Techlearning blog

Some readers know that I do a lot of work with organizations on data-driven decision-making issues. At last count, I think I’m up to several dozen school districts, four state departments of education, and a few corporations. As you can imagine, I spend a lot of time thinking about data-driven accountability and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

One of the things that I regularly hear from educators is their strong condemnation of NCLB. And yet, as an outsider who works at a university rather than in a school system or at the state department, it seems to me that at least some of the core complaints about NCLB may be misdirected.

I have yet to meet someone that is against the core premise of NCLB: that existing achievement gaps need to be closed and that schools should, and could, do much more when it comes to the academic achievement of traditionally-underserved student groups. In other words, everyone seems to agree that ‘no child should be left behind.’ The discontent instead stems from the way that NCLB has been implemented.

Some of the criticisms of NCLB are easy. For example, the Act’s failure to incorporate what we know about English-language learning into its assessment requirements, its somewhat arbitrary limitations on the proportion of students with special needs that can take alternative assessments, and its insistence that some special education teachers be licensed in multiple subject areas are all easy pickings for critics. The corruption allegations that are swirling around the Reading First program, if true, are quite deplorable. Other complaints, however, are worth dissecting a bit further.

For example, many educators decry NCLB’s emphasis on yearly, standardized, high-stakes, summative tests and lambast the feds accordingly. The problem is that this was a state-level, not federal-level, decision. For example, the STARS program in Nebraska illustrates that states could have chosen to go a different route. States could have implemented a more local district– or school-based assessment approach. The fact that most states didn’t should be blamed on state-level policymakers, not the federal government.

Similarly, another big complaint about NCLB is that it forces schools to “dumb down” or narrow the curriculum. But again, I think the criticism on this issue is misplaced and that folks like TMAO have it right:

It is because of our control in shaping environments and in setting the conditions for teaching and learning that we must not speak of NCLB making us do things, at least not on the level of classrooms or schools, and maybe not even on the level of districts. When schools limit access to curriculum, or take away electives, or insist upon a fanatical adherence to scripted curriculum, these are responses to the test-everyone mandate, and must be judged on their merits independent of the existence of the overarching federal legislation. . . . the choices in response to the legislature that anger and frustrate so many are simply not the only choices.

No one forces educators to make their curricula and/or instruction less engaging or less interesting. No one forces educators to dumb down or narrow their curricula. These are choices that administrators and teachers make; they are not federal mandates. We have lots of teaching and learning research that shows that high-quality instruction that focuses on higher-order thinking skills can keep students engaged, provide cognitively-rich learning environments, and result in higher mastery of basic skills compared to other approaches. If we fail to implement these kind of learning environments, should we indict the feds or ourselves?

There are many other valid and invalid criticisms of NCLB. I only raise a few here to make the point that if we’re going to point fingers at someone, we should at least point them in the right direction.

We are living through a paradigm shift: one in which we transition from the Brown v. Board of Education paradigm of ensuring that all students have access to high-quality learning opportunities to a paradigm in which we say that it’s not just enough for traditionally-underserved students to have access, we’re also concerned with their academic results. In one sense, it’s very exciting: I have seen conversations in schools about student learning outcomes that never would have occurred before NCLB. But as with all paradigm shifts, we can expect much consternation and disruption along the way. As we make this progression, I believe it is important that we at least situate our concerns appropriately.