[RSCT] Stealing Our Schools

[S. Kashdan]

Stealing Our Schools

Jackie Dee King

New Politics, Vol, XII, No, 1, Summer 2008, page 69

http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue45/King45.htm

Jackie Dee King worked for FairTest as statewide coordinator of the
Massachusetts Coalition for Authentic Reform in Education. In that position,
she organized parents, teachers, and students to oppose the discriminatory
aspects of high-stakes testing and to fight for true reform in public
schools.

The Federal "No Child Left Behind" law is in trouble. Critics and supporters
alike predict that it will not be reauthorized in this legislative year. A
growing chorus of voices from the grassroots and from major national
organizations is calling for an overhaul of the law or even scrapping it
altogether. Many teachers and parents hope that a newly elected
Administration next year will examine the damage being done by the current
law and take steps to change it. Corporate forces are pushing to take public
education down the privatization path that has been paved by this law, but
the real reform of our schools will come only from maintaining the public,
democratic nature of education in this country while working to address its
very real inequities.

"No Child Left Behind" describes an important goal for our nation's
educational system. Unfortunately, the current law accomplishes the opposite
of what its catchy misnomer promises. It does, in fact, leave many children
behind, especially those in urban, under-funded, and minority school
districts, as well as students with special needs and limited English
proficiency. A more appropriate title might be "No Child's Behind Left
Untested," as educators and parents have noted bitterly.

Test and Punish

What does this long and complex piece of legislation actually do? No Child
Left Behind (NCLB) is the 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA), a 1965 federal law which funded the Title I
program aimed at improving education for disadvantaged students. 1

The NCLB represents a dramatic break from the original version of ESEA. It
requires that, in exchange for receiving Title I funds, states must set
minimum "standards" in math, reading, and science. States must assess
students annually in grades 3-8, and once in grades 10-12, to monitor their
progress. Standardized, paper-and-pencil tests -- usually designed by
out-of-state, for-profit testing companies -- are the sole means of
assessment in almost all states.

The law requires that states set a cut-off score at which students are
considered proficient in tested areas. Schools have to make adequate yearly
progress (AYP) in the percentage of all students -- and subgroups of
students broken down by race, income, disability, gender, and language --
that reach proficiency in each subject. Failure of any subgroup to meet the
goal means that the school "fails" that year. The AYP for each year is
determined by a formula based on all students scoring at a "proficient"
level by 2014.

The rigid AYP formula sets up most public schools for failure, especially
those schools with the most diverse student populations. Some studies
suggest that more than 70 percent of the schools in the country will fail to
reach AYP within several years. The National School Boards Association has
estimated that most schools will fail eventually. Almost certainly, schools
in low-income urban areas will not be able to jump this hurdle. Not only
will these schools and districts be subject to drastic punishments, but the
sheer number of such schools will send a clear message: public schools are a
failure!

Failure to reach AYP will render a school subject to an increasingly severe
set of sanctions, year by year: the school must be placed on a "school
improvement" list and forced to send a letter to all parents saying that the
school is failing; students must be given the option to transfer to another
school, with transportation at the district's expense; students must be
offered tutoring services; the school must replace staff and/or implement
new curriculum; the school must restructure, become a charter school, or
face state takeover or privatization. None of these measures has a proven
track record of actually improving schools, but many of them involve
relinquishing the school to the private sector in some way.

It should be noted that funding for NCLB is woefully inadequate. In 2004,
Congress authorized an additional $18 billion to help states pay for the
increased costs associated with the law. But the Bush Administration asked
for only a $1 billion increase, saying that was "more than enough" money. 2
Since NCLB is an unfunded mandate, the states have to implement it even
without sufficient federal aid. The increased funding was one of the ways
that many liberal Democrats were persuaded to go along with passage of the
legislation.

Drill and Kill

THE EFFECTS OF NCLB ON OUR NATION'S schools and students have been
devastating. 3 In many school districts, high school graduation rates are
declining; the curriculum is narrowing and schools are being turned into
test prep centers; art, music, gym, recess, and field trips are being swept
aside to make way for intensive drilling exercises in math and reading for
several periods during a school day; hands-on, project-based teaching and
learning are being replaced by rote memorization and cookie-cutter,
"teacher-proof" methodologies; for those schools labeled "failing" by the
law, money which should go to improve classroom instruction instead is being
used to bus children to another school or to pay for expensive private
tutoring companies often staffed by inexperienced providers. Talented young
teachers are becoming demoralized, as they are no longer able to apply their
creativity in the classroom, and many are leaving the profession. Nowhere
are these changes more apparent than in the very schools and districts that
NCLB supposedly was designed to help the most: those urban schools with a
high proportion of students of color and students living in poverty.

The Disappeared

Perhaps the most disturbing trend is the rise in the dropout (or pushout)
rate in many districts. These alarming statistics are gradually coming to
light, despite the efforts by many state Education Departments to mask them.
The hiding of accurate figures is accomplished in many ways. NCLB requires
regular reports of how students perform on standardized tests and punishes
schools that fail to progress, but does not require the same degree of rigor
in tracking dropouts. States are allowed to set their own formula for
calculating graduation rates; this has allowed many states to drastically
undercount the number of dropouts. 4 For example, New Mexico defines its
graduation rate as the percentage of enrolled 12th graders who receive a
diploma, thus ignoring all the students who have left school in the earlier
grades. Massachusetts has decided to count those students who drop out but
later seek a GED as high school graduates. (The dropout rate has been
increasing anyway.) Texas, the state that served as a model for NCLB, in the
1990s counted students who left school as "transients" rather than dropouts,
because they might always decide to come back to school later. (Few made
that choice.) 5

One has to wonder why the federal and state governments would not put
collection of uniform, verifiable, public data about dropouts at the top of
their list in designing education reform. What does reform mean in the
context of so many students being pushed out of school? It doesn't take a
rocket scientist: As struggling students drop out, a school's test scores go
up.

Many of these "dropouts" are eased out the door by school personnel. When I
worked for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest) from
2000 to 2004, we received hundreds of complaints from parents, teachers, and
students about what the MCAS, the state's high-stakes test, was doing to
their schools. Some of the more chilling stories were about students being
pushed out in order to improve their school's MCAS scores. At a large
district high school in Boston, one administrator (who would be subject to
reprisal if identified) described how it worked at her school: "When the
springtime comes around and the whole school is gearing up for the MCAS, we
are told by the headmaster that we should just 'let some students go.' These
are the ones who are scoring poorly on the test. Many are on the edge
anyway, and if you just stop calling when they are absent, monitoring what
they do in school, meeting with them to provide encouragement, they will
often drift away. We were told, 'Don't worry, they can always come back
later, or take the GED.' So, the students leave, our MCAS scores go up, and
the headmaster gets profiled in the newspaper. It makes me heartsick. Some
of my young teachers come to me almost every day, talking about leaving the
profession."

(As this article goes to press, the Bush Administration, for the first time
is proposing regulations that will require states to use a uniform national
standard in determining graduation rates. It remains to be seen what the
final version of the formula will entail and how long the process of
approving it will take, but the proposal is a step in the right direction.)

Corporate Control Tightens

NCLB is part of a large, loosely orchestrated campaign by sectors of the
corporate community to take control of our country's schools. Public
education in America was not won without a fight, as Kenneth Goodman has
noted in Saving Our Schools. 6 Child labor laws got young people out of
factories and into schools; battles were waged state by state to make
education compulsory. The American public came to believe that all children
were entitled to a free education that would help them get ahead in life.
But there have always been forces in society that resented the costs of the
schools. Some groups, such as the religious right, have wanted to push their
own agendas and curricula on the public schools. And some have wanted to
make money. As other public services, such as electricity, health care,
national parks, and water have become more privatized, some corporations are
setting their sights on one of the last large sectors of the American
economy in the public domain: its K-12 schools, a $500 billion/year
undertaking. 7 (The other sector, Social Security, is also under attack.)

NCLB has played into the hands of those who want to privatize education. The
law sets impossible goals for meeting its artificial "standards" through
high-stakes tests. Most schools in the country will sooner or later fail to
meet these goals and will be designated as failures. This sends a message
that public education is "broken," that we are in the midst of a crisis, and
that a radically new approach is called for. Waiting in the wings are the
corporations and their conservative think tanks, who step forward with the
solution: give the schools to us! We'll make them work!

NCLB requires children in elementary, middle, and high schools to take over
65 million tests every year. This is a gold mine for privateers.
Eduventures, Inc., a private education company in Boston, estimates that the
U.S. market for tests, test prep materials, and related services was $2.3
billion in 2006. The testing costs related solely to NCLB were at least $517
million, most of them generated by a few large companies including Pearson
Educational Measurement, Harcourt Assessment Inc., Riverside Publishing, and
CTB/McGraw-Hill. Testing is just the tip of the iceberg of the education
market. Other corporations are taking over and running entire schools and
school systems. 8

Perhaps the clearest indication of corporate intentions with respect to
public schools is contained in a December 2006 report by the National
Commission on Skills in the Workplace, "Tough Choices or Tough Times." 9 The
report, funded in large part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, calls
for a series of draconian measures which would end public control of our
schools: 1) make all public schools into "contract schools" (essentially
charter schools, but with even less public input) 2) eliminate almost all
powers of local elected schools boards 3) take away teacher pensions and
slash health benefits, while providing the temporary solace of higher
salaries at the front end 4) force all 10th graders to take an exam, and
stop the education of all who don't pass, throwing 16-year-olds out of
school. Many corporations are ready to step in and take over these
"contract" schools.

Billionaires Bill Gates and Eli Broad are pouring millions of dollars into
funding charter schools in cities such as Houston and Los Angeles --
basically establishing alternative school systems. Even conservative
commentator Diane Ravitch has said that Bill Gates is setting himself up as
the Superintendent of American Schools, able to promulgate whatever policies
he wants. If ordinary people -- parents, teachers, students, and other
concerned citizens -- do nothing to stop this privatizing juggernaut, our
schools will slip out of the public sphere and into the hands of
corporations whose primary motive is profit, not the education of our
country's youth. 10

Rising Resistance

AS GRIM AS THE NATIONAL PICTURE MAY BE, there is reason for hope. A vigorous
grassroots movement has sprung up to fight the high-stakes standardized
testing movement in many states and to challenge NCLB at the federal level.
More than 140 national groups representing millions of Americans in
education, civil rights, parents, labor, and religious communities have come
together in a coalition known as the Forum on Educational Accountability
(FEA). They have sent a Joint Statement to Congress calling for major
changes in No Child Left Behind. 11

The statement calls for less emphasis on standardized testing and more on
rich curriculum; for accountability that does not over-identify schools in
need of improvement; for taking account of each child's growth over time,
rather than simply in relation to a test score; for using multiple measures
to track student and school progress, not just standardized tests; and for
fully funding the law so that schools can be helped rather than punished.

Central to the recommendations of the coalition is the concept of "authentic
assessment." These groups want the law to reflect the fact that students
learn in different ways, and express their achievements by various methods.
An authentic assessment system picks up on this truth, adhering closely to
what the student has learned in his or her classroom and how that can be
assessed: whether through classroom paper and pencil tests, performances,
portfolio reviews, or hands-on projects. Authentic assessments are school-
and classroom-based and give teachers important information about what and
how students are learning, in order to fine-tune their instruction.

In addition to these grassroots efforts, a number of state legislatures are
rebelling against the law. Resolutions and legislation have been considered
in several states, including Virginia, Utah, and Arizona, that would "opt
out" of NCLB by refusing to accept Title I funds and thus exempting
themselves from the law's requirements. Many are coming to recognize that
they spend far more money attempting to follow the law's arbitrary and
unreasonable strictures than they receive in Title I funds.

Schools do not exist in a vacuum. They cannot solve every problem in our
society. In order to learn, students need schools with decent facilities,
small classrooms, high-quality teachers, well-stocked libraries, modern
laboratories, and many other important components. But they also need safe
streets, good nutrition, decent and stable housing, quality health care,
recreational facilities, after-school programs, and caring communities. If
we demand "adequate yearly progress" from our schools, why do we not demand
that society make progress in providing for the basic needs of children in
the same way?

The United States has one of the most unequal systems of education in the
world. Children in wealthier communities receive a host of supports and
opportunities to learn, both in and out of the classroom. Children living in
poverty are taught in large classes in crumbling buildings, with few books.
We need a massive investment of funds and other resources in our inner-city
schools, not a test that punishes those students it was supposed to help.
It's time to take back our schools.

Notes

1. FairTest, The National Center for Fair and Open Testing. April 5, 2008.
The FairTest website contains a wealth of background information, reports,
and analysis on the "No Child Left Behind" act and the misuses of
standardized testing in general.

2. Monty Neill and Lisa Guisbond. Failing Our Children: How "No Child Left
Behind" Undermines Quality and Equity in Education. (Cambridge, MA:
FairTest, 2004).

3. Sharon L. Nichols and David C. Berliner. Collateral Damage: How
High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America's Schools. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2007). This book describes a host of problems caused by
NCLB testing.

4. Sam Dillon. "States' Inflated Data Obscure Epidemic of School Dropouts."
New York Times, March 20, 2008.

5. Kenneth Goodman, Patrick Shannon, Yetta Goodman, and Roger Rapaport,
Editors. Saving Our Schools: The Case for Public Education. (Berkeley,CA:
RDR Books, 2004), pp. 85-87.

6. Ibid., p. 53.

7. "How Many Billionaires Does It Take to Fix a School System?" New York
Times Magazine, Money Issue. March 9, 2008.

8. Wayne Au. "Teaching in Dystopia: Testing's stranglehold on education," p.
24 in Rethinking Schools, Spring, 2008, Volume 22, Number 3.

9. Tough Choices or Tough Times: The Report of the Commission on the Skills
of the American Workforce.

10. Jack Gerson and Steven Miller, "Exterminating Public Education," SLATE,
National Council of Teachers of English.
www.ncte.org/library/files/About_NCTE/Mar_2008.html

11. Joint Organizational Statement on "No Child Left Behind" Act,
www.fairtest.org/joint-organizational-statement-no-child-left-behind