Obama Seeks Sweeping Change in ‘No Child’ Law

[undeterred]

Source: The New York Times

By SAM DILLON
Published: January 31, 2010

The Obama administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of President Bush’s signature education law, No Child Left Behind, and will call for broad changes in how schools are judged to be succeeding or failing, as well as for the elimination of the law’s 2014 deadline for bringing every American child to academic proficiency.

Educators who have been briefed by administration officials said the proposals for changes in the main law governing the federal role in public schools would eliminate or rework many of the provisions that teachers’ unions, associations of principals, school boards and other groups have found most objectionable. Yet the administration is not planning to abandon the law’s commitments to closing the achievement gap between minority and white students and encouraging teacher quality.

Significantly, said those who have been briefed, the White House wants to change federal financing formulas so that a portion of the money is awarded based on academic progress, rather than by formulas that apportion money to districts according to their numbers of students, especially poor students. The well-worn formulas for distributing tens of billions of dollars in federal aid have, for decades, been a mainstay of the annual budgeting process in the nation’s 14,000 school districts.

Peter Cunningham, a Department of Education spokesman, acknowledged that the administration was planning to ask Congress for broad changes to the No Child Left Behind law, but declined to describe the changes specifically.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/education/01child.html

---

I hope its change in the right direction.

[babylonsister]

1. Sweeping overhaul of NCLB? Sounds great to me; the devil will

be in the details. Rec'd for now.

[Freddie Stubbs]

74. Education is a complex issue, any policy will have to be complex

[noamnety]

2. I have little hope for this.

Writing on the wall:

Money for "academic achievement" = more money for successful schools. Academic success (or lack thereof) is tightly correlated to minority status and poverty - for a number of reasons. The inevitable result will be less funding for schools in minority/poverty neighborhoods, schools will end up being "restructured" (taken over by management companies and turned into charters).

The biggest problem with NCLB was its absurd focus on standardized testing rather than learning, this looks to put even more pressure on schools to teach to the test.

[mopinko]

5. how is your reading comprehension?

call for broad changes in how schools are judged to be succeeding or failing

sounds like plain english to me.

[noamnety]

9. Reading comprehension sometimes requires reading between the lines.

Right now funding is per student. The article says funding will be distributed differently, based not just on number of students but also on their academic success. I get what that means - more emphasis on the test scores for funding purposes, not less.

Also from the article, which sheds light on the direction Obama's moving for anyone who wasn't already aware of it:

"The administration has already made its mark on education through Race to the Top, a federal grant program in which 40 states are competing for $4 billion in education money included in last year’s federal stimulus bill. In his State of the Union address, Mr. Obama hailed the results so far of that competition, which has persuaded states from Rhode Island to California to make changes in their education laws. States that prohibit the use of test scores in teacher evaluations, for example, are not eligible for the funds. The competition has also encouraged states to open the door to more charter schools, which receive public money but are run by independent groups."

[mopinko]

12. this is about federal funding, which is a small percentage of overall $$

and i agree with shaking up the funding. the idea of chapter one funds was that more money to schools with more poor kids would lead to better achievement in those schools. but no such improvement ever happened. so.....

charter schools are a deep subject, and i can only say that the ones we have in chicago are mostly great. they are primarily run by non-profits, including universities. they are some of the best schools in the city. and yes, most do still use union teachers. in fact, the teacher's union hold something like 6 charters.

i am opposed to judging teachers or kids just by test scores, but i am in favor of some serious judgement of teacher quality. there are a freakin' lot of bad teachers out there. a lot of them need to be out selling shoes at some point in time.

[noamnety]

15. a lot of people here know I teach at a charter

There are some things I like about them. But I don't support the idea of killing off traditional public schools through standardized testing gotchas - not when standardized testing is applied to a population which is anything BUT standardized in the advantages they are given in life. And I don't support policies which have the unintended consequence of encouraging the most qualified teachers to stay in districts with the highest test scores in order to ensure their own good ratings and job security.

[kjones]

19. Standardized testing is the devil. rawr!

May as well draw on horns and a tail and hand it a pitchfork. Scrambling to get "good" scores
distracts from actual learning and just lends itself to cram-test-forget.

[mopinko]

21. so what do you have to disagree with?

sounds like they are dumping the parts of nclb that did just that.

[noamnety]

26. I don't believe they are dumping those parts.

That's based on watching what Obama and Duncan have done in the past year, reading through the Race to the Top brainchild of theirs (which our staff refused to sign), and lots of experience with watching how "reform" always seems to turn to "lining corporate pockets".

I'm looking at how rhetoric aligns with past actions.

If you believe there will be less focus on test scores, less penalizing of schools with populations that produce low scores, based on what they've said - you have a different set of beliefs than I have. There's not much way of proving which one of us is right except to wait it out and see, unless you want to try something else like arm wrestling ... but I don't have a lot of upper arm strength; it would be an unimpressive showing on my part.

The real problem that needs to be addressed is poverty. Kids don't learn as effectively when they are hungry, when they can't afford health care, when they are homeless and don't have a regular time or place to study, when they come from families that are stretched beyond their means. And schools aren't as effective when they are dealing with generational underfunding. But we can't address that because that would require overhauling the real systemic problems, right down to notions of capitalism by definition resulting in some people collecting most of the capital from the rest of us, leaving the rest of us with fewer resources. So instead we get these charades of reform that everyone knows isn't a real solution, but will allow them to claim they "accomplished" something in time for when the next election rolls around.

[No Elephants]

54. Sounds more liie a totally vague and non-specific statement .

[No Elephants]

53. Clear as a bell. And so specific, too. Think I'll wait for more info before I react.

[Freddie Stubbs]

57. How do you determine if students are learning if you do not test them?

:shrug:

[Doremus]

59. Somehow American schools thrived for decades before "standardized" testing.

Indeed, American schools were among the finest in the world. Imagine that, and without any standardized tests from politicians who haven't set foot in classrooms since they were students.

:shrug:

[WriteDown]

60. Maybe it was due to the strict social constructs of the 50's....

:rofl:

Hard to determine why they "thrived."

At this point we probably need to seriously start to look at a two-tiered system like exists in places like Japan(which has PLENTY of testing).

[Freddie Stubbs]

61. What percentage of students actually graduated back then?

:shrug:

[panzerfaust]

62. How do you learn anything if you are simply being taught to pass a bullshit test?

Which, by the way, will in large part determine how much money your "teacher" makes.

The UK is gradually awakening to the cost and folly of over-testing of students, it would be nice if we would learn from their experience ... but that would require focusing on "product" vs "process" and the latter is what "educators" tend to focus on.

I especially like the part of NCLB where "poorly" performing schools get further penalized. Yep, that should learn 'em!

My guess is that one could a priori estimate with a high degree of accuracy what any school's test results would be, based upon the family income level of the students attending.

[Freddie Stubbs]

68. So, your arguement is that thise is no way to determine if students actually learn?

:shrug:

[noamnety]

63. We don't test what they've learned.

For example, my daughter could read at about the third grade level when she entered kindergarten. She could have learned absolutely nothing from kindergarten to 3rd grade, but her third grade test scores would have shown that the school, that the teachers were successful at teaching her, and could under the new system earn merit pay - not for anything they taught her, but for having the good luck to have her in their classroom.

Another student could have entered third grade 3 years behind the class reading level. Maybe in half a year, the teacher brought them up to a 1st grade reading level - so they learned a lot. But that school and teacher would be penalized for failing the student - even though they were better teachers than the teachers in the first scenario with my daughter, and the student learned more in their classes than my daughter learned in hers.

That's the problem - it's a snapshot of what a group of students knows at any given time, which frequently has far more to do with the circumstances of the preceding 5-17 years of their life than anything the particular teacher has done with them.

The only way to do any meaningful testing that assesses how effective a teacher is: test the kids at the start of the school year, test the kids at the end of the school year, measure their progress instead of their ranking against an arbitrary national standardized benchmark which assumes all kids are standardized.

[Freddie Stubbs]

69. So, testing ok, as long as you test the students' progress?

That sounds reasonable to me.

[noamnety]

72. I wouldn't want it as the sole factor

because there are other things that factor into education, like whether the learning is rote based, inquiry based, whether the students leave the classroom wanting to learn more or never wanting to touch the subject again, whether a student feels safe in a classroom or whether the environment makes them suicidal, etc.

But it makes sense that if we want to measure whether a teacher was effective - and tie merit pay and school achievement reports to that, it is far more reasonable to measure how much the students progressed during the time they were with that teacher, rather than testing what they know at a single point in time.

If we set up a research project to test whether certain medicines were effective at preventing headaches, one of the first things we'd do is get a baseline reading of the subjects to determine whether they came into the experiment getting one headache a year or 50 headaches a year. If you don't do that your end data is meaningless. It's especially meaningless if you put everyone against a national benchmark of an acceptable number of headaches, and refuse to acknowledge that you have high concentrations of subjects taking one medication who were already predisposed to chronic headaches because of environmental factors, another group on a second medication who only gets tested when they have PMS, a third group who repeatedly forgets to even show up to take the medicine, and a control group who has never had a headache in their lives. But in our standardized testing that's exactly what we do. We have localized concentrations of kids with particular backgrounds which either aided or hindered their knowledge base, and we refuse to acknowledge or adjust for those factors - reducing everything to "this medicine works, this one doesn't".

It's basic scientific methods here, and it pisses me off no end that we are a community of educators who aren't using sound methodology. How do we have any credibility to teach if we can't even set up a simple testing procedure in a logical way?

[azurnoir]

3. It is about time

this law has made education into a "numbers game" and little else

[Jefferson23]

4. Hoping for the best K&R

[Webster Green]

6. I wish we could declare everything the chimp did as null and void.

Including all his appointments, proclamations, signing statements, everything.!

And purge the government of all the remaining Big Dick & the Chimp loyalists/traitors.

[madrchsod]

7. yes the devil is in the details.....

has duncan been fired yet?

[msongs]

17. he is speaking on behalf of Obama, implementing Obama policy. wanna fire Obama too? nt

[babylonsister]

20. Don't believe everything you read, especially on DU. nt

[djp2]

22. Seems to be a lot of...

Closet Conservatives out there when it comes to Education...or are they just plants for the Right Wing?

Don't they know what Progressives believe when it comes to education..

As far as bad teachers, after teaching at 4 schools over 32 years, I've only seen what I consider to be 2 or 3..and the Administration refused to do what was needed to get rid of them..It was the administrators fault, and the Districts, not a lack of means to do the job and get rid of them..we don't need MORE rules against teachers, but FAIR application of them. Let teachers speak out against the system they work in not get fired for doing so.

[babylonsister]

24. I notice you don't indicate where you come from, or if NCLB infected

your school system. I'm not a teacher, but have read how poisonous that was, and lived in TX to see it. So, was your teaching experience infected with 'the tests'?

[Freddie Stubbs]

56. Why would President Obama do that?

:shrug:

[progressoid]

8. Here's a sweeping change for ya - shit can the whole thing

[Hydra]

45. +1

Like so many other things, taking a bad idea and trying to make it work is not the answer- kill it and start over.

[FiveGoodMen]

49. +2

[ibegurpard]

73. seconded

[rpannier]

10. K&R

Like it.
Sounds like it's a move in the right direction.

[dkf]

11. How's about requiring a minimum number of instructional days so the Hawaii teachers union stops

Trying to cut them.

It's amazing how the union here has less school days as a perpetual goal. And we constantly are at the bottom in terms of performance while ranking above average in cost per student and teachers salaries.

[Suji to Seoul]

16. Putting a kid in a school for a long time does not make that student good,

just like sitting in a barn for 8 hours a day does not make you a cow.

Quality over quantity. Or else the system fails.

And why shouldn't teachers make more money? Each teacher should start a 100,000 a year miniumum.

Military, teachers, nurses, police and fire fighters are grossly underpaid to begin with for the work they are required to perform.

Why do you hate teachers?

[dkf]

23. Did you see we now have the least amount of school days in the nation?

The secretary of education came down to scold us.

The kids have 4 day weeks for the majority of the school year. But hey my traffic is excellent when they are off.

Here is the schedule. It's almost a perpetual 3 day weekend and Wednesdays get out early.

http://doe.k12.hi.us/news/furlough/calendars/scan_10month%20calendar.pdf

[JDPriestly]

27. Raising kids in Europe, I was amazed to discover how short their

school day was. In the first four years of elementary school, my children got there shortly after 8:00 a.m. and stayed until 12:00 noon. They brought home lots of homework in the first grade. And each child was expected to bring back to school the next day a neat notebook with the previous day's assignment copied and understood. In the first and to a certain extent the second grade, each homework assignment had to end with a line of some simple decorative design done in colored pencil. Doing the line with the colored pencil was sort of a reward for the child. It was like saying: Well done. See how pretty your notebook looks. And children like using colored pencils.

The responsibility for making sure the children learned was placed squarely on the parents. I don't know if it is still like that. But, as we have been told over and over, European students do better on tests than do American students.

So, how much time, how many hours children spend in school is not so important. Maybe our children spend too much time in school. That's quite possible. It's not how long you sit at a desk but how much attention you are paying, how involved you are when you are sitting there that counts. And when the school day goes on and on and on, a lot of children just lose interest.

Young children probably learn the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic best when tutored by their own parents. Of course that presumes parents who are willing to sit with their child and make sure that their child has mastered each homework assignment. I'm talking about children in the early grades learning fundamental skills so there is no problem with parents being unable to help the child with the material.

The secret of better schools may be in shorter school days, not longer ones. Teachers probably would not seek to shorten the school week if the school days were shorter.

[dkf]

28. The union required that no extra homework be given so as not to

Disadvantage kids who couldn't keep up. Seriously. The parents tried to hold their own classes on Friday by hiring the normal teachers but the unions said the teachers couldn't teach anything that was in their normal curriculum. Honest to god.

I have to admit my opinion of the teachers union here is at rock bottom. It didn't used to be that way but the more I learned the more frustrated I got. I didn't realize that gov Cayetano fought like heck to get an extra 10 days instruction years ago. But the teachers union turned 7 of those days into paid non instructional days for training. After they got their raises of course.

[Suji to Seoul]

35. Then become a teacher or school adminstrator and change the system

until then, you're just another armchair educator that thinks they know more than trained professionals.

Would you second guess a doctor or a dentist's methods and practices like you second guess a teachers?

My opinion of teacher bashers cannot get lower. Become a teacher and work time in the trenches, or become an administrator and implement new policy.

I support the union protecting the teachers. Why do you hate unions? Would you complain if another union did as well for their members as a teacher's union did?

Why are you spouting Republican, "teacher hating" talking points?

[dkf]

36. I was thinking maybe I should if I decide to change careers.

I'm pretty burnt out working 10 to 14 hour days for almost 20 years with about 2 weeks vacation a year even though I'm entitled to twice that. My sister works in the school system. She says I should have quit my job years ago and doesn't understand why I work so much. She makes the same I do but with about 3 months less work a year working 8 hours a day. And she gets health care benefits at retirement along with a pension.

She loves the furloughs by the way. And her kids do too. I'm the one telling her she should spend furlough Fridays doing something educational. The kids are pretty smart though. And they are young enough to bounce back.

I've heard from quite a few people that their friends who are teachers really appreciate having long weekends. I don't blame them for enjoying it. I would too.

[No Elephants]

55. I taught for a year and it was a very hard and stressful job. Criticism, OTOH, is easy.

[JDPriestly]

47. In my experience, the teachers' union in California is very pro-student,

pro-schools. So, I guess there is a big difference. The teachers' unions here fight for smaller classes. That is good for teachers but even better for students.

[AllyCat]

32. I remember in high school German class in the 80s learning about

German school students and having exchange students from there come to our class. They had class from 8-1 every day, came home for lunch and then had homework. 4-5 hour days was about it. Many of them went to some kind of classwork or tutoring on Saturdays according to the three German students who visited our class. They only had breaks at Xmas and a month in the summer.

Seems now, most parents are ticked off about short school days because they work and many see school as "free daycare". Every time the kids are off for the day, I hear parents griping that they had to stay home, or find a sitter, or some such. They talk about all their TV shows. Don't they help their kids with their schoolwork? Make sure it gets done? Make sure their kids understand it? My parents were always working with us on things so we could understand it.

I feel badly for the teachers that they get paid so crappy for such an important job. If I was a teacher, I would want a shorter work week too, but feel a need to do what I was trained to do...teach! Teachers are not paid enough, and kids need more consistent time studying or in classes, whatever the need is for them.

That said, homeschooling is sounding better and better to me. We have a year left to figure out what we are going to do....

[JDPriestly]

46. As a result, teachers have to waste their time supervising the

kids on the playground and in study hall arrangements. Those are not good uses of teacher time. Teachers would teach better if they had more time to grade papers and prepare for classes.

[Suji to Seoul]

34. I live in China and before Korea. . .six and seven days a week for 10 hours a day

Kids learn nothing and sleep in class most of the time.

You know nothing of what you speak. Quality or quanitity.

[dkf]

37. Well how's about 8:00 to 2:30 3 days a week and 8:00 to 1:30 one day a week.

Of course that also includes lunch and recess.

Obama's Sec of Ed came down to tell us we were hurting our chances of getting the educational grants they plan to award. They let it be known that for the President's home state to be cutting instructional time when he was advocating increasing educational time was a personal embarassment to him.

[Suji to Seoul]

39. if the students learn and perform in that time, then good, I am happy for it

How do you know the investment will pay off? Do you have a crystal ball?

Talk to me in 20 years to see what these kids are doing with their lives to see if this experiment worked.

You non-educators are all the same. . .all you see is time in a classroom, not quality in the classroom.

Dismissed. I do not wish to talk to you anymore. Your disgust for teachers makes me sick.

[dkf]

41. We are ranked 47th and that is because the bottom states are tied.

Our poor public school system is One reason we have one of the highest private school enrollments in the nation. Obama went to Punahou as did Steve Case of AOL and Pierre Omidyar of eBay.

I hear that military families don't want to be stationed here because of the school system. Now that is a sad comment indeed.

[dkf]

38. Dupe

[DrCory]

43. How Odd...

"Kids learn nothing and sleep in class most of the time."

I also have taught in China (and am returning in 2012), and my experience was quite the opposite.

[Suji to Seoul]

50. They don't sleep in my class. If they do, I yell at them, remove their sitting privilege and

tell them to stand in the back on one foot until my secretary calls their Head Teacher or the Grade Level Chairman!

I am a bastard of a disiciplinarian. And the Principal, Headmaster and International Affais Director think it is amazing to watch. Their parents like the discipline too. I have received many gifts from them for teaching their children how to be adults.

我爱在中国英文老师.

BTW, where are you going in 2012? 我在石家庄 in 河北 and I'm moving to 昆明 in 云南 in 九月.

[DrCory]

64. Most Likely...

武汉. At least for a year or two. I've lived in Wuhan before and do like it although the summer heat is difficult to bear. I'd love to try Harbin or Kashi (I'm a person of extremes), but my wife is a Wuhan girl and shows little interest in the north or west. She would like to live in Qingdao, a choice I enthusiastically approve of.

I love it too, there's something special about the kids over there.

[Suji to Seoul]

66. I have a friend in Wuhan Loves it there.

I'm growing tired of 石家庄 and am looking forward to my move to 昆明。

[WriteDown]

42. Why 100K? Why not 500K?

Why do you hate teachers?

[Suji to Seoul]

51. I'm not complaining about that. If ARod can get 28 million a year hitting a baseball

and Adam Sandler can get 20 million for every shitty movie he's in. . .why not give the people molding the next generation 500K?

The more for our teachers, the better quality teacher we will have. You ever think the best and brightest of us don't want to become teachers because of the lack of respect (as apparent on this board in this thread), lousy facilities, poor treatment, second guessing, scapegoatings and horrible pay?

How can I hate teachers? I am an educator (four years in America, one in a Korean High School, 1.5 so far in a Chinese high school and will be in a University in August), and my mother is a career educator.

[WriteDown]

58. As long as each teacher is required to get a doctorate....

In the subject they are teaching then I think they should be paid more. I went to a university with a major teaching school and it seemed to serve mostly as a way to get a MRS degree.

[Suji to Seoul]

65. I have two Master's Degrees (including one in the subject I taught in America)

Do I qualify?

[WriteDown]

67. If you can find someone that will pay you that much or can sell tickets..

then sure!

[KamaAina]

48. Did the teachers' union create the "Furlough Fridays"?

Or was it repuke gov Lingle?

That's right, folks, the Aloha State has taken the furlough concept to a new extreme, actually closing schools on Fridays (all public schools in Hawai'i are run directly by the state Dept. of Ed. rather than local districts)

[Suji to Seoul]

52. No, it's just easier to blame teachers and teacher's unions.

How does that Republican talking point go?

"If a kid can read, thank a teacher. If a kid can't, blame a teacher's union."

Why do people here hate unions and teachers?

[Frank Booth]

13. Oh No!!

Improving teacher quality?!?? :scared: :scared:

I bet the teacher unions won't like that one bit.

[Suji to Seoul]

14. Since education is a long term investment rather than a short term achievement

you can piss off. Teacher's Unions understand that "teacher quality" is code for "unfunded mandates," "increased responsibility," and "more focus on standardized tests."

You must really hate teachers.

Don't bother to respond. you're on ignore.

[Frank Booth]

25. Nope. I like most public teachers and think they do great work.

I just don't like the few who don't give a damn (and believe it or not, they do exist) and the teachers' unions who fight tooth and nail to let them remain teachers.

[Suji to Seoul]

40. like the ABA who keeps bad lawyers and the Police Union that keeps bad cops?

You hate all unions too, or is it just teachers?

Right wing talking points against teacher's unions make me sick. Ignored forever.

[GiveMeFreedom]

18. Wer ked fer me:!@

Tat no chilld letf beehine wer ked fer mee I passeed effery teest I gat at me. Tanks Teecher.

[AllyCat]

30. What was that called again? Creative spelling or something?

I've talked to a dozen parents at least who have kids who learned spelling that way and to this day (many are now adults) can't spell a damn thing.

[EvilMonk]

29. Hmm...

Interesting...

[JCMach1]

31. Funding for performance

NCLB is crap, but Obama and his education crew keep making matters worse.

[winyanstaz]

33. Now this could be good......

I hope this is the change we have needed for the children....but only time will tell now.

[Tim01]

44. "solicit input from Congressional leaders of both parties"

I think it's just a lot of talk. They may change a few things to get the unions off their backs. But I don't think there are plans to change anything that matters.

[Jkid]

70. NCLB is a failure

I say repeal the act, only leaving the dangerous schools provision of the act and rename it the safe schools act.

[superconnected]

71. Ah, the law that left the poorest schools without even school supplies

teacher still have to bring their own pencils and erasers to classes for the kids to use, in many poor areas.

I'm glad they are changing how schools will be funded because it was setup for the richest districts to do the best and get the most federal money - to help them keep doing the best - afford the best teachers. The poor kids who do the worst to got the least funds so their schools hit poverty by 2005 (the ones left are still in poverty or closed due to the districts couldn't afford them), and they can only afford the cheapest-least-experienced teachers. This affects how their kids do economically in the future, because guess what colleges look at - grades AND school standing, of where the student is coming from. Rich get richer, poor get poorer.

I'm glad Obama is changing this. So many schools are impoverished that need the funds right now just to stay open.