In case you missed it, apparently President Obama and his Administration have decided that No Child Left Behind is just too lofty of a goal. And it is putting too much stress on their friends in the Teacher's Unions. And they think they know better than Congress and the current law that is in force. I wonder if this will go to court?
A simple test to determine if this is a good thing.... Does the Teacher Union support it? If so, it bodes good for poor Teachers and terrible for unlucky Students... This Ed MN statement almost made me ill... "Minnesota is already well on its way to implementing the goals of the waiver program: rigorous academic standards, high-quality teacher evaluations and extra support for the schools where students are struggling the most." I've seen the results of the "high quality teacher evaluations" first hand and am not impressed...
How can an evaluation be useful in any way if the Principal can not discipline or fire the poor performers? Or reward the best performers?
Past G2A NCLB Posts
MN Dept Ed: NCLB Waiver Workgroup
MN Dept of Ed: Q&A
Education MN Statement
MPR Concerns and Praise
CNN 10 States Freed from some NCLB Reqts
FoxNews NCLB waivers let Team Obama Seize Control
FoxNews States should Do More
HP NCLB: 10 States Receive Waivers
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
22 comments:
The first reaction is to laugh uproariously at the farce, followed quickly by outrage at the ugly truth. Maybe the first step in improving our schools is a Right to Work amendment to our Constitution?
J. Ewing
Nice post, exactly right. I still want my law allowing MN colleges to bill MN K-12 for issuing fraudulent diplomas, needing remedial work. Got to kick them in the wallet and they get the publicity they deserve, too.
blah, blah, blah, do you have anything new to add to this tired topic?
Would you want your daughter to teach in a school full of your so called "unlucky kids" then be fired when she and her colleagues fail to meet the NCLB impossible standard.
I am trying to find subtle ways to steer my niece, who scored 35 on her ACT, to a field where her abilities will be much more appreciated both in terms of $ and respect.
Hi Laurie,
If you want to have incredibly smart and capable Teachers well rewarded and highly valued. You will need to get rid of the Unions since they believe that all of you Teachers are equal except for years served and degrees earned...
Just think about that, if your bright, driven and capable niece became a Teacher. And she was the best Teacher ever. The Union would insist that she only be paid per the grid...
Her compensation would be about the same as that of the incompetent deadbeat Teacher with the same years and degrees.
And she would be paid far less than that older incompetent Teacher with more years of service and more degrees.
With this in mind... Who is doing the greatest disservice to the good Teachers and the Students that really need them?
NCLB may not be perfect. It may in fact even be terrible in some people's eyes. Yet it was the first thing in decades that shined a very bright light on the inadequacy of some of our Schools and Teachers.
In my change mgmt work it is called a burning platform, and is critical to help people want to improve and accept change. Without it people stay just where they are and in this case the most needy Students and best teachers lose.
You are right blah, blah, blah. Change is bad let's keep the achievement gap and the poor Teachers. The status quo feels safer and more secure. Why would we want to create pressure and an incentive to change?
Thoughts?
Chg Mgmt 1
Chg Mgmt 2
Burning Platform Video 1
Burning Platform Video 2
Our Iceberg is Melting Video
Understanding Iceberg
If not NCLB and AYP, what burning platform do you recommend?
Remember it has to be severe enough to make:
- Legislators, Unions and Teachers consider purging poor performers and paying high performers significantly more.
- Encourage changes to attract the most capable as Teachers.
- Make Conservatives consider additional early childhood and parenting education efforts. Even possibly putting the childs good before the parents "rights".
- Others?
Without an adequate burning platform, we will stay frozen in place on this iceberg until it splits and destroys our way of life. Interesting concept, this pay me now or fail...
On the upside, poor Teachers and Schools will still have their funding / jobs until it happens.
By the way... Iceberg is an incredible book that is easily understood by kids andadults.
John,
I will give you credit for bringing something new to the topic by introducing the concepts of iceberg and burning platform to the shortcomings of education.
Schools with unions have changed and improved. Many districts include opportunities for additional responsibilities and pay for their most motivated and capable teachers. Districts also can and do also get rid of union protected teachers whose performance they find lacking.
I think the best hope for improvements in education will come through increased use of technology/individualized learning. Schools have been slow to change and adopt new ways of teaching and learning.
Laurie,
Of course I am only familiar with RAS and the misc lawsuits that make the news. From these it looks like the Unions and Contracts have a long way to go.
Sorry I did not make the "burning platform" concept clearer over the years. To me it is integral with the Plan Do Check Act process. It is the power that drives the desire to continuously improve.
Now with Obama saying, let's reduce some of the pressure. (its just too hard) I am still curious what you want to replace it with?
People simply won't leap from their comfortable beliefs, behaviors, actions, etc without something incenting them.
What I don't understand is why AYP is an "impossible" standard? All it says is that schools need to continue to improve, which anybody with two brain cells to rub together ought to recognize. The current situation is unacceptable, and we ought to be demanding that kind of improvement much more quickly than NCLB does. After all, since NCLB was first passed, we have passed an entire generation of kids through these "dropout factories" that turn out illiterates and innumerates in nation-crippling numbers. I will say to anybody objecting to NCLB: if you've got a better idea, trot it out here, and guarantee to me it solves the problem. We cannot wait any longer.
J. Ewing
The challenge is that EVERYONE thinks "the gap" is terrible, and that it should be fixed. Unfortunately EVERYONE is too busy pointing at someone else as the root cause. And the half dozen of us can't even agree where to start. G2A Contributions
I am not sure what it will take for EVERYONE to own and fix their OWN portion of the mess. Until something severe forces the consensus and contribution to happen, let the blame game continue. With NCLB being weakened, it may be awhile.
Thank heavens my family and I are in the Lucky group.
Nonetheless, there are people who are RESPONSIBLE for teaching these kids, who insist that no one else be allowed to do it, or even CAN do it, and who get paid handsomely whether they actually do their jobs or not. Why is it difficult to decide where to "start" on education reform? Seems brilliantly clear to me. Maybe just start enforcing the penalties built into NCLB, instead of forgiving the wholesale child abuse of public education?
J. Ewing
J,
Thank you for supporting my point.
The people that have been made "RESPONSIBLE for teaching these kids" have repeatedly begged for additional resources and authoritiy. (ie parent ed, early child ed, funding, social worker support, control of kids when parent is irresponsible, etc) Yet the conservatives have repeatedly denied these requests.
Talking about granting responsibility without authority.
Now my point is not to start the what matters discussion again. It is to note that NO ONE is giving up their deeply held beliefs that SOMEONE else is to blame. So the stalemate will continue until the consequences are severe enough that the warring factions feel compelled to work together.
So long as we allow schools the EXCUSE of needing more funding or "authority," they will never take the responsibility. We've tried that every year for the last 40 and education doesn't get much better, at least until NCLB came along and then it crept up, just a bit, before schools started complaining how "impossible" it was to not leave some or lots of children behind. Now we have solved that problem by just absolving schools, again, of any responsibility to meet educational goals.
OK, tell you what. THIS conservative, in the interest of the millions of kids being crippled daily by our public school system, will offer a compromise. (Note: I believe this can be done by school district, but the districts need to break it down to the school level, internally.) Let any school district ask, individually, for more funding, IF they will commit to improving academic achievement by a similar amount, above a certain minimum. Isn't that what the schools have been saying, that they need more money to improve results? Here's their chance.
J. Ewing
Are you telling me you are willing to triple or quadruple their funding and give them the authority to grade parents and neighborhoods. And the authority to minimize parental and neighborhood influences on the student when the are found lacking. (ie boarding school like)
That may take care of most of the obstacles we listed. Though I expect we will still need lower expectations for the special needs kids whose capabilities are limited by their condition.
It is interesting thought and should certainly enable NCLB...
Yes, I am willing to triple funding if the schools commit to tripling academic achievement. I somehow doubt many schools would be willing to do that, so I feel safe. The other part of this would have to be that, if the school FAILED to achieve what they had promised, that they would "go out of business" and pay to send all the kids somewhere else of their parents' choosing. Again, I'm safe.
Only slightly less likely is that any district would promise some small improvement for a roughly equivalent funding increase, and probably fail. Besides, in the worst schools that small change isn't enough. We need some substantial change starting 10 years ago.
J. Ewing
That would take care of half of their problem... The breaking the cycle second half would definitely be a hard sell. Even if the parents were extremely deadbeat and high risk. Given how hard it seems to be to get a kid out of an abusive or neglectful home today.
I don't think the Liberals or Conservatives would support State run boarding schools for at risk kids. And I am sure the ACLU would flip, especially if we used the WIC, welfare funding, etc to help pay for it. I mean the Mom's wouldn't need it while the kids were at school.
And lord knows the Conservatives would believe the government was brainwashing them to vote Democrat... Yep. It would never work.
Your belief it "wouldn't work" is predicated on your assumption that a large portion of minority and poor parents are "abusive and neglectful." I don't believe that, dare I say racist, presumption for a minute. The only thing "wrong" with the vast majority of the parents of children who are "underperforming" is that those parents have lost hope of something better for their kids-- condemned to a failing public school with no means of escape. Improve the schools, or let the children (and parents) escape from those schools, and the number of "unlucky" kids will drop to a manageable few, or less.
The absolute essential to improving the schools is... improving the schools. All I am demanding is that the schools put my money where their mouth is. They claim they cannot improve without more money? Fine. How much improvement will you GUARANTEE for a 4% funding increase? How about 20%?
J. Ewing
It seems like we have been here before. G2A American Poverty
I'll expand on this in one of my upcoming posts.
While you are at it, please comment on the proposed lawsuit to demand race-baced bussing to solve the academic achievement gap.
Anon,
Do you have a source regarding this busing idea?
To me, anything done based on Race seems incredibly foolish and insulting.
I know some people that I think are smart/successful, and other people that I think are foolish/ struggling. And race certainly does not seem to be the deciding factor. I think it has more to do with attitude, beliefs, self discipline, etc. But we can delve into that further during the upcoming post.
I believe the anonymous commenter is referring to this recommendation by a bipartisan commission (not a lawsuit) http://www.minnpost.com/learning-curve/2012/02/integration-task-force-forwarding-results-cassellius
"Now with Obama saying, let's reduce some of the pressure. (its just too hard)"
To the best of my understanding, and I've followed this pretty closely, this isn't what he's said at all. No one in education or in Washington (Republican or Democrat) thinks NCLB works. Truly, John, you're the only person I know who likes this mess of a law. The phrase I see often is that it lacks practical value. The goal isn't to help individual kids achieve--it's to get specific and somewhat meaningless scores on tests, which vary state to state, making them completely useless as a federal yardstick. The waiver doesn't get states off the hook to close the achivement gap--it requires them to create better, more effective ways to measure progress and, more importantly, achieve actual results. Adios, NCLB--don't let the door hit you on the way out.
--Annie
Thanks Annie.
MinnPost Integration
Time will show if just the bath waster got dumped, or if maybe the baby goes missing.
If I am the only person supporting NCLB... Why did the Administration need to do this end run instead of getting the law changed?
And what do you think will serve as the new intense burning platform?
You may not remember, but the whole notion of forced bussing "to achieve racial integration" was predicated on the notion that black kids were in "poor" (i.e. underachieving) schools and that the white kids were in better schools. Therefore, if we sent some black kids to the white schools those black kids would (automagically) be better educated, while sending white kids to the poor schools would create a clamor, by white parents, for those schools to be improved. The net result was that all schools got worse. It wasn't that black kids could only learn with white kids beside them, but the fact that the "poor" schools and school systems simply did not know how to do better! The only way to improve education is for the education "establishment" to improve education. Gimmicks like race-mixing, or magnet schools, or the latest new-new-new math aren't going to cut it. It's like school lunches. They can be highly nutritious but worthless if the kids won't eat it.
As for NCLB, it started out with three great virtues: 1) high expectations, that every child would be proficient by 2014 (I think) and that schools would make AYP towards that goal 2) that we would measure such progress by objective testing, and insure "no child left behind" and 3) that schools who repeatedly failed would have to remediate those failures or give parents the means to escape altogether. The first has proven unrealistic, and the third was long ago gutted by teachers unions and the vested education interests, leaving us with the hated second, because it continues to expose the sickening depths of the problem. No wonder the educrats hate NCLB so much. Oh, for the good old days when they could just promise results through some magic buzzwords, if only they had more money!
J. Ewing
Post a Comment