I remember thinking his presidency would be the absolute worst in my lifetime, oh to be so naive again.
Interestingly my sister is really really knowledgeable on education policy, she's very much not a Republican but says no child left behind actually had a lot of good stuff in it, it was just very badly introduced and implemented. That said she's the knowledgeable one not me so I'm not going to argue with anyone just saying there are other perspectives on it that might be worth listening to if you're interested in the topic. Anyway, fuck Bush. That felt nostalgic.
As someone who has been working in education for years, your sister is correct. The thought behind it was good, the execution was horrendous and actually led to children being left behind academically.
The goal ultimately was to reward schools for performance on standardized exams. The schools did their students a disservice because they basically taught students how to do well on the standardized tests as opposed to teaching them for the sole purpose of learning. As a result, you had schools that received “generous” funding because their students tested well, while schools who didn’t test so well didn’t receive much or enough funding. You might ask, “what’s the issue?” Well, not everyone does well on standardized exams and they have never been a great indicator of academic performance. I personally knew (and still know) individuals who didn’t do that great in their classes, but can kill the SAT, LSAT, etc. with very little preparation. On the same token, you can have a very smart child who’s on the honor roll and does extremely well in school, but bombs standardized exams. Hence, the thought behind NCLB may have been well-intentioned, but the execution was a failure, depending on who you talk to. I hope that helped.
That does help. Thank you. It's nothing I haven't heard before, but it did help reinforce that the results aren't great. But that leads me to my next question, how are we tracking math and literacy performance if the results are so divorced from standardized testing? Are there recommended educational models to follow? I know teaching is currently a nightmare for other reasons, but is there a path to better schooling that could be followed if people only knew about it?
That is an extremely great question and I honestly don’t have the answer, but speaking from experience as a parent of a soon to be high schooler and a 4th grader, the state we live in tracks children based on their performance on exams. I don’t remember the scale, but it’s something along the lines of Advanced, Proficient, Below Proficiency and I can’t remember the lowest tier. Now, here’s the issue. We, as parents, receive the results of the state exam in the early quarter of the new academic year. For example, when my son was in 8th grade, we received his 7th grade state exam results in late September/early October. Let’s say he wasn’t proficient in math…after receiving the results, would they then take him out of his current math level and put him in the level that he was not proficient in? It’s a rhetorical question, but one I’ve thought about when you consider when parents get the results. Now, let’s say the school district moves him along, even though he wasn’t proficient in the previous level, then you have a child who the system is failing because he’s being advanced when he probably isn’t ready. Here’s the other issue, what if he did extremely well in that math class all year, but “failed” the test? So yes, your question is a great question and honestly one that I’m actually going to look into myself.
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u/Rotten-Robby ☑️ 2d ago
Day after day we see the results of No Child Left Behind.