There is no way that we can solve all of educations problems at once, so right now I want to focus on just one issue. I think that the main education policy we need to take a look at is the “No Child Left Behind” Act of 2001. My main concern with this act is how adequately, or inadequately, it is measuring student achievement through its mandated standardized testing. Can individual states do the same thing on their own, perhaps more effectively? I know that ridding our schools of standardized tests is not going to be an option, so what lawmakers need to find is a system that is most cost efficient and effective. The federal government either needs to come up with a way to have national standardized test, or it needs to take a step back, and let the states figure out what works best for their schools in order to optimize success. Student success should be the most important thing on the agenda for any lawmaker, state or federal, but unfortunately, politics gets in the way.
The “No Child Left Behind” Act (NCLB) was originally proposed by President George W. Bush immediately after taking office. Senator Ted Kennedy was one of the bill’s major sponsors and it was passed by the House of Representatives on May 23, 2001, by the Senate on June 14, 2001, and signed into law January 8, 2002. For the purpose of this essay, I want to only look at the section of this act that deals with standardized testing, not necessarily the aspects about federal funding in schools. NCLB emphasizes standardized testing (all students take the same test under the same conditions) to measure improvements in reading, math and the sciences. The scores are used to determine if the school has taught the students well. If schools do not make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), as it is outlined in NCLB , several years in a row, plans are made and implemented for restructuring of the school and government take- over.
Proponents for NCLB claim that the legislation encourages accountability in public schools by giving parents greater access to educational options for their children. They argue that through standardized testing and mandated school report cards, the achievement gap is being closed. When I say achievement gap, I am referring to the apparent level of disparity between students of minorities, and students coming from a lower socio-economical status in comparison to their white counterparts. By setting the same standards for all students regardless of their race or class, NCLB is seemingly a step towards accomplishing this goal. In addition, Schools must make their annual report cards available, so that parents can see the AYP rates and decide if they want to keep their children in their school, or switch them to another school in their district, with perhaps better improvement rates. NCLB is supposed to close the education gap by creating common expectations for all students.
The problem with NCLB is that there is not a nationwide standardized test. States are left to create these standardized tests at their own discretion. This poses the problem that a state may create a test with lowered standards to make it appear that their students are excelling. Missouri is one known state that has lowered its standards since the law was put into effect. Standardized tests also create teachers who “teach to the test.” Instead of focusing on teaching students skills that they will be able to apply to a broader range of disciplines, teachers teach what they think will be on the tests. For example, in a math class, a teacher who anticipates straight addition problems like 2+2=4, she may not feel inclined to teach the same subject in an applied manner, (i.e. word problems). This puts students at a disadvantage for both the test, and for real life. Teachers may incorrectly assume what materials will be tested, as well as cheat students out of the applied knowledge that they are going to need once they arrive in the so called “real world.”
Furthermore, standardized tests are not taken seriously by students. Even though students should be taking the tests to the best of their abilities, in order to attain the most accurate score, many students simply do not care about the tests. Because students are hammered with tests from the time they are in elementary school, by the time they reach high school, they are just annoyed with them. I know that when I was in high school, it seemed that everything revolved around the tests. Perhaps this is because I attended a Title I school (a Title I school is one that usually has a high concentration of minority students in areas of seemingly high poverty rates. The funding for these schools is based on test scores as well as daily student attendance), and most of our funding was determined by our scores on these exams. However, when a test does not have an immediate effect on a student’s GPA, or graduation status (with the California High School Exit Exam as the exception to this), many students deem them a waste of time.
Now, set aside these seemingly huge problems with standardized tests, and we are still left with a flawed system. Of course NCLB was born of purely good intentions; it is not being executed properly. If the government could figure out a way to reform NCLB, and create a nationwide set of standards and testing, there would be much more accurate results. However, because we are in tough economic times, education reform is not on anybody’s high priority list. So I think that it would be better for the federal government to just take a step back and allow individual states the freedom to put in place their own types of education reform. Many states already had systems of standardized testing before NCLB, and I think that right now, it might be the most effective route to take. Take California for example, in 1988, California voter passed Proposition 98.
Proposition 98, which is also referred to as the "Classroom Instructional Improvement and Accountability Act," implemented a system of standardized testing that would help lawmakers create the budget for education. Proposition 98 made it necessary for all schools to publish the results of their yearly standardized tests in what is called their School Accountability Report Card (SARC). Every school in California was required to make this information available to whoever wanted it. The SARC includes information about student achievement and progress toward meeting reading, writing, arithmetic, and other academic goals. This also shows progress towards reducing drop out rates, among other things including teacher statistics, basic cleanliness of the school, etc. These SARCs seem to be providing even more valuable information that NCLB reports do. Why is it that California had this plan in place over ten years before NCLB?
One of the major reasons why I feel that Prop 98 is better than NCLB is the fact that there is a model SARC that all schools are trying to achieve. All schools are working to a model success rate. NCLB does not offer any type of nationwide model that schools should be trying to work for. Granted, Prop 98 still poses the same problems with standardized testing as NCLB, however, the standard model helps schools to have a goal and something to work towards. Of course there are still consequences for schools having poor SARCs, which include monetary issues. Most of the state funding for schools is based on SARC reports; however this issue is much too large to really get in to in the means of this paper.
In a perfect world, we would be able to eliminate standardized testing all together and just be able to trust that our teachers are doing their jobs in preparing students for their futures. We would love to see zero percent drop out rates and all of our students receive some kind of higher education, whether it is at a university, community college, or trade type school. However, we know that the likelihood of this happening is very slim, but we can all work together to achieving this goal in the future. What other options would policy makers have as a sort of substitute to standardized testing?
I wish that there was a simple answer to this question. There isn’t. I don’t think it would be possible, or even effective to completely eliminate standardized tests. I think that maybe a step in the right direction would be to consolidate these tests. Instead of testing students every single year, I think it would be better to have a system that randomly selecting different grade levels, or have tests every other year, or every few years as sort of progress checks on students in each grade level. This way, students would not get completely tired of having to take these tests every year, and instead of focusing on teaching to the tests, teachers would have more flexibility to teach more important things. With biennial or even triennial standardized tests, lawmakers could still monitor the progress and achievement of students. I feel a policy similar to this would be much more significant, especially in younger children, k-8th grade.
Once students reach high school age, I think that there should be just one test similar to that of the California High School Exit Exam. In a student’s sophomore year in high school, he or she will take one final exam before graduation. If they do not pass this test, based on the standard level of knowledge one should have attained by that point, they will have several more chances to pass before graduating. By allowing students multiple attempts at the exam will help to keep the exam fair, and will uphold a certain level of accountability on teachers. If a student is not able to pass on the first time around, then obviously they are in need of more teacher assistance. If significant percentages of students are not passing the first time they take the exam, then more measures can be taken to examine teachers and figure out why students are not passing. This exam will also allow that students are prepared for graduation and possess a certain level of knowledge that will be important in either their careers or in continuing their education.
Though I am still opposed to the idea of standardized testing, I feel that it is seemingly necessary to uphold certain accountability on behalf of teachers and students alike. Until we can figure out a better way to do this, standardized testing is here to stay, hopefully in a more efficient cost- effective way. Who knows, perhaps some day I will be able to come up with a better solution to this problem and change it, but for right now, the above mentioned reform is all I can come up with. I just know that something needs to be done, even though we have so many other issues to deal with. Education is the most powerful tool, or weapon, a country has and I think that America needs to not let it go wayside. If we tackle this problem now, in the future, we will have more educated citizens and ultimately better decision makers.
Links that I found particularly useful:
http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/beginning.html
http://www.politicalbase.com/issues/no-child-left-behind-act/12/
http://www.subnet.nga.org/educlear/achievement/
http://cbs2chicago.com/politics/No.Child.Left.2.278792.html
http://www.ed.gov/programs/titleiparta/index.htmlA
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/hs/
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/sa/questions.asp
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/sa/prop98.asp
http://www.ed.gov/policy/speced/guid/modachieve-summary.html
http://www.edsource.org/sys_edsystem.html
The administration should be ashamed that education is not at the top of our agenda. I agree with your article in that education should always be a top priority. I almost feel like in regard to No Child Left Behind, that standardized testing were implemented because it was the easy way out – they need to come up with something to make it look like they were trying to reform education, and standardized testing seemed like the easiest method. But obviously, as you discussed above, it is a flawed system.
ReplyDeleteStandardized testing=waste of time. Any teacher knows which students are ready to move on to the rest of the world and which are not. Standardized testing is, as you and Lora have said, a government excuse to say that they are doing something about the problems with education in this country.
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