The unintended consequences of NCLB

1
The unintended consequences of NCLB
2
Many top educators and researchers have argued
that NCLB

• Is flawed legislation destined to fail as
  designed
• Will not produce gains on the National Assessment
  of Educational Progress (NAEP) or other tests
  used to audit states systems of education
• Is not closing the achievement gap as it was
  intended to do
• Is increasing dropout rates among our nations
  youth
• Despite these criticisms NCLB appears to be
  slated for reauthorization with few modifications

3
A series of flawed assumptions underlie NCLB
including

• Students work harder and learn more when they
  have to take a high-stakes test
• Students will be motivated to do their best and
  score well on high-stakes tests
• Scoring well on high-stakes tests leads to
  feelings of success by students, while doing
  poorly on such tests leads to increased efforts
  to learn
• Students and teachers need high-stakes tests to
  know what is important to teach and to learn
• Teachers need to be held accountable through
  high-stakes testing to motivate them to teach
  better and to push the lazy ones to work harder
• The high-stakes test associated with NCLB are
  good measures of the curricula taught in school

4
Still more underlying flaws

• The high-stakes tests provide a kind of level
  playing field, an equal opportunity for all
  students to demonstrate their knowledge and skill
• Teachers use the results of high-stakes tests to
  help provide better instruction to students
• Administrators use the results of tests to
  improve students learning and to design
  professional development
• Parents understand high-stakes test scores and
  can use them to interpret how well their child is
  doing in school

5
Were confusing students

• When I was teaching sophomore English in 1998,
  one of my students, a stocky 16-year-old football
  player, came up to me one day after class to say
  he wanted to transfer out. His last English
  teacher, he said, spent much more time preparing
  her class for the states standardized assessment
  test, mostly by having students bubble in sample
  tests. He had decided my class, where we analyzed
  poetry and wrote essays constantly, wasnt going
  to help him pass the test. If I fail, Miss, its
  going to be all your fault.
• Macerna Hernandez, Test Pressure Is Getting to
  Our Schools Its Inspiring Cheaters and Stifling
  Real Learning, editorial, Dallas Morning News,
  July 28, 2006.

6
Encouraging unethical behavior

• A survey of teachers and administrators sponsored
  by a Tennessee newspaper, for example, found that
  almost 9 percent of the teachers surveyed said
  theyd witnessed test impropriety on Tennessees
  high-stakes exam. Among several of the tactics
  reported
• Weak students were seen herded to the library to
  watch movies for a week while academically
  stronger students took exams
• Teachers were wandering the classrooms during the
  tests, casually pointing out wrong answers to
  students or admonishing them, saying, You know
  better than that
• Counselors locked their office doors after the
  state testing was done to erase stray marks
• There were suspensions for various infractions of
  students who were academically at the borderline
  just before the test
• Eliminating monitors in testing classrooms,
  leaving teachers to do what it takes to get
  those scores up!

7
Tacitly encouraging dropouts

• An equally sinister trend is that educators have
  become complaisant toward students who want to
  drop out. Since these students are usually
  (though not always) low scorers on tests, there
  is little incentive to convince them to stay in
  school. In fact, schools fare much better if
  those students leave. So those more challenging
  students who are more apt to give up, reject
  schooling and drop out are gleefully allowed to
  go.
• A Florida superintended noted, When a
  low-performing child walks into a classroom,
  instead of being seen as a challenge, or an
  opportunity for improvement, for the first time
  since Ive been in education teachers are seeing
  that child as a liability.

8
A crisis of caring and compassion

• An article in the South Florida SunSentenial
  highlights the states zero tolerance policy for
  children who must take the test in spite of
  emotional trauma or face being held back a grade.
  No flexibility in test procedures was allowed for
  a 14-year-old child who lost her brother to a
  shooting and was still mourning or for the
  15-year-old whose father had hung himself in
  their home, causing the son to suffer anxiety
  attacks afterward.
• In Louisiana, one student who was in a car
  accident that claimed the lives of a brother and
  a sisterleaving her paralyzed from the chest
  down and afflicted with a brain injury forcing
  her to relearn basic math and how to hold a
  pencilwas forced to take the regular state exam.
  This practice frustrates educators who are forced
  to be complicit of acts of cruelty against their
  own students. In the words of this students
  principal, Its unfair and its mean. We are
  hurting the children we are supposed to be
  helping the most.

9
Narrowing the curriculum

• Teacher A We only teach to the test even at
  second grade, and have stopped teaching science
  and social studies. We dont have assemblies,
  take few field trips, or have musical productions
  at grade levels. We even hesitate to ever show a
  video. Our second graders have no recess except
  for 20 minutes at lunch.
• Teacher B Those things science and social
  studies just fall to the back burner and quite
  frankly, I just marked report cards for the third
  grading period and I didnt do science at all
  for their third grading periods. Same for the
  social studies.
• Teacher C Projects, I eliminated curriculum
  such as novels I would teach, we didnt have time
  to go to the library, we didnt have time to use
  the computer labs because they had to cut
  something. I cut things I thought we could live
  with out. I cut presentations, anything that
  takes very much time, I cut film. We have been
  cutting like crazy.

10
More on narrowing the curriculum

• Maryland, 2003 Anne Arundel County in Maryland
  loses 23 middle school art teachers
• Oregon, 2003 Roseburg Public Schools in Oregon
  cancel seventh- and eighth-grade foreign-language
  classes
• Arizona, 2003 Arizona legislature cuts 7
  million in arts funding to schools and other
  groups
• Wisconsin, 2003 Milwaukee has lost 9 percent of
  its art, music, and physical education teachers
• Rhode Island, 2004 Providence eliminates
  elementary science and technology-enrichment
  classes
• Kansas, 2006 High school freshman required to
  double dose their English classes to raise test
  scores, at the expense of electives
• California, 2006 Havenscourt Middle School
  requires its students to take two periods of all
  core subjects, drops funding for shop, art,
  music, and Spanish
• Claus Zastrow and Helen Janc, The Condition of
  the Liberal Arts in Americas Public Schools A
  report to the Carnegie Corporation of New York
  (Washington, DC Council for Basic Education,
  2004) Heather Hollingsworth, Students Double Up
  On Math and English, Associated Press, Aug. 4,
  2006.

11
Are we really condoning this

• An elementary school principal we know in the
  suburbs of Boston received her box of test
  materials from an armored truck guard a few days
  before the state high-stakes test was to be
  given. She opened the large carton containing the
  tests and answer sheets and found also her
  instructions, a large ziplock bag and latex
  gloves. Her instructions directed her, on test
  day, to put on the latex gloves and insert the
  test booklets that children had vomited on into
  the ziplock bag, and to return those tests along
  with the others to the Department of Education.
• So the good people of the Commonwealth of
  Massachusetts fully understand that these tests
  are stressful to children , and they expect a
  goodly number of children to throw up as a
  function of their assessment program . Besides
  high-stakes testing, do we have other programs
  that are sure to make some of our children sick?
  Why do we allow ourselves to design testing
  programs that have these effects? And who is the
  poor person who has to open these ziplock bags,
  perhaps months later, and check them in to
  maintain security? Do we pay that person enough?