Is "No Child Left Behind" working?

Question

I am especially interested in hearing from teachers and principals?

Answer 1

My son has a language based learning disability. One of his problems is that he knows what he wants to say but he has trouble coming up with the words to express himself. He has horrible spelling and they say he will probably never have good spelling. He gets help one hour per day with remedial help. He is allowed longer time to take his tests. He has a 93 average, is on honor roll and plans on attending college for Criminal Justice. He also runs three seasons of track and is one of the best on the team. He is in 10th grade. I had to fight for two years to get him tested and get the extra help he needs. It was the best thing I ever could have done. I do feel this act is working!!!! 22 years ago when i was in school they would have let my son slide between the cracks.

Answer 2

Yes: The accountability is forcing standardization nationwide.

No: The emphasis on testing is making the classroom a test-conscious but sterile environment, which lacks the room for teacher autonomy & creativity & the arts & humanities.

Answer 3

I've been a teacher for 21 years.  I have taught everything from High School physics to kindergarten and not only in many states in the US, but in many countries around the world.  Additionally, I have worked in both public and private schools. All of the years of NCLB I have worked in a poor public school in the Central Valley of California.

Although I understand why they made the law, there are countless problems with it, and the way schools and districts have gone about fulfilling its requirements is down right criminal.

To begin with, each state is allowed to choose their own standards. That means some states have chosen very low standards, while others have chosen impossibly high ones. Neither is good for the children. One doesn't challenge the average child while the other overwhelms them. Literally, a failing kindergartener in California could be on the third grade honor roll in New Mexico! (You might ask yourself why did our state choose such developmentally inappropriate standards. They will talk about wanting to raise the level of education for all Californians, but my guess it has less to do with wanting our students to do better and has more to do with the fact that the longer schools are labeled as "failing" in CA, our the more our governor does not have to pay back the 1.6 Billion dollars he "borrowed" from our state education fund.)

Since NCLB only tests language and math, in many schools these are the ONLY things that are taught. In my district they are so petrified that teachers will "waste” time teaching things that aren't tested, that they have an hourly pacing calendar. Teachers get written up if they are teaching something at the wrong time of day or the wrong day all together. Literally. my friends and I have been written up for teaching math in the morning, (the allotted time for math is 45 minutes in the afternoon), for teaching social studies, (not part of the core curriculum and did not relate to the core curriculum story of Hats, Hats, Hats), for explaining a word to a second language student, (it wasn't English Language Development time and the word wasn't part of the academic vocabulary listed for that week's instruction), for teaching a sound that was taught a previous week as well as teaching one that wasn't slotted to be taught for two weeks, (the only time we can remedialize or enrich instruction is during "global access time"). We have also been written up for providing classroom time for children to think and analyze different problems. We were told that it took too long for the child to get the answer and a better use of their and our time in the classroom setting was to just tell them the answer and to move onto something else.

Throughout the country, there are two main failing subgroups; English learners and learning disabled children. Are we really surprised? How can we expect someone who is learning something to be as proficient as someone who already has mastery of it? The whole situation screams of injustice when we realize that to be label as an English learner a child is tested; their low score earns them the label. As soon as a child becomes proficient he is “redesignated” as “English proficient” and his scores don’t count in the English learner subgroup any longer.

Similarly, to be labeled as “learning disabled” children must score so poorly on certain standardized tests that there is a three year discrepancy between their chronological age and his academic proficiency. Is there any wonder why six months later they all don’t have the same score as their counterparts that did pass the test? Is it truly a shock, or a statement about a teacher, school, or district when six months later that child doesn’t score as well as a child who did pass the test initially?

Tell me how this is all of this helping our students? The advanced ones are bored to tears, the low ones are floundering, and the average ones are learning to sit quietly and regurgitate what is given to them. Science, social studies, history and geography the very subjects that can spark a child's interest in learning, and are vital to understanding the world in which we live, have been swept under the carpet. Before NCLB the appalling but true fact was that the average American couldn't find the US on the map of the world, now, with no science, social studies etc. at all in the classroom how ignorant are our citizens going to be?

Moreover, the program looks at only ONE test that was taken in five consecutive days, (at least here in CA) to determine how well a school is doing. It does not take into consideration how far the child has personally come, what personally is happening in the student's life, or how long that child has actually been in that particular school. Here are just a few anecdotes from last year's testing.

One student left the test in the middle of testing because his brother was sick and his mother was picking him up. She didn't want to come back after school to pick the student up. He was then kept out of school for three days that week, and then the next week, (the week of make ups), because his mother was too busy taking care of the brother.

Two brothers rarely came to school. Their parents were divorcing and their mother worked three jobs. She slept in the mornings and didn't wake them up. Therefore they were only in class about two days a week the whole school year. We worked with social services all year and they were eventually placed in foster care, but not before they took the NCLB tests.

A family of 7 children, all of whom had been "home schooled" their entire life entered our school on the first day of testing. It had been their mother’s belief that an ancient Babylonian devil inhabited thin black lines and so none of the children could read and they were afraid of pencils, yet it was mandatory that all of them be tested and their grades counted as a reflection of our teaching even though none of them had even had one hour of instruction in our school.

One student went to Disneyland the week of testing. His mother said it was the only time she had off and wanted to be there without the crowds. He was then sick the week of makeovers.

I could go on, but you get the picture. We have NO control over these circumstances, yet these students’ grades are painted as a reflection of our teaching, our schools are labeled as “failing”, and our days further scripted. Moreover, the “pass” and “fail” labels aren’t based on the average test scores. They are based on the amount of growth made in EACH of 36 subgroups IN ADDITION TO the number of children labeled as “proficient” each year in each subgroup. In other words, a whole school can make growth, but if one subgroup doesn’t make as much growth as deemed necessary by NCLB guidelines, the WHOLE SCHOOL is labeled as failing. The school is then forced to send notices home to parents informing them that their child is attending a “failing” school and that they have a right to move them to a “non-failing” school. Often the list of “non failing” schools contains schools whose average scores are lower than the failing school, but since they showed the proper growth according to the NCLB guidelines, aren’t “failing”. How misleading is that?

Lastly, there are educational sanctions placed on schools when they don’t “pass”. Failing schools lose more and more money each year that they are labeled as “failing”. Last year my school had $200 per classroom to buy all the paper, pencils, erasers, zero copies, and so on that it needed, (forget things like balls for PE and recess). This year it was lowered to $100. How can we expect all children to succeed when the teachers, especially of our poorest and most needy, aren’t given the means to supply them with basic learning supplies?

Answer 4

I don't think it is working because of the effects I'm seeing in my 15 year old brother-in-law.  The "No Child Left Behind" scenario has caused him to be swept up in "moving forward", but he isn't getting the proper help he needs.  In order to keep pushing him in to the next grade, he keeps getting pushed into a lower and lower level of education.  This kid is very smart, just not when it comes to tests.  His mom has bought into the whole idea and the school talked her into putting him into all learning disability classes.  Yeah, he is going to graduate on time, but he isn't learning anything and will not even get a proper high school diploma.  I think that instead of pushing kids through so that they aren't "left behind" that extra attention should be given to whether or not that child should be held one more year.  Maybe that is what they need....