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Board of Ed member, Shelia Brogan, disagrees with the Congressman and gives her support for the NCLB program.
Isn’t the NCLB just a race to the lowest common denominator forgive the pun?
NCLB requires states to move towards 100% reading and math proficiency by 2014. A noble idea, but with no national standardized tests, the state have found a workaround. States have made the tests easier in order to get more students to meet the proficient requirement, lowering their standards to be in compliance. In NJ, the state’s ASK tests requires only 50% of the questions to be answered correctly in order for a student to be “Proficient.” This is one of the reasons NCLB has been cited for “dumbing down” our schools.
Across America, teachers overwhelmingly complain that the law has narrowed the curriculum and promoted “teaching to the test.” Schools, told they must meet an unrealistic goal of continual progress toward all children being “proficient” by 2014 are being set up for failure.
Unfortunately, it is urban schools and kids of color that are most likely to be labeled as failing and to be subjected to punitive sanctions.
Under AYP (“Adequate Yearly Progress”), each school is judged by a matrix of 40 indicators tied to state test scores.
It outlines 10 student groups: total population, special education students, English language learners, white, African-American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American, Hispanic, other ethnicities and economically disadvantaged. In each category, there are two mandates: 95% of students in each group must take the state test, and each group must make its AYP target.
Any school that misses its target on either the reading or math test and in any subgroup is on the road to being labeled a failure. If it does not get off the failing list, it is subject to increasingly punitive sanctions, including turning the school over to a for-profit private management firm. So big business can start running our schools soon if NCLB is renewed.
In addition, the AYP system creates perverse incentives. It rewards schools that focus on kids on the edge of achieving grade-level proficiency. There’s no incentive for schools to do much of anything for the kids who are on grade level or above, which is one reason the law is unpopular in wealthier, high-achieving communities.
It is noble for Ms. Brogan to mention Newark and Paterson, but we live in Ridgewood. (Didn’t Mr. Vallerini say this once in a Board of Ed meeting?) Arguments can be made that NCLB hasn’t help those districts either.
So this reader asks what’s up with Sheila Brogan a known liberal agreeing with arch conservative Scott Garrett? . Brogan has always been known to be a liberal, but the this reader also wonders if she’d like to come to the next Ridgewood Republican club meeting? And this blogger asks once again why can’t we just opt out?
