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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?
>PJ…
Garrett is against NCLB, he wants states to opt out. Not a popular republician opinion, but a smart one. Good for Garrett!
Sheila is for NCLB, not a popular democrat position. What’s up with that?
>There’s a flip side to this. NCLB is at least an attempt to make schools accountable. It will place limits on how fuzzy their teaching and assessments can be.
Remember, without accountability, our district is likely to continue following the path to “authentic assessment” which is said by its own proponents to be “in the eye of the beholder.”
>NCLB is what has allowed fuzzy assessments (see your NJASK math test) and the low bar accountability ( Ridgewood now strives for proficient not advanced) to permeate the school system.
Shame on Brogan for wanting Ridgewood to be reaching for the same “high” standards as Paterson.
Then again, this from the same person who wondered is it a list or a ranking?
>i said this years ago when i sat on federated with sheila and dr. porter, nclb is a great way to blame the federal government for a district’s problems without the district taking the hit. it’s also a wonderful way to pit the districts like ridgewood (that don’t get a lot of federal money) against the abbott (low income) districts who receive a lot of money. i think nclb in theory is a great thing but in practice it’s left a lot of district’s with nothing more than an excuse to raise taxes and be less accountable.
>Ridgewood schools have no Gifted Program. Ridgewood does not embrace academic achievement – hence why their is no valedictorian.
We ignore our brightest students.
Because Shelia wants us just to be “proficient”. That is her high standard.
The same person who has no clue if Everyday Math or TERC or Addison Wesley is better than the other.
>Gosh, I read the article in the Ridgewood News much differently than most of the bloggers. I read that Sheila disagreed with congressman Garrett because it would mean the loss of Federal funding(the little that we get). I read that she does not agree with the NCLB Act. She thought it was a good thing to opt out of but without being penalized by lose the funding.
>Sheila doesn’t agree with Garrett’s proposed legislation for one reason and one reason only. It brings parents back into the equation of educating their own kids. Sheila can’t have parents making decisions for their own kids. Gosh, what were all us parents thinking? Sheila knows what’s best for ALL village children. Next thing we know, Sheila will be running to win Garrett’s seat in Congress!
>she can run but she’d lose
Shelia Brogan — bringing more government into your life (not better, just more more more)
>If I hear “ALL children” one more time I will scream.
It comes staight out of the Ministry of Truth. (Think Orwell 1984.)
>All children, Proficient children, average children, all in one pot, all the same, no one better than another one. Thanks Sheilla. Once again you made us PROUD
>6:44am
I thought Ridgewood was crying because we don’t get “federal funding”? Don’t we have an advocacy group fighting about how little funding our rich little town gets?
Sheila was saying that NCLB is good for Paterson…but the blogger who said the key is it is used as an excuse for what “they have to do to meet federal guidelines.”
It’s a pretense about their hands being tied because they have to educate “all children” and TERC speak to “all children”.
What they are really saying is that TERC is for those Special Ed kids in Travell and Orchard.
>Shelia could not have ANY child considered better than another child. Doing so would require a rank. And ranking is not egalitarian.
Ranking is also based upon statistics and requires math.
Oops. Sorry PJBlogger.
There is that 4 letter word:
M-A-T-H
>6:24am
“We ignore our brightest students.”
We also ignore our average students who could become GOOD students if given the chance. There are plenty of kids IGNORED in the middle.
We also do the minimum for the challenge students, agreeing to things in IEP meetings and then forgetting to implement them.
And yes, if you have a gifted child in Ridgewood, you need to whisper that quietly because now that’s taboo.
In my opinion, Ridgewood serves no student well with the “one size fits all” philosophy.
>Now that it is official that the Ridgewood School System has dumbed down drastically (or “d” to the 3rd power)we had better hope that the colleges are dumbing down and subsequently employers. Thanks for nothing, BOE and school administrators. We moved here for our children’s education and now we have to uproot and move to a town with higher standards for our children (which is any town but Ridgewood).
>”There are plenty of kids IGNORED in the middle.”
I’d take this even further. I think plenty of these kids could be sterling achievers, given the chance. There are probably gifted kids entirely overlooked, too.
But instead they’re expected to conform to the middle and twist themselves into a pretzel to adapt to strange programs.
When kids are pulled out of school to be home schooled, the ceiling is lifted.
Just imagine what each of our children could do without the constraints of what “grade they’re in.”
I think plenty of “average” kids would soar.
>4:50pm
“I think plenty of these kids could be sterling achievers, given the chance. “
Well said.
That’s why we moved to Ridgewood, that was the expectation of the school system and that is where it fails.
>You don’t have to worry about TERC teachers teaching to the test – there isn’t one! They, the students (or individuals in search of their own personal math nirvana), haven’t finished drawing and discussing their individual concepts of what really is a test and how does that make us feel. They might get back to us later with the results (oops, can’t say that word), if they feel like it. Brogan is just distancing herself, like present day republicans, from the looney tunes on the BOE.
>Try as she may, Brogan can’t distance herself from this – she is part of the problem.
Go to the library and watch her performance during any of the discussions.
It speaks for itself.
>i just can’t get myself to go watch Sheila perform..her laugh is like fingernails across a chalkboard..her hand gestures make me dizzy..and her hairclips drive me over the edge..sorry..but true.
>The value of NCLB was that it gave us all permission to talk about public schools failing. Before NCLB all the talk was about how to get more money into poorer schools.
Now we know that even when we spend $22K in Newark, ony a handful of kids pass the Graduation test (HSPA).
Result: The schools are a failure. But before we can find solutions to the cause of the problem (unions, poorly educated teachers, BOE’s run by their administrators (also poorly educated), we have to admit that the problem isn’t money, but the people within the system and the non-competitive structure of the system itself.
Is there a monopoly that has ever succeeded? Ever?
>10:26am
The problem with NCLB is that big government can’t get anything right. Once the government steps in you get things like the National Science Foundation which funds fuzzy math and fuzzy science education.
Bush just gave one of those fuzzy math guys(Hyman Bass) a medal because either a)his staff is clueless and didn’t advise him of the mans background or b)he needs to play the education game with these folks because their lobbyist are so strong.
If states run education again, it brings the complaint closer to home.
NCLB has been hijacked by the Educrats and is now used as the excuse for mediocrity.
Didn’t Sheila say something like “we need to teach to ALL children.” What they are saying is “we need to get that bottom up and screw the middle and the top.”
>This Colbert guy is a riot! Thanks PJ for posting this.
>they need to teach “ALL” children but that does not include “ALL” the children who do not do well with reform math and constructivism
>Another hatchet job from Susan Sherrill a/k/a RN editor.
>Fuzzy math and curriculum that cannot be measured are the NEA’s way to fight the government’s demand for accountability. All educators hate being held accountable. This attitude may be reasonable for college courses which are being taken at will. This attitude does not fly in K12. ELHI education should not be caveat emptor.
>Colbert is a scream. Wonder what our BOE members would think after making state standards their High water mark only to have someone like Colbert show why these standards are in the gutter.
Maybe they’re not smart enough to get it. Could be they just don’t care to admit how WRONG they are.
>Sheila doesn’t agree with Garrett. She once wrote a letter telling him to stay out of education in Ridgewood after parents appealed to him over the sex and drugs survey.
It backfired on Ridgewood and on Sheila because Garrett was on the assembly education committee.
Imagine the smarts of a BOE member telling an assemblyman on the state education committee to “stay out of education.”
Some strategy, eh, Sheila?
>Sheila needs to stay OUT OF education here in Ridgewood especially now that her kids are OUT OF the system and she appears to be OUT OF her mind.