9.04.2007

Public Service Announcement

As a teacher of gifted students, I see the kids that get "left behind" by the euphemistic "No Child Left Behind" act. This is what happens when politicians get to make educational policy ~ they create something that sounds good for a sound bite without really understanding all the true effects that will occur down the line.

Read on...

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From the San Diego Union-Tribune, Wednesday, August 29, 2007. See http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070829/news_lz1e29goodkin.html
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Gifted children are being left behind

By Susan Goodkin and David G. Gold

With reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act high on the agenda as Congress returns from its recess, lawmakers must confront the fact that the law is causing many concerned parents to abandon public schools that are not failing.

These parents are fleeing public schools not only because, as documented by a recent University of Chicago study, the act pushes teachers to ignore high-ability students through its exclusive focus on bringing students to minimum proficiency. Worse than this benign neglect, No Child forces a fundamental educational approach so inappropriate for high-ability students that it destroys their interest in learning, as school becomes an endless chain of basic lessons aimed at low-performing students.

These predictable problems were reported as early as 2003, when The Wall Street Journal warned that schools were shifting their focus overwhelmingly toward low achievers. Expressions of concern from distressed parents and educators of gifted children have come in increasing numbers ever since.

No Child is particularly destructive to bright young math students. Faced with a mandate to bring every last student to proficiency, schools emphasize incessant drilling of rudimentary facts and teach that there is one "right" way to solve even higher-order problems. Yet one of the clearest markers of a nimble math mind is the ability to see novel approaches and shortcuts to attacking such problems.

This creativity is what makes math interesting and fun for those students. Schools should encourage this higher-order thinking, but high-ability students are instead admonished for solving problems the wrong way, despite getting the right answers. Frustrated, and bored by simplistic drills, many come to hate math.

Talented writers fare no better in language arts education. Recently, a noted children's author recounted her dismay when fifth-graders attending one of her workshops balked at a creative writing exercise. She was shocked to learn that the reluctant writers were gifted. The children, however, had spent years completing mundane worksheets designed for struggling classmates and thus rebelled at an exercise they assumed would be yet another tedious worksheet.

One suggested revision to address these concerns is "growth modeling," which tracks the progress of all students, including those already scoring above proficiency. But as long as No Child requires that every student reach proficiency by 2014 and it continues to focus only on grade-level material, teachers will lack incentives to appropriately educate students who can master their grade's curriculum well before spring testing. Nor will growth modeling prompt schools to provide an enriching curriculum that goes beyond the basics.

The response of many parents to this situation was summed up succinctly by one of our numerous friends, colleagues and family members who have pulled their children from neighborhood schools: "We've learned that the real solution is called 'private school.'

"Perhaps if more policy-makers sent their children to public schools, they would address these unintended but disastrous consequences of No Child. Rather than trying to rectify this situation, however, many politicians advocate a voucher program that would only encourage more parents to desert public education.

Some politicians justify vouchers with the Orwellian claim that taking money from public schools to pay private tuition will improve the public schools by forcing them to compete for students. This claim is absurd given the uneven playing field between public and private schools.

Most obviously, private schools can reject any student who would require extra time from teachers. Thus it is left to public schools to handle children with behavior problems or severe learning impairments, and non-English speakers. Until private schools receiving vouchers are required to accept all applicants, vouchers simply allow them to cherry-pick public school students, giving them an insurmountable competitive edge.

Ironically, the private schools to which President Bush and his allies are so anxious to hand public funds are also exempt from the standardized testing these politicians declare to be the critical measure of educational success. Private schools need not impose upon their students the drudgery of preparing for and taking weeks of standardized tests and can offer an enriching curriculum beyond the basics without worrying about No Child sanctions. Given these one-sided constraints, no one could honestly claim that vouchers do anything but drain resources from the public schools this act was supposed to improve.

In adopting the No Child law, Congress finally addressed the shameful neglect of students in failing schools, particularly inner-city schools. Now it must address the fact that the requirements it imposed are driving away many of the concerned and involved parents critical to our ailing public school system.

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Goodkin is executive director of the California Learning Strategies Center, a Ventura-based education think tank. Gold is a lecturer and consultant on strategic issues in negotiation.
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Another great article on this topic: Time Magazine's Are We Failing Our Geniuses?

4 comments:

mckay said...

i've heard this before and it's been confirmed with a friend of mine who pulled her son out of public school for this very reason. me, i skipped a step an enrolled my boy into a good private school from the very start. he starts tomorrow!

Fantastagirl said...

I wish I could afford private school, and that I had access to a good private school. Unfortunately in my part of the world, that is not an option. I worry for my son... especially when our middle school was just ranked as a school in need of assistance, not something to be proud of, I'm sure.

Blogarita said...

There are flaws in the Left Behind design for all students, not only the gifted ones. What about those of us who can't afford private school, or whose kids may not be gifted? Our only choices seem to be homeschooling, which some of us (me included) may not be cut out for...or dealing with public school as it is.

Sparky starts school next year; I'm not without major concerns.

Violet said...

I agree with you, Blogarita, that there are many other issues with NCLB... Many demographics of children are being hurt by this policy and teachers are losing their passion for their jobs when they are handed a script and told "This is the way you will teach" - - when has every student ever learned in the same way??

Very few people have the option of sending their children to private schools and there are a lot of drawbacks to that option as well. Many private schools don't have the extra curricular options of public schools, most are heavy from the religious perspective, and in some states they are not required to hire teachers who are certified in the areas they are hired to teach. However, as the article points out there are a couple of major things going for them: They don't have to accept all students and they aren't required to take the state mandated tests that the public schools are.

However, Fantastagirl, one of the problems of NCLB is the way that some schools are designated as "in improvement..." The school may be doing many things right for many of the students, but it did not meet the "Adequate Yearly Progress" for certain groups of students (i.e. minority or English Language Learners) and the way that this is determined does not always give an adequate picture of how the school is truly performing. The problem comes when the school is forced to focus solely on improving test scores of certain subgroups instead of meeting the educational needs of all students.

Dave and I have talked about the prospects of private schools vs. public schools vs. home schooling for our own child... We'll see what happens between now and then with public policy and the schools in the area where we live.