No Child Left Behind Fails to Pass Test

[Dr Ron]

From Light Up the Darkness--see original post for links:

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=713

There's more evidence on the failings of Republican policies on education. We've previously discussed the evidence that abstinence based sex education is ineffective. Now a study conducted by the Northwest Evaluation Association has shown that academic growth that students experience in a given school year has apparently slowed since the passage of No Child Left Behind.

From the New York Times report on this study:

"In both reading and math, the study determined, test scores have gone up somewhat, as each class of students outdoes its predecessors. But within grades, students have made less academic progress during the school year than they did before No Child Left Behind went into effect in 2002, the researchers said.

"That finding casts doubt on whether schools can meet the law's mandate that all students be academically proficient by 2014. In fact, to realize the goal of universal proficiency, the study said, students will have to make as much as three times the progress they are currently making."

No Child Left Behind was originally passed with bipartisan support, but many Democrats have felt that the implementation has been faulty, concentrating on penalizing schools rather than providing the support to improve public education. Many liberals fear that the real goal of the Bush administration is to force schools to fail in order to increase use of voucher systems to provide tax money to religious schools.

[electropop]

1. No Child Left Unharmed is working perfectly.

The Rethuglican agenda is not merely to funnel money to the religious right, but to stunt the intellectual growth of our kids, so they will be too stupid to see what the thugs are doing.

And abstinence education is not ineffective. It's very effective in a counterproductive way. I presume the Rethug desire to produce lots of illegitimate poor stupid kids has to do with needing more slave labor and cannon fodder.

[Tux]

2. And

Being poor and uneducated, they can be recruited into Evangelical cults they claim to be churches.

[electropop]

3. The churches are re-education camps...

where the masses are taught to be docile and accept their fate.

[zipplewrath]

4. That's a complex study

The Times article is a very brief overview of a very complicated study. It would be interesting to read the actual study. The implication really isn't all that different from what's been going on for decades, merely maybe an amplification. Basically what's being asserted is that the smartest and the dumbest aren't being served well because the whole focus is on the average. Focus isn't really on the improvement of a single child, but on the overall performance of the average. So once a child as achieved mediocrity, there is little incentive to attempt to further their progress since the test basically seeks to determine minimum competency, not total knowledge. Furthermore, since relative progress isn't measured, it doesn't matter how well a child did last year, as long as they do well enough this year on an absolute scale, all is fine.

The public schools have been letting the top students slide for years. If you excel their approach is either to let you slide, skip a grade, or get them involved in off campus AP type programs, frequently at community colleges. On the other end of the spectrum they just look at getting you out of school. There is no incentive to work with poor students, or challenge talented students. It's actually a variation of industry. Dumb down the job so any idiot can handle it, then you can hire any idiot to do it, and keep wages low. The last thing you want is someone smart, so they are discouraged from staying (through stupidly dumb wages) or discouraged from improving (by being treated like an idiot).

[elehhhhna]

5. Here's a link to free test prep (by state & grade)

Been meaning to check it out. My gals both scored in the upper 90's on the Texas tests for their resspective grades (3rd & 5th) so one could assume that the answer to "is my children learing/" is YES. But this is Texas. after all...
http://brainchild.com/gen/usmap.asp

edit/update: OOOH ! I got 12 out of 12 right! I can pass the Texas 3rd grade reading TAKS test! On to 4th grade!!!!

[Pthalo BlueMoon]

6. NCLB...A Joke

Teachers are teaching "to the test" these days, thereby disenfranchising all students but the middle achievers. The gifted are being ignored because the curriculum is not challenging ebough. The Special Ed kids are losing out because principals will not accept new Special Ed classrooms, for fear their "Adequate Yearly Progress" scores will fall.

Yeah...no child will be left behind...unless you are one of the two above groups!

[DELUSIONAL]

7. welcome Pthalo BlueMoon --

And you are correct -- there is plenty of research which shows that teaching for the test is the very worst way to teach.

Most states already have competency tests of some sort -- and the teachers always seem to be preparing the students for one test or another.

[newyawker99]

8. Hi Pthalo BlueMoon!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast: