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Christopher Compton, an intern at the Notebook, is a student at Swarthmore College.
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Debate in Congress stalls; future of NCLB still up for grabs
by Christopher Compton
Adopted in 2002, the federal No Child Left Behind Act was due for reauthorization by Congress this year. But Washington has been so divided about the controversial law that the debate there stalled out this fall – pushing the likelihood of passage of a revised law beyond next year’s election and possibly into the second year of the new president’s term.
However, discussion of the act will not rest, as more schools every year fall short of Adequate Yearly Progress and face consequences.
Debate this fall centered on a House draft bill, and President Bush’s response that he would veto any bill not to his liking. Meanwhile Democrats continued to express frustration that his administration has never fully funded the law.
Here are some fiery points of contention.
How will schools be assessed?
President Bush sees the straightforward, high-stakes nature of standardized math and reading tests as one of the greatest strengths of NCLB. Many others in Congress and elsewhere see the tests as restrictive, strangling the curriculum and forcing children into alienating, high-pressure situations.
The House draft bill wants to abandon the exclusive focus on standardized tests and add other measures of school quality. It also wants to judge schools based on how the same students progress over time – the so-called “growth model” – rather than comparing the scores of one cohort of students with the next.
The “growth model” has wide support in Congress, in state houses, and among teacher unions, and the Bush administration is willing to consider it. Using measures other than reading and math tests to judge schools is more controversial, however.
These proposed alternative assessments include graduation rates, dropout rates, college enrollment rates, end-of-course exam results, improvements among the lowest and highest achieving students, and secondary tests in history, science, civics, and writing.
Many Republicans, including the Bush administration, view these proposals as creating “loopholes” that will make evaluating school quality more complex and less transparent. Education Trust, an advocacy group concerned about closing the racial “achievement gap,” and a strong supporter of the original NCLB act, supports the administration’s position.
Most Democrats and many educators, however, responded favorably to the suggested reforms, arguing a more fair and comprehensive understanding of student and school performance is needed.
“Suburban parents don’t like the way the testing emphasis has narrowed the curriculum, and urban parents are not seeing the real progress they were promised,” said Monty Neill, co-director of The National Center for Fair and Open Testing, in the Capital Times.
Neill chairs the Forum on Educational Accountability, a working group of some of the 140 organizations that signed a joint statement of concerns about NCLB’s accountability system. The statement criticizes the law for “over-emphasizing standardized testing” and “narrowing curriculum and instruction to focus on test preparation rather than richer academic learning.”
What will happen to ‘failing’ schools?
Current NCLB regulations require schools to make major changes if they are not making “Adequate Yearly Progress” toward 100 percent math and reading proficiency by 2014. These include conversion to charters, privatizing management, or complete reconstitution of staff. But districts and states are, in many cases, virtually ignoring this part of the law.
The House draft bill suggests using harsh sanctions on no more than 10 percent of schools in any district by distinguishing between “priority” schools and “high priority” schools. “Priority” schools, ones closer to meeting AYP, would face milder consequences.
Supporters, mostly Democrats, say that this would allow for schools to focus their resources on the schools that need it most. They argue that so many schools are currently avoiding changes because they are not feasible in districts with large numbers of struggling schools.
President Bush sees this proposal as an attempt to let many schools off the hook, and has threatened to veto any NCLB bill that softens consequences for schools that do not meet AYP.
His administration also finds fault that, in the House draft, “priority” schools would not be required to offer their students supplemental educational services (SES), or private, outside tutoring. “These kids who are eligible for service today suddenly would not have help,” said Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.
Many Democrats and experts, however, see NCLB tutoring as costly and ineffective. “There’s been virtually no consistently rigorous research on the effects … on student achievement,” University of Wisconsin Professor Patricia E. Burch told Education Week. “There’s very little discussion about accountability for these, in many cases, for-profit firms.”
Will merit pay improve teacher quality?
Several reauthorization proposals include the idea of merit pay for teachers. Some would give teachers incentive bonuses just for working in high-needs schools, while others, including the House Democrats’ version, would reward teachers based on their students’ performance on standardized tests and on classroom observations performed by “master teachers.”
Both major national teachers’ unions support incentives but came out strongly against any law that included bonuses tied to student achievement. They have long complained, even before NCLB, that such “merit” or “performance” pay is subjective and often misdirected.
But teachers themselves are torn, according to polls, with some supporting performance pay based on test scores, and many saying that the current pay system – based almost entirely on seniority and education level – is unjust.
How will English language learners and students with disabilities be tested?
Many schools have failed to make AYP due to the failure of just one or two subgroups, most often students with disabilities and English language learners. The House Democrats’ draft proposal would allow states two years to create specialized assessments for these subgroups or face a 25 percent decrease in federal funding. A move toward new assessments would likely include “portfolio” assessments, which judge students’ progress based on the learning they demonstrate in class and in their work.
Republicans in Congress and other staunch supporters of the original NCLB see changes in assessments for these groups as undermining the strict and straightforward nature of NCLB, which ensures the same test for all students.
Democrats and others, however, see it as a way of making assessments fairer for a group of students facing specialized and significant obstacles. NEA president Reg Weaver said that portfolio assessments allow assessments to evaluate effort, while standardized tests penalize students not able to easily regurgitate facts.
In Indiana, which used portfolio-supplemented assessments for English language learners until the federal government forced them to abandon the project last year, students’ scores went down dramatically when reintroduced to non-portfolio tests.