Former Bush Ed Official: NCLB is a Failure

[PVnRT]

Former 'No Child Left Behind' Advocate Turns Critic - NPR

"The basic strategy is measuring and punishing," Ravitch says of No Child Left Behind. "And it turns out as a result of putting so much emphasis on the test scores, there's a lot of cheating going on, there's a lot of gaming the system. Instead of raising standards it's actually lowered standards because many states have 'dumbed down' their tests or changed the scoring of their tests to say that more kids are passing than actually are."

...

"There should not be an education marketplace, there should not be competition," Ravitch says. "Schools operate fundamentally — or should operate — like families. The fundamental principle by which education proceeds is collaboration. Teachers are supposed to share what works; schools are supposed to get together and talk about what's for them. They're not supposed to hide their trade secrets and have a survival of the fittest competition with the school down the block."

[ProSense]

1. Sounds like a typical Republican

They're not supposed to hide their trade secrets and have a survival of the fittest competition with the school down the block."

Where did she get that idea?

Former 'No Child Left Behind' Advocate Turns Critic

In 2005, former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch wrote, "We should thank President George W. Bush and Congress for passing the No Child Left Behind Act ... All this attention and focus is paying off for younger students, who are reading and solving mathematics problems better than their parents' generation."

Four years later, Ravitch has changed her mind.

Typical Republican hypocrite. When Bush was giving away the money to Neil Bush it was okay. Now that schools are being funded, it's not okay.

[PVnRT]

2. That completely ignores the point raised about standards and testing

[waiting for hope]

3. I heard on NPR this morning and you are

correct - she was talking about test scores and also, that she has found the competitive nature between schools is not creating improvement, it's stifling growth.

[ProSense]

5. You mean their was a point to her hypocrisy? n/t

[PVnRT]

8. I didn't think you would do anything other than an ad hominem attack

Obama supports standardized testing and school privatization, so you do as well.

[ProSense]

9. Obama supports improving schools, and so did Kennedy. n/t

[waiting for hope]

4. K&R - for content.

[Spheric]

6. And what about laying the burden of funding education on the students?

In Florida, our entire education system now revolves around preparing students for a single annual test -- Florida's Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). The results of this test are used as the basis for student promotion and graduation, and also school funding. If the students at a school do not test well, that school receives less resources and funding for the next year. How well do you think they usually do the next year with less to work with? It is a vicious cycle whose only rational purpose must be the destruction of the public school system entirely.

It's all up to the kids what resources and how much funding their school gets based on how well they do on this stupid test. This forces the administration and teachers to put great pressure on these kids to focus on this particular test to the exclusion of all other learning.

Locally, they moved the Gifted program (for students with higher IQs) to the school which most needed to raise their FCAT scores and redesigned the program to have these students concentrate almost exclusively on this test. Of course, the schools that these students are pulled from would like to have them back to help shore up their own scores.

The whole process is a race to the bottom. Is it any wonder that Florida has one of the worst graduation rates in the country? What an abominable waste.

[progressoid]

7. No shit?

:banghead:

[Uzybone]

10. getting a bit tired of Bush officials seeing the light

when it is time to write a book.

[4_TN_TITANS]

11. Amen to that...

When there's no more Bush coattails to ride, then they wake up to what is right.

[cmd]

12. Well, hellooooooooooo

What did they think would happen? NLCB set schools up to fail. Teachers had no choice but to spend all their time teaching to the lowest student in the class. Gotta get those test
scores up.