Is the NCLB Horrific?
Sunday, July 08, 2007
On the home page of his Eduwonk blog, Andrew
Rotherham quotes someone who has praised it for
"separat[ing] the demagogic attacks on NCLB from the
serious criticism." In his July 5 entry, Rotherham,
who, among his numerous books on education counts
a book he has co-edited with Chester Finn (remember
him?), notes "I'd still really like
to see someone make the true and courageous point
that while hardly perfect, No Child Left Behind
isn't nearly as horrific as it's made out to be."
In serious rhetorical criticism, we call this "begging the question." The question to be asked is not, "why is no one of courage and truth standing up for NCLB?" as Rotherham would have it; it's "is the NCLB 'horrific'?" (to use Rotherham's word). Let's determine the answer to that first, before we attribute courage and love of truth to supporters of the NCLB.
The context of Rotherham's statement was the appearance of the major Democratic presidential hopefuls before the National Education Association Convention. In his blog, Rotherham waxes ecstatic over Senator Obama's supposed support for merit pay and Senator Clinton's supposed support for charter schools. Also commenting on Rotherham's observation is blogger TeacherJay, who offers caution about jumping on the NCLB-bashing bandwagon because, "When you get right down to it though isn’t NCLB’s goal to help children and reform schools?"
To TeacherJay, I answer, no, at least not as I understand "helping children" and "reforming schools." I agree that education is in trouble and I assert that children are not being helped by it as much as they deserve to be. I also agree that it needs to be reformed. But the NCLB's "reforms" are analogous to reforming the tax code to increase Exxon-Mobil's profits: it's not the way the country needs to go.
Merit pay and charter schools have been two cornerstones of the conservative attempt to "reform" American education for a long time. But what's behind these two principles?
Merit Pay
Merit pay sounds like a good idea: in true capitalist fashion, meritorious teachers get rewarded by receiving more money. Non-meritorious teachers don't get more money. The dirty little secret of merit pay, however, is who determines merit? And how do they do it? (For a grimly humorous but oh-so-telling look at this issue, see "No Dentist Left Behind.") For the sake of illustration, let me hypothesize an exaggerated example: suppose in an advanced algebra course, the final "assessment" consisted entirely of questions on plumbing. (This is what we call an "invalid test," by the way--a test that doesn't really measure what it says it's measuring.) And further let's assume that teachers' merit pay is based on their students' scores on this invalid assessment.
You can see where I'm going: unless the means of evaluating "merit" are valid, i.e., give accurate results about the items being evaluated, the awarding of merit pay becomes very problematic. But what if the assessment (evaluation) is manipulated, controlled by forces with political agendas? Can you imagine a biology teacher's merit being based on his students' score on a Creationism assessment? A geography teacher's merit being based on his students' scores on multiple choice tests that include questions such as, "The capital of Yugoslavia is (A, B, C, or D)...?" Or an English teacher's merit determined by her students' ability to parrot back pre-determined and un-thought-about interpretations of great works of literature?
By the way, Elizabeth Kantor has come very near to advocating this in her speech before the Conservative Women's Network, reprinted on the Heritage Foundation's site: ranting about "politically correct" liberal English teachers, as one example, she laments the loss of "...the 'permanent things' that conservatives are supposed to be defending. Some of those things—like the chivalrous attitude toward women that you find in Chaucer's poetry—are wonderful inventions for which we can thank Western civilization." Imagine a teacher's merit being determined by whether she can get her students to accept, unquestioningly, the permanent value of chivalry. If you can think imaginatively and creatively about a work of literature, she seems to be saying, you fail. And, under merit pay guidelines, your teacher fails.
In short, "assessment" underlies "merit pay," and assessment equals control. Teach what we tell you to teach or you lose your merit pay.
This is not educational reform; this is educational hijacking. And the metaphor is not that strained: Paul D. Houston has written of the NCLB: "For example, pilots, while subject to rules and regulations, are still presumed to know better how to fly the plane than their passengers." Or those who try to hijack their planes.
Charter Schools
The concept of charter schools is part of the larger goal of privatizing education, based on the theory that anything people like parents and teachers and local school boards can do, private corporations can do better, or at least make money from it. (A number of observers--see Stan Karp's chapter in Many Children Left Behind--have asserted that, underneath, this is the real goal of the NCLB--to manipulate the tests so public schools will be deemed failing, and then re-channel the money into private for-profit schools.) Under the much-hyped voucher system, charter schools get to take money from the public coffers intended for public education and spend it on their own students, whom they have taken out of the public school systems.
Now, who do you suppose will get the vouchers to go to those for-profit and charter schools? The same ones whose parents shop at Bloomingdale's and Hammacher Schlemmer. And who will get what little is left of the educational money? The ones who shop, if they can afford to shop at all, at Walmart. This ever growing split in the education afforded the haves vs. the education afforded the have-nots in our society is devastatingly documented by Jonathan Kozol in his most recent book, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. It is not courageous to support this.
When charter schools and private for-profit schools are supported with public educational funds, the result is the Walmartization of public education. When teachers' pay is based partly on how well they teach their students to be little more than mindless test-takers, the search for truth suffers.
Horrific indeed.
In serious rhetorical criticism, we call this "begging the question." The question to be asked is not, "why is no one of courage and truth standing up for NCLB?" as Rotherham would have it; it's "is the NCLB 'horrific'?" (to use Rotherham's word). Let's determine the answer to that first, before we attribute courage and love of truth to supporters of the NCLB.
The context of Rotherham's statement was the appearance of the major Democratic presidential hopefuls before the National Education Association Convention. In his blog, Rotherham waxes ecstatic over Senator Obama's supposed support for merit pay and Senator Clinton's supposed support for charter schools. Also commenting on Rotherham's observation is blogger TeacherJay, who offers caution about jumping on the NCLB-bashing bandwagon because, "When you get right down to it though isn’t NCLB’s goal to help children and reform schools?"
To TeacherJay, I answer, no, at least not as I understand "helping children" and "reforming schools." I agree that education is in trouble and I assert that children are not being helped by it as much as they deserve to be. I also agree that it needs to be reformed. But the NCLB's "reforms" are analogous to reforming the tax code to increase Exxon-Mobil's profits: it's not the way the country needs to go.
Merit pay and charter schools have been two cornerstones of the conservative attempt to "reform" American education for a long time. But what's behind these two principles?
Merit Pay
Merit pay sounds like a good idea: in true capitalist fashion, meritorious teachers get rewarded by receiving more money. Non-meritorious teachers don't get more money. The dirty little secret of merit pay, however, is who determines merit? And how do they do it? (For a grimly humorous but oh-so-telling look at this issue, see "No Dentist Left Behind.") For the sake of illustration, let me hypothesize an exaggerated example: suppose in an advanced algebra course, the final "assessment" consisted entirely of questions on plumbing. (This is what we call an "invalid test," by the way--a test that doesn't really measure what it says it's measuring.) And further let's assume that teachers' merit pay is based on their students' scores on this invalid assessment.
You can see where I'm going: unless the means of evaluating "merit" are valid, i.e., give accurate results about the items being evaluated, the awarding of merit pay becomes very problematic. But what if the assessment (evaluation) is manipulated, controlled by forces with political agendas? Can you imagine a biology teacher's merit being based on his students' score on a Creationism assessment? A geography teacher's merit being based on his students' scores on multiple choice tests that include questions such as, "The capital of Yugoslavia is (A, B, C, or D)...?" Or an English teacher's merit determined by her students' ability to parrot back pre-determined and un-thought-about interpretations of great works of literature?
By the way, Elizabeth Kantor has come very near to advocating this in her speech before the Conservative Women's Network, reprinted on the Heritage Foundation's site: ranting about "politically correct" liberal English teachers, as one example, she laments the loss of "...the 'permanent things' that conservatives are supposed to be defending. Some of those things—like the chivalrous attitude toward women that you find in Chaucer's poetry—are wonderful inventions for which we can thank Western civilization." Imagine a teacher's merit being determined by whether she can get her students to accept, unquestioningly, the permanent value of chivalry. If you can think imaginatively and creatively about a work of literature, she seems to be saying, you fail. And, under merit pay guidelines, your teacher fails.
In short, "assessment" underlies "merit pay," and assessment equals control. Teach what we tell you to teach or you lose your merit pay.
This is not educational reform; this is educational hijacking. And the metaphor is not that strained: Paul D. Houston has written of the NCLB: "For example, pilots, while subject to rules and regulations, are still presumed to know better how to fly the plane than their passengers." Or those who try to hijack their planes.
Charter Schools
The concept of charter schools is part of the larger goal of privatizing education, based on the theory that anything people like parents and teachers and local school boards can do, private corporations can do better, or at least make money from it. (A number of observers--see Stan Karp's chapter in Many Children Left Behind--have asserted that, underneath, this is the real goal of the NCLB--to manipulate the tests so public schools will be deemed failing, and then re-channel the money into private for-profit schools.) Under the much-hyped voucher system, charter schools get to take money from the public coffers intended for public education and spend it on their own students, whom they have taken out of the public school systems.
Now, who do you suppose will get the vouchers to go to those for-profit and charter schools? The same ones whose parents shop at Bloomingdale's and Hammacher Schlemmer. And who will get what little is left of the educational money? The ones who shop, if they can afford to shop at all, at Walmart. This ever growing split in the education afforded the haves vs. the education afforded the have-nots in our society is devastatingly documented by Jonathan Kozol in his most recent book, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. It is not courageous to support this.
When charter schools and private for-profit schools are supported with public educational funds, the result is the Walmartization of public education. When teachers' pay is based partly on how well they teach their students to be little more than mindless test-takers, the search for truth suffers.
Horrific indeed.
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