- D.C. Gets No Child Left Behind Waiver
- Invitation to a Dialogue: An Excess of Testing
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
July 19, 2012
The Obama administration on Wednesday granted the District and six states relief from key provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law, including the requirement that all students be proficient in math and reading by 2014.
The law has come under increasing criticism for being unrealistic and overly punitive, but Congress has yet to pass revisions. Last year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced that he would lift the most burdensome mandates for states that outlined alternative accountability plans.
Duncan has granted 33 waivers so far, including to Maryland and Virginia. Approval for the District’s plan came after months of revisions.
“D.C. has come a long way since the initial submission,” Duncan said. “There are folks that thought they couldn’t get it done, and they clearly have.”
In Washington, where many schools fall far short of 100 percent proficiency, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education can now set new goals that reward schools for making gains on standardized tests, not just posting high scores.
“It’s better than we had before,” said Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, who called the previous system “clearly broken.” State Superintendent Hosanna Mahaley and D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson also applauded the new plan.
The aim is to cut failure rates in half by 2017 so that 73 percent of students in public schools are proficient in reading and 74 percent are proficient in math. Over the next two years, the city will begin holding schools accountable for meeting targets in science and writing.
Officials also aim to ratchet up the four-year graduation rate from 59 percent to 78 percent by 2017.
Individual schools will have to cut their failure rates in half, which means that those starting with lower achievement will have to make bigger annual gains.
Based on performance, schools will be placed into one of five categories: reward, rising, developing, focus and priority.
Top-performing reward schools will have the most flexibility to determine how they spend federal funds, whereas priority schools — those with the lowest proficiency or growth, or graduation rates under 60 percent for multiple years — will receive the most intensive and substantial interventions.
The New York Times
By Stephen Krashen
July 16, 2012
The common core standards movement seems to be common sense: Our schools should have similar standards, what students should know at each grade. The movement, however, is based on the false assumption that our schools are broken, that ineffective teaching is the problem and that rigorous standards and tests are necessary to improve things.
The mediocre performance of American students on international tests seems to show that our schools are doing poorly. But students from middle-class homes who attend well-funded schools rank among the best in the world on these tests, which means that teaching is not the problem. The problem is poverty. Our overall scores are unspectacular because so many American children live in poverty (23 percent, ranking us 34th out of 35 “economically advanced countries”).
Poverty means inadequate nutrition and health care, and little access to books, all associated with lower school achievement. Addressing those needs will increase achievement and better the lives of millions of children.
How can we pay for this? Reduce testing. The common core, adopted by 45 states, demands an astonishing increase in testing, far more than needed and far more than the already excessive amount required by No Child Left Behind.
No Child Left Behind requires tests in math and reading at the end of the school year in grades 3 to 8 and once in high school. The common core will test more subjects and more grade levels, and adds tests given during the year. There may also be pretests in the fall.
The cost will be enormous. New York City plans to spend over half a billion dollars on technology in schools, primarily so that students can take the electronically delivered national tests.
Research shows that increasing testing does not increase achievement. A better investment is protecting children from the effects of poverty, in feeding the animal, not just weighing it.
STEPHEN KRASHEN
Los Angeles, July 16, 2012
The writer is professor emeritus at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education.
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