NCLB - Letter from Greg Palast

[whometense]

This is enough to make you want to bang your head against the wall:

NO CHILD'S BEHIND LEFT: THE TEST
By Greg Palast

New York -- Today and tomorrow every 8-year-old in the state of New York will take a test. It's part of George Bush's No Child Left Behind program. The losers will be left behind to repeat the third grade.

Try it yourself. This is from the state's actual practice test. Ready, class?

"The year 1999 was a big one for the Williams sisters. In February, Serena won her first pro singles championship. In March, the sisters met for the first time in a tournament final. Venus won. And at doubles tennis, the Williams girls could not seem to lose that year."

And here's one of the four questions:

"The story says that in 1999, the sisters could not seem to lose at doubles tennis. This probably means when they played

"A two matches in one day
"B against each other
"C with two balls at once
"D as partners"

OK, class, do you know the answer? (By the way, I didn't cheat: there's nothing else about "doubles" in the text.)


My kids go to a New York City school in which more than half the students live below the poverty line. There is no tennis court.

There are no tennis courts in the elementary schools of Bed-Stuy or East Harlem. But out in the Hamptons, every school has a tennis court. In Forest Hills, Westchester and Long Island's North Shore, the schools have nearly as many tennis courts as the school kids have live-in maids.

Now, you tell me, class, which kids are best prepared to answer the question about "doubles tennis"? The 8-year-olds in Harlem who've never played a set of doubles or the kids whose mommies disappear for two hours every Wednesday with Enrique the tennis pro?

Is this test a measure of "reading comprehension" -- or a measure of wealth accumulation?

If you have any doubts about what the test is measuring, look at the next question, based on another part of the text, which reads (and I could not make this up):

"Most young tennis stars learn the game from coaches at private clubs. In this sentence, a club is probably a

"F baseball bat
"G tennis racquet
"H tennis court
"J country club"

Helpfully, for the kids in our 'hood, it explains that a "country club" is a, "place where people meet." Yes, but WHICH people?

President Bush told us, "By passing the No Child Left Behind Act, we are regularly testing every child and making sure they have better options when schools are not performing."

But there are no "better options." In the delicious double-speak of class war, when the tests have winnowed out the chaff and kids stamped failed, No Child Left results in that child being left behind in the same grade to repeat the failure another year.

I can't say that Mr. Bush doesn't offer better options to the kids stamped failed. Under No Child Left, if enough kids flunk the tests, their school is marked a failure and its students win the right, under the law, to transfer to any successful school in their district. You can't provide more opportunity than that. But they don't provide it, the law promises it, without a single penny to make it happen. In New York in 2004, a third of a million students earned the right to transfer to better schools -- in which there were only 8,000 places open.

New York is typical. Nationwide, only one out of two-hundred students eligible to transfer manage to do it. Well, there's always the Army. (That option did not go unnoticed: No Child has a special provision requiring schools to open their doors to military recruiters.)

Hint: When de-coding politicians' babble, to get to the real agenda, don't read their lips, read their budgets. And in his last budget, our President couldn't spare one thin dime for education, not ten cents. Mr. Big Spender provided for a derisory 8.4 cents on the dollar of the cost of primary and secondary schools. Congress appropriated a half penny of the nation's income -- just one-half of one-percent of America's twelve trillion dollar GDP -- for primary and secondary education.

President Bush actually requested less. While Congress succeeded in prying out an itty-bitty increase in voted funding, that doesn't mean the extra cash actually gets to the students. Fifteen states have sued the federal government on the grounds that the cost of new testing imposed on schools, $3.9 billion, eats up the entire new funding budgeted for No Child Left.

There are no "better options" for failing children, but there are better uses for them. The President ordered testing and more testing to hunt down, identify and target millions of children too expensive, too heavy a burden, to educate.

No Child Left offers no options for those with the test-score mark of Cain -- no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding. Rather, it is the new social Darwinism, educational eugenics: identify the nation's loser-class early on. Trap them then train them cheap.

Someone has to care for the privileged. No society can have winners without lots and lots of losers. And so we have No Child Left Behind -- to produce the new worker drones that will clean the toilets at the Yale Alumni Club, punch the cash registers color-coded for illiterates, and pamper the winner-class on the higher floors of the new economic order.

Class war dismissed.


**********
See a clip of the actual practice test at www.GregPalast.com

[wisteria]

1. This seems to prove the point that repubs want a dumbed down

society. Why, otherwise they would have to share the wealth and power.

[cmnh]

6. They're lucky NCLB wasn't in effect in Midland, TX back in the day.

<img src="" alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com">

[TayTay]

7. Did Georgy go to public schools in Midland?

Well, maybe they had that special needs program up and running then. I wonder what his disability was called in the forms?

Hey, nice to see you again, CMNH.

(Great pic. I wish he could be, 'Left Behind.' Sigh!)

[cmnh]

9. Looks like he did...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids/president/


By the way, it looks like there's a typo in the website. Instead of "Favorite Teacher - Coach Jones" it should have said "Favorite Craving - Coke Jones".

[TayTay]

10. OMG, CMNH, there is a 'Brain Challenge' on that site!

Now what could Georgie's Brain Challenge be: (After proving he has one.) Oh dear Lord, this is like a gift from God for anyone who likes humor. (I can't help myself, must post this.)

Brain Challenge
What was President Bush's favorite subject in school?
Tay sez: Recess. Obviously Georgie likes going outside and playing with his bike. We have to be careful though because he falls off his bike a lot and he won't wear a helmut.

Where did President Bush attend college?
Tay Sez: Yale, but he was a legacy. He is even more of a legacy now and at the same time, oddly enough, the nation will have no legacy once he is done destroying it. There is no proof that Georgie ever really studied history, even though he, like Sen. Allen has a degree in it. If he did, he might never had messed with Iraq. Bad history there for occupiers.

How many Presidents served before President Bush?
Tay Sez: All of them. However, Georgie excelled at recess in elementary school and has taken this experience to the WH with him where he is the President who has spent the most time on vacation.

What was President Bush's job before he became President of the United States?
Tay Sez: Skimming money from the public and hanging out with Daddy's rich friends. (Oh and he once ran a major league baseball team, but only so he could get the public to pay for a new stadium and he could make some money off the public largesse.)

Name two of President Bush's goals for America.
Tay Sez: Destroy the military and Social Security. If he has any time left over, he plans on decimating public education, medicare, medicaid and the environment, but he goes on vacation a lot, so those latter goals might have to wait a bit longer.

Challenge Question: What is the meaning of working together in a bipartisan spirit?
Tay Sez: For heaven's sake, don't ask Georgie this! He has no idea. He thinks it has something to do with talking to them libruls, but that sounds so dirty.

[MH1]

2. How much did they spend

to have the test reviewed by people with the appropriate credentials (say, sociologists) to weed out the culture-biased questions?

My bet - not much.

I would also bet that this is less an indication of some nefarious conscious intention to "winnow out" and more a function of improper test development process that allows educated, fairly well off people - who btw would be so familiar with tennis courts that they might not imagine someone not being familiar with them unless they were specifically reminded - to create the questions without any review by people who would catch stuff like this.

And it's possible the people assigned to write the questions were woefully underfunded, too.

Just my .02.

[sandnsea]

3. But but but

The questions talked about black people so they couldn't possible be culturally biased. :sarcasm:

My neice is going for her masters in pscyhology. She has led an incredibly sheltered life and I guarantee you that she wouldn't recognize the cultural bias because she basically has been trained to believe racism and classism just don't exist.

[beachmom]

4. I can't tell you HOW much I am against NCLB!!

It's affecting my family because the preschools are now pressure cookers (even the little church preschools) where 3 and 4 year old kids are pushed into learning and writing letters and numbers, and even to read, way before it's the right time developmentally. I'm not talking about being exposed to letters, I'm talking about getting a folder full of red marked papers returned where the child didn't do things "correctly". Then I read this article in Parents magazine that NCLB is in part responsible for this because the pressure on the school to get good test results when the kids are in 3rd grade (when the tests start) is pushed down the grades, and is now there in its ugliness in preschool. Maybe I am biased because I never tested very well on standardized tests, but I am so against these multiple guess exams -- they're about being too lazy to REALLY teach kids. They turn kids into robots who simply parrot back what needs to be learned for THE TEST. Meanwhile, critical thinking and creativity are thrown out the door. I agree on the dumbing down of America, but it's dressed up as learning a "core curriculum" that doesn't invite free thinking.

Kerry did vote for it, though, and isn't his complaint that there isn't enough funding, not the whole thinking behind NCLB? I feel sort of out of the political realm with my thoughts on standardized tests -- both parties seem to be for it, because it's exact and measureable. But essay exams and math problems where you show all of your work, and get partial credit, are, to me, the ideal way to test students. I mean, how many of you are at work, have a problem, and are given 4 possible answers for the solution? No, you actually have to use your brain and come up with it with good old fashioned problem solving techniques along with a consensus with others. Where, in school, is this taught?

Reading about the racial biases just even deepen my distrust of this program, which I think will result in the Chinese, Indians, Koreans, Europeans et al outdoing us in science and engineering . . .

[TayTay]

5. Kerry did vote for it, but that was before

everyone clearly knew that Bush never intended to come across with the funding for the mandates in NCLB. The person who really got snookered on this was Sen. Ted Kennedy. Teddy has been a Dem 'point man' on education for a long time. He was courted by the Bushies in order to get NCLB passed. The Bushies promised Ted that money would flow and the initiative was genuine and Teddy worked with them to get it passed.

Needless to say, the Bushies pulled the rug out from under Ted when they refused to fund this program. (Testing is not a bad idea, but as implemented, this bill is a disaster. I don't know anyone who has to work with it who likes it.) In all honesty, I think Sen. KErry acquiesced to Sen. Kennedy's Ed background and voted for it. (If Teddy likes it....)

Read this excerpt from the Congressional Record of 9/4/02: Sen. Kennedy sees what the Admin really wanted in NCLB. (Warning, this is not pretty.)

I was asked over the recent month of August as I went around Massachusetts, is: What is going to be the administration's response to the children being left behind with the budget that the administration recommended to the Congress for funding of No Child Left Behind? Will politicians be accountable? There are 10.3 million children who fall into what we call the Title I category. Over 6 million of those children are going to be left behind under the administration's budget. We do not expect that money in and GPO's PDFof itself to be the answer to all of the problems, but it is a pretty good indication of the priorities of a nation and the priorities of an administration. And this chart is a pretty clear indication of the recent history of increased funding for education. We are talking her about the total education budget. In 1997, a 16 percent increase; 12 percent in 1998; 12 percent in 1999; 6 percent in the year 2000; 19 percent in 2001; and 16 percent in 2002. However, it is only 2.8 percent under this administration's budget, the lowest we have seen over the last 7 years.

Again, money is not everything, but we did make a commitment to the parents, to the families, to the schools. There is tough criteria for all of those groups.

We have seen, in the efforts made by Senator Harkin in the Appropriations Committee, the recommendation that it will be higher than this program. It will be some $4.2 billion, and it will raise this percentage up to about 6 percent. 2.8 percent is the recommendation that is being made by our Republican friends in the House of Representatives. By and large, the best judgment we have is that this will be the figure coming from the House, and we will be somewhat above, and the conference will come out lower, certainly, than what we have seen in recent years.

What has resulted from this--from the fact that we have not seen adequate funding of the program? We recognize in the No Child Left Behind Act that one of the most important necessities is a well-qualified teacher in every classroom in the country. There is virtually no increase in funding for teacher training. So the 18,000 teachers that would have been trained if there had been a cost of living increase will not receive the training.

Mr. President, 20,000 students will be cut from the college Work-Study Program; 25,000 limited-English-proficient children cut from the Federal bilingual program; 33,000 children cut from afterschool programs; there is virtually no increase in the Pell grants; and there is no increase in student loans.

What has the administration requested of the Congress? Why do I take a few moments of the Senate time today? I want to point out what is happening in this debate regarding funding of education because tomorrow in the House of Representatives, they will mark up a recommendation by this administration for $4 billion in new funding for private school vouchers. We understand, this is for private schools, 10 percent of the education, $4 billion. Yet just 2.8 percent increase for the public schools, where 90 percent of the children go.

There are a number of reasons we should be concerned. I think most of us believe that we should not be taking scarce funds from the public school children and putting them into

private schools. That is in effect what this is doing. If we had the $4 billion, we would be able to increase the total number of poor children to be covered under the Title I program to about two-thirds of those that are being left behind this year. However, the administration said no; we will have $4 billion over a 5-year period to be used for the private schools, for just 10 percent of the children.

[Mass]

8. I am like you - I think that the all thing is bad and poorly conceived

It is important that there is accountability, but the whole idea of testing like that is so bad.

It reduces studies of anything that is not considered useful (art, music, PE,...). The more it goes, the more it is obvious that everything is made to produce adults that will take orders, not be creative and independant.

I would not blame the teachers though. Unfortunately, because of the stupidity of the tests, they have to teach this way or they are penalized, but dont expect too much innovation and creativity from schools that teach this way.

My oldest son is in 10th grade. As Massachusetts has decided that passing the 10th Grade MCAS is necessary to graduate from highschool, it is even worse this year. It is all about teaching the test, particularly in these matters where he is not in a strong section.

As for the other one who has learning disabilities, the MCAS period is horrible because he knows he will not succeed, but he has to do it because it is what the law says and he spends the year being taught in a way that does not help him at all learning.

Adding to the fact it is not funded and the results in MA show perfectly well that it is totally biased on class and origin.

[beachmom]

11. For me, I'm not really with Ted Kennedy either although he's right

about the funding -- if you're going to create this monstruous program, then the least you can do is fund it. I won't tow the party line on this one though. Standardized exams don't work, other than as a supplement (like SATs and such) when you're looking at different schools all over the country. It's not that I'm against testing, it's that I am against multiple choice "logic" testing. I have read that American adults now have VERY poor grammar skills, and I have witnessed this in the work place when I receive e-mails riddled with elementary mistakes (like there, their, and they're errors) -- and this is from college graduates. Students need to be able to read and comprehend well but they also need to be able to put together a comprehensive sentence that also involves using their creativity. Instead of those completely stupid questions listed at the top of this thread, what about asking students to write about the sports they and their family enjoy and where they play these sports? Then there is no cultural bias, and the student is judged by their written word only.

My husband is German, and they have to pass an exam before graduating from high school -- there are three different types of high schools depending on your abilities and what career you want when you graduate -- called Gymnasium (the college bound H.S.). It is blue book style, requires a TON of studying, and is very difficult but fair. But guess what? It's a lot of work for the teachers to grade, and I just feel like educators in this country are too lazy to do that grading -- just like our voting system, faster and easier, is considered more accurate, even when the truth is the exact opposite.

I agree that you can't blanket blame teachers -- like any other career, there are good ones and bad ones. Since my kids haven't entered the public school, I have no opinion about teacher unions and all of that -- I can tell you thought that my Mom, who is a Democrat, had a big problem with tenure because mediocre teachers couldn't be fired. But I will reserve my judgment until I have direct experience, then I think you know I will have a strong opinion. My one good friend who is a teacher in Conn. says that it's really hell teaching now, and everything is about "teaching to the test", and the school is only focussed on THE TEST. All of this makes me understand why homeschooling has risen in popularity, and not just for fundamentalist Christians.

[TayTay]

12. 'Teaching to the Test' is a menace.

The idea of having testing is fine, there are people who want some standards against which they can measure success. But, with falling money and the increasing vise like grip of a set of mandates that strangle real teaching, I can't endorse either what happened with NCLB. What is missing is teaching how to think, which is what education used to be about. (And should be about.) Sigh! We are educating a generation of robots, and even at that we are not doing a good job.

[whometense]

13. I think you raise some important issues.

I had a teaching degree, and worked in education at all levels from day care through high school. I also have three children who all went through public schools from K-12. I don't think anyone can disagree that tenure has led to a lot of dead wood in the ranks of teachers. There are, of course, wonderful teachers too. My kids' experience was overall a very good one, but we were very involved parents - there's no substitute for that. Though, I might add, I don't believe in parents' breathing down teachers' necks, either. I believe in developing a cooperative relationship that is mutually beneficial.

It does seem that NCLB is a somewhat backwards attempt to rectify the accountability problem. Better teachers and better teacher training and compensation would probably do a lot more. The MA standardized tests are grueling. To be frank, most upper middle class kids come through them with flying colors, unless they have ESL or ADD or other LD issues.

Which leads me to believe that we'd be hugely better off over all if we poured more money into Head Start and other early childhood programs than doing this punitive testing later on. Teaching kids how to be ready to learn and teaching (and encouraging) parents how to be involved in their kids' education would be a more positive approach. Though I believe in accountability too - no one should be passed through the system unable to read or do basic math.

I also agree strongly with what Mass said about art/music/PE. There are kids who, for one reason or another, can only be reached through alternative educational avenues, and those avenues have to remain open. They make all kids better, more well-rounded people, to be sure, but for some kids they are literally a lifeline.

Ok, off my soapbox.