What will the Democrats do about NCLB's requirement of 100% proficiency by 2014?

[Karmadillo]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/13/AR2007031301781.html

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 14, 2007

No Child Left Behind, the landmark federal education law, sets a lofty standard: that all students tested in reading and math will reach grade level by 2014. Even when the law was enacted five years ago, almost no one believed that standard was realistic.

But now, as Congress begins to debate renewing the law, lawmakers and education officials are confronting the reality of the approaching deadline and the difficult political choice between sticking with the vision of universal proficiency or backing away from it.

"There is a zero percent chance that we will ever reach a 100 percent target," said Robert L. Linn, co-director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA. "But because the title of the law is so rhetorically brilliant, politicians are afraid to change this completely unrealistic standard. They don't want to be accused of leaving some children behind."

more...

http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/09/obama-education-president-oped-cx_dr_1109ravitch.html

Commentary
The Obama Education Agenda
Diane Ravitch, 11.10.08, 12:00 AM EST

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If any single group in a school does not make gains for two years in a row, the school will be designated a failing school. Once schools start to fail, there is a list of specific remedies and sanctions in the law. The students are offered a choice to go to a better school or to get free tutoring. If the school continues to fail, it may be turned into a charter school, handed over to the state or private management, closed or "restructured."

Here is what has happened over the past seven years: Less than 5% of eligible students chose to leave their schools; less than 20% accepted free tutoring. Very few long-term failing schools converted to become charters or privately managed. Schools that entered the last, most punitive phase--restructuring--seldom improved at all.

As the approach of the 2014 deadline for 100% proficiency grows nearer, the bar gets higher for every school. Consequently, the number of "failing" schools escalates every year. Last year, 25,000 of the nation's 90,000 schools failed to make what the law calls "adequate yearly progress." This year, the number is likely to be higher.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Great question!

And bring on the public school bashers!! Please, I am serious. I want to hear their ideas for making sure 100% of our kids are proficient. I want to know how they think we can teach severely impaired kids with IQs below 60 to read at grade level. I want to know how they think we can teach those kids to regroup in Math, count money and tell time to the minute. Since they are so sure our public schools are failing our kids and we absolutely must spend our tax dollars on vouchers and charter schools, how do they propose private schools and vouchers will meet the needs of 100% of our kids and make sure 100% of our kids are working at grade level.

Please, I want to know.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

9. More gym, swimming, dance, culinary classes and computer programming!

more fun for kids, that's the solution!

[Tim01]

2. Just abandon NCLB before it is too late.

Do whatever bullshit face saving stunt is necessary, but get rid of this disastrous policy.

What we used to have worked much much better than NCLB.

[Tim01]

4. Oh, and cheating will be rampant and almost encouraged, It's already started.

The teachers will do whatever they have to to meet the criteria, in the end. They will have no choice.
They can encourage cheating, or loose their job.

[tonysam]

7. Teachers aren't doing the cheating

unless their bosses are threatening them to do it.

There are serious repercussions if teachers don't do what administrators want, whether what those administrators want is legal. Yours truly was approached by an unethical principal who wanted me to illegally put all my kids on alternate testing (I was a life skills teacher) when most of them did not qualify. He was worried the schoolwide test scores would be pulled down because of my students. I refused, the principal retaliated when I had won that particular battle and tested my kids appropriately, but in the end, although I demanded to be moved to another school to get away from that POS principal, I ultimately paid for my "transgressions" with my career.

[Tim01]

10. You just proved my point.

I've already seen it in the schools. And you have been a part of it. You will be replaced with someone who will allow cheating.
And principals will be replaced if they don't do whatever is required to get those test scores up, cheating.

[tonysam]

12. Right, Tim01

What is the kicker is when I was sacked I was replaced by a "retiree" who never left the district, i.e., a "double-dipper." I was ditched because the HR head didn't want to pay my retirement and future salary using a mistake on an FMLA form as an excuse to sack me illegally.

You're rehired: Law gives school board OK to bring back the retired for critical positions

At the school where the attempted cheating took place, I demanded to move to another school, but instead of the union and the offending principal's boss allowing me to pick my school, I was SWITCHED with a teacher who had problems with staff at her school. I felt I was being set up for a fall. But of course she is still a life skills teacher at this middle school because she is an administrator's wife.

Cute, huh?

[Tim01]

13. It's a fucked up mess.

I know a 3 teachers who have quit over this kind of crap.

And it damned sure isn't helping the students. They are learning that rules should be bent or broken as necessary to suit the situation.

[tonysam]

15. If the public knew the truth of how absolutely

horrid public schools are in terms of workplace problems, there would be outrage from sea to shining sea.

It infuriates me to no end the lengths school districts will go to keep negligent or malicious principals. They have almost ironclad job security, more so even than superintendents (who are often fired for all kinds of reasons).

[gratuitous]

3. Let's try starving school of money and resources

And see how that works between now and 2014. We'll give the money we save to a bunch of overrich, greedy bastards.

Oh wait; the Republicans aren't in control anymore. Well, let's try that anyway.

[msongs]

5. close all the schools and start more wars as jobs for the now available kids nt

[tonysam]

6. The Democrats will do nothing

because Obama and the despicable Arne Duncan support it.

Public schools are too far gone now for the trend of privatization to be reversed.

[Karmadillo]

11. I hope you're not right, but I fear you are.

nt

[WinkyDink]

8. Here is the stupidest, most insane aspect: Each tested group is discrete. NO 11th-grader today will

be in 11th grade in 2014.

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR SCHOOLS TO ALTER THE HUMAN SPECIES ENOUGH TO "PRODUCE" A BETTER MODEL IN 2014 THAN EXISTS TODAY.

[Karmadillo]

14. Kick

nt

[greenbriar]

16. something soon,

it is killing us