Leaving your kids behind

It certainly sounds idealistic. No one can argue that public schools should make every effort to help EVERY student, but did you know that only 6% of the costs to implement No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is supposed to come from the federal government?

Thanks to Bush’s tax cuts, deficits, and pre-emptive war in Iraq, they’re not even coming through with that 6%.

Two of the goals of NCLB is accountability and choice. In a perfect world, these goals also sound like idealistic, but run through a Washington-speak decoder they sound more like deregulation, privatization, and free-market competition. These goals may not even sound all that odious except that we’re not talking about sprockets or gizmos, cogs, or “information systems.” We’re not talking about investment portfolios. We’re talking about children.

Republican proponents of NCLB claim that schools need to be held more responsible for results the same way the business world operates. Carrots and sticks, fines and bonuses, performance reviews. There are several problems with that, besides that I went into teaching to help kids, rather than have to compete in the dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest world of business.

One problem is what performance are you reviewing? It seems like tests are supposed to measure student performance, but a student can be incredibly intelligent, creative and hard working and yet be a miserable test taker. It’s like when you have something wrong with your car, so you take it into a mechanic, but the car doesn’t malfunction for the mechanic, so they can’t find a problem. Other kids are unmotivated, stubborn, insubordinate, and totally disinterested in school, but for whatever reason, they perform outstanding on tests.

I realize and agree that the basics are vital, but you can’t reduce all learning to only math, science and reading. Some students may be brilliantly intelligent in some areas, but have very little aptitude for others. Some kids have do have Linguistic intelligence ("word smart"), or have Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart"), but others excel in Visual-Spatial intelligence, Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence, or Musical intelligence. NCLB tests don’t evaluate P.E., Art, Speech/Drama, or Music performance.

Most exciting of all, but most difficult to assess are those kids with Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart"), and Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart"). Maybe it’s because my wife is a guidance counselor, but these are areas which many children desperately need instruction.

And keep in mind, we’re not talking about sprockets or gizmos, cogs, or “information systems.” We’re not talking about investment portfolios. We’re talking about children. Children have bad days, they have quirks and idiosyncrasies. No test could ever be standardized enough to be truly accurate. There are just some things you can not measure fairly.

Kids also have needs. When those needs aren’t met, no matter how qualified or dedicated their teachers are, they won’t be able to learn well, let alone perform well on a standardized test.

Kids need physiological and nutritional needs. In other words, they need to eat decent. They need to feel safe and protected, accepted and loved. They need to feel value, feel needed, useful, and capable.

If and when most of those needs are met, they’ll need to feel like they can accomplish something and set reasonable goals and achieve them. They’ll need to be able to figure out who they are. There’s no way to standardize students. They aren’t computers or cars or cell phones. And if you can’t control all the variables, you can’t accurately access their learning.
Can any school manage to do all of that for every kid? How would you assess their performance if they could? What is the “bottom line” in education?

Certainly teachers, principals and superintendents should be held accountable, but so should the students themselves, and so should their parents for that matter. Does their time, love, and money get invested in their children? Are they helping and encouraging their child to learn?

NCLB provides hoops for schools to jump through, but doesn’t provide any of the resources to do so. NCLB places the emphasis of education on test-taking skills, not on thinking skills, learning skills, or subject content. NCLB stigmatizes schools who’s statistics don’t look good enough, which they may have little control over.

Schools and teachers can’t control the number of non-English speakers in their district. They can’t control the number of severely learning disabled or handicapped children in their district. They can’t control the poverty or drug use or broken homes in their district. They certainly can’t control the amount of time that parents spend with their children or how much children are read to. Yet if the test scores don’t show enough improvement in a district, teachers, administrators and schools may be seriously penalized.

Bush supporters would argue that parents should have the right to move their students to the best districts. That takes even more resources away from the schools who need to improve. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It’s social Darwinism, survival of the fittest. So what happens? Schools need to be able to compete to stay alive, scruples and ethics are sacrificed. Corners get cut, numbers are fudged, rules are bent. Sounds like business, not school.

Capitalism is the best system for business (when it works), but surely the lessons of Enron, Worldcom and InCone should show us that competition may not always produce what’s best for the general public. Competition breeds antagonism and greed at the expense of cooperation and community.

Education issues often get eclipsed by “louder” things vying for our attention like the war, gay marriage, and abortion. But if Bush gets re-elected, someone has got to convince him that No Child Left Behind needs to be abandoned or seriously rethought. If NCLB is allowed to continue, every child will be left behind. All of America’s public schools will be worse off then they were before Bush tried to fix them.