid, and additional staff may be a better way to go.

I have to make a small side note, as I worked as a public school teacher in a school that was declared under performing and I saw many of the effects that Ravitch speaks of firsthand. While standardized testing without a doubt affected the content of every instructor’s lessons, another factor that affected the climate of the school was a district goal that would decrease the number of suspensions handed out to students. Certainly decreasing suspensions ensures both that students are in the classroom learning instead of at home or in internal suspension and that behavior problems in general are decreased and not able to affect the overall quality of education; however, merely saying “cut down on suspensions” can have an adverse affect. Again the pressure is handed down from the top and suddenly school principals are simply not suspending students. This does not necessarily mean that behavior has gotten better; in fact, it often got worse because students saw other students stay in the classroom after their outlandish behavior. And teachers were criticized for sending disruptive students to the principal. If those in charge do not make changing the behavior that causes suspension a priority, then decreasing suspensions as a goal becomes ineffective and counterproductive. Similarly, putting teachers’ jobs on the line because of test scores may improve test scores, but may not improve learning.

Ravitch also criticizes school-choice, and points to statistics that show encouraging states and districts to embrace it did not yield the anticipated results. Under NCLB, less than 5% of eligible students in low performing schools have transferred to better schools.  She says that some parents in particular were reluctant to transfer their children, “The parents of English-language learners tended to prefer their neighborhood school, which was familiar to them, even if the federal government said it was failing.” Additionally, some schools were labeled under performing because their special needs students’ test scores failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (a baseline that measures progress based on student test scores), so many parents of students who were not in that subgroup did not see a reason to transfer their children. In the end, school choice did little to improve education for those who mattered most.

President Obama and many other lawmakers have praised charter schools, and have developed directives to encourage and require communities to open them, setting aside billions in stimulus funds with strings attached like getting rid of limits on charter schools. Ravitch slams this idea, saying, “The only national study that’s been done said that 17% [of charter schools] did better than the public schools with which they were matched, and 83% did no better or worse.” The issue of privatizing our schools has most certainly been a partisan issue, and if democrats can’t support privatization, how can they support charter schools? Again, this issue comes down to a clear misuse of funds, which is an outrage, because these funds could be used to fix legitimate sources of the problem.

In a recent article in the Huffington Post, Ravitch cuts to the chase on her views, which are all the more relevant after the events in Central Falls:

“Imagine that you are a teacher in a high school in a high-poverty district. Many of your students don’t speak English. Some don’t attend school regularly because they have to earn money or babysit with their siblings while their parents are looking for work. Some come to school unprepared because they didn’t do their homework. But you are idealistic and dedicated, you work with each of the students, you do your best to teach them reading, writing, science, math, history, whatever your subject. But despite your best efforts, many of your students can’t read very well (they are struggling to learn English), and many of them don’t graduate. If your school eliminated all its standards, you could easily push up the graduation rate. About 45 minutes away is another high school in a much better neighborhood. Its statistics are far better than yours. The children are almost all born in the U.S., and their parents are almost all college graduates with good jobs. Their kids don’t go to school hungry, they have their own room and their own computer, and they have stellar test scores to boot. Their graduation rate is very impressive, and most of their graduates go to college.”

While no one can argue that bad teachers should be fired, just like bad cops or bad governors, the issue here is that teachers are considered “bad” when they are teaching under challenging circumstances. Take the high-poverty district above. These districts exist all over the country, and the teachers who work there and have worked there for years have shown more fortitude and more concern for their students than any lawmaker. It is time to praise them, not fire them.

Ravitch continues, “Since we can’t fire poverty, we can’t fire students, and we can’t fire parents, all that is left is to fire teachers.” The politicians we criticize are already aware of this conundrum, and they have clearly made a choice, because certainly someone needs to get fired. In the world we live in, there is no progress if there is no blame. Perhaps the real question for these politicians is not why are they firing teachers, but why aren’t they doing more to decrease poverty? Perhaps it is time to take some of that money back from NCLB and put it into social services and programs that will foster education and empower people in poor communities to better themselves and their children. Because it seems to me that right now there’s a lot of blame, but there is not a whole lot of progress.

Also by Caty DiDonato Anderson:

Rhode Island Teachers Take the Blame

The Wrong Way: What No Child Left Behind

Whose Right? Adoption Exclusion in America