|
09469
June 11, 2009
Report card
Lack of resources, support for teachers will doom “No Child Left Behind,” experts tell ACSWP
WASHINGTON — Holding public schools accountable for meeting standardized test scores without providing them with the resources to raise students to those levels is “intellectually dishonest,” an aide to Pennsylvania Congressman and education reformer Chaka Fattah told the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) here recently.
With the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (currently called “No Child Left Behind”) up for congressional reauthorization, “the two top priorities have to be adequate resources and college access,” said Elizabeth King, Fattah’s senior legislative assistant, in conversations with ACSWP members at the Presbyterian Washington Office on May 15.
Last summer’s 218th PC(USA) General Assembly directed ACSWP “to study the church’s policies on public education in relationship to the issues of desegregation, affirmative action, faith-based initiatives, home schooling, charter schools, and the No Child Left Behind law, with attention to class as well as race …”
Class and race factors in the nation’s public schools are undeniable, King said. “There are major achievement gap problems, particularly for inner cities and rural areas,” she told the committee.
“And we are witnessing the resegregation of schools resulting from housing and economic issues,” she added, noting that longstanding school desegregation programs in Seattle and Louisville have recently been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
While praising “No Child Left Behind” as “a radical plan to raise student achievement,” King said the biggest problem with it “was the lack of resources committed to teachers. We need accountability, but we need to commit the resources to get kids there.”
Utilizing techniques that have been proven effective in special education settings are also essential, said renowned educational consultant Myrna Mandlawitz. “Schools and districts must be accountable, as ‘No Child Left Behind’ mandates,” Mandlawitz told the committee, “but rating schools and districts isn’t as important as the educational factors that help individual kids progress. We must stop looking just at test scores and look at growth factors.
“Use the principles used in special ed — what supports are needed to help kids progress in general education?” she said.
A crucial issue for educational reformers and the Congress, both women agreed is how to marshal more resources when education budgets are shrinking.
“There are so many barriers to learning that need to be addressed,” Mandlawitz said. “Only school, family/community partnerships will be able to overcome all the critical services that are being eliminated by budget cuts.”
Teachers burn out because such collaboration is not there, she added. A team approach to educating kids — another principle borrowed from the special education field — “can enrich the educational experience so much and ensure that kids are successful in school. That’s the real key,” Mandlawitz insisted.
“What can we do to enrich the education experience? Focus on teaching and learning rather than testing — infuse in teachers and kids that education is about fostering an excitement to learn.”
As part of his reform proposals, Fattah has introduced a “student bill of rights” in the U.S. House of Representatives, King said. The goal of the legislation, she said, “is to focus on what adequate educational resources are and on who is currently getting them.”
At a National Council of Churches-sponsored conference earlier this year called “Transforming No Child Left Behind,” speakers collectively voiced seven goals for the ESEA reauthorization legislation:
- Recognize that it is unfair and immoral to demand equal outcomes on standardized tests without equalizing the resources at federal and state levels that create the opportunity for children to learn;
- Address with resources the generational educational debt of poverty and segregation;
- Improve the most vulnerable public schools and turn away from blaming teachers and punishing the schools that serve poor children;
- Develop the unique gifts of each child, created in the image of God, rather than worshiping standardization;
- Test children only in ways that improve instruction, measure real performance and encourage exploration, imagination and critical thinking;
- Set a visionary and at the same time workable school improvement time line to replace the unrealistic 2014 deadline for school “proficiency”;
- Address economic and social issues outside the school day that impair learning.
Mandlawitz and King praised those goals. On the question of testing, for instance, Mandlawitz said “No Child Left Behind” failed to address testing as “a guide for reforming instruction.” Teachers don’t receive testing results back in time to make need changes and, she added, the current law “spends too much time rating schools and not nearly enough time evaluating individual student progress.”
King agreed. “At the end of the day, we have to be honest — the teacher is the person who teaches the kid,” she said. “We’re asking for a miracle, but we really have no choice, so we have to come up with the best ways to support our teachers.”
“With some kids, the only way is to intervene dramatically,” King insisted. “We simply cannot give up on a five-year-old.”
| 
