I read something the other day, I think it was Mar.1st Time, I’m not sure. And it looks like NCLB means no child left untested (not sure how that gets the B in there). Anyway it reported a “success story” of NCLB. This didn’t sound so successful to me. The school was on the bad school list (not the term but you get the drift) so they had to reform. This amounts to kids taking tests earlier, taking more tests more often, being taught how to take tests. VERY little if anything in the article was on teaching reading seriously, with research based methods. Most of it seemed to be, well teach the kids how to take the da** test and everything will be fine.
I have read of this before but not as a response to NCLB. Yup all the kids need is more testing!
—des
Re: Article on NCLB
I always thought NCLB was created by Bush because we already have a similar high stakes testing thing going on in Texas when Bush was governor and he felt it was successful. The Texas testing was in place before Bush was in office, I believe.
We here in Texas have been Teaching The Test for over 12 years. We have all come to accept it - either that or go to the private schools. It does give you an idea of how schools compare to other schools. It does give homebuyers an idea of how specific schools are doing. We do know there are bad schools in good districts and now that’s not a surprise anymore to new homeowners. The principals know which teachers can teach the test and which ones can’t.
The system becomes very manipulative. What helps the school’s two bottom lines? Scores and Money? Is it better to label kids or not. Use this reading program or that one. Is it better to run certain kids out because they are different in some way or keep them around for some reason. Should schools allow transfers or not? It all boils down to does it help the scores and does it cost money we don’t have or does it bring more money in.
This has nothing to do with teaching individual kids or what’s good for the kids or good for the teaching profession.
Big business complained that new employees didn’t have basic skills. Politicians developed this plan to make sure children learned what they needed to learn and, of course, the public says, Sure, we want our kids properly educated. Then they create this testing plan. Over the years, the school districts figure out how to teach the test because they disect each question on each test to learn anything they can to pass on to the kids. If something isn’t on the test, they don’t teach it. Cursive, for example.
Years ago we moved away from standardized tests because the tendency when standardized tests “rule” is to teach to the test. You read fewer novels and longer works in favor of shorter articles and excerpts, like the tests use. You move away from getting thinking/reasoning/reading/writing responses going and to mutlptiple choice formats, because this is the way the tests do it.
Educators became critical of this limited view of achievement and wanted to incorporate more realistic reading/writing activities. We began to read fiction, nonfiction (real literature) and novels. We emphasized reasoning, responding over choosing correct answers. We also made some unfortunate choices at that time. In CA we adopted the Houghton Mifflin Literary readers. We placed every child in the grade level, lockstep in the same reader. The program gave decoding skills minimal emphasis. A certain group of youngsters did not do well in this program at all.
Then the knee-jerk reaction came. For various reasons some people were not satisfied with our NAEP scores (participating countries are ranked). This test is given in 4th and, I believe, 11th.
The NAEP is NOT administered in first and second grade when children tend to read materials that only use words that are in their speaking-meaning vocabularies. At that level reading scores have MORE to do with decoding skills. By fourth grade many expert word readers are poor comprehenders and still do poorly on tests.
So, our knee-jerk reaction spawned, among other things, NCLB. Now we teach phonics in most places to a fair-the-well, above and beyond the degree and intensity that 50-60% of our students benefit from. We equate using so-called research-based reading programs (read, phonics) with high test scores.
This will very likely NOT change our test scores as is promised because the problem is comprehension. Our 11th graders do far less well than our 4th graders. I wonder why? Could it be the extensive television-watching, Nintendo-playing culture we promote outside of school? Our students spend their hours at these activities, they are not reading, discussing and engaging their minds. Many countries have lower standards of living and people have fewer gadgets. Books, magazines and human conversation are still inexpensive forms of entertainment to pass the time. However, we choose not to indulge ourselves in these activities.
So, what would you do if you were told you had to raise standardized test scores, or else? By golly, you would teach test taking skills and give practice tests until everyone is blue in the face.
If you don’t, the others will and your students will be at a disadvantage. So we come full-circle. We still have lock-step instruction that demands every student be on the same page in the same book, but now it is all about reading short selections and completing multiple-choice sheets.
Brilliant!