Teacher Leaders Network - NCLB - (Page 4)

Educators in the past three or four decades are highly intelligent, sensitive people that have been sounding the alarm for years. In my own district, we already disaggregated the data prior to NCLB, we already actively identified and adjusted learning for students who fell between the cracks. We already took unusual measures to make sure everyone had every opportunity and resource for learning. Attention Alone Does Not Equal Effective Accountability All of the expert teachers in the TLN focus group have serious reservations about NCLB — even those who believe that the law led to more focused teaching, more targeted assessments, and more concern about children in low-performing schools. In many instances, they say the standardized tests used to assess the students they teach are uneven in quality, and their school districts may or may not help teachers use the test data to improve instruction. They also note that the NCLB accountability metrics fail to take into account the exceptional diversity in students’ preparation levels and the daily challenges that diversity creates for teachers working to meet the individual needs of each student. As Michelle Ivy, a veteran NBCT teaching in a Miami high school, noted: “We are willing to be accountable and we are. We have students from 127 countries who speak 31 languages, and while they are challenging and bright, they are seriously mobile and nontraditional in the ways they learn. Their needs cannot be met with the kinds of items measured by a multiple-choice test.” Laura Reasoner Jones, an NBCT from Fairfax County, Virginia, teaches in a high poverty elementary school with many English Language Learners: Many of the students I teach do not have background knowledge to deal in any way with the questions and concepts on these (accountability) tests. The life experiences that we as middle class educated people give our children are not available for many of these children, and it is very difficult for them to catch up in a matter of months when they do not enter school as English speakers and are not all that fluent in their own native language. I look at the fifth-grade reading test, for example, and see vocabulary words such as “cultivate,” “courageous,” and “saliva.” I see four different question formats within one page, questions about endings of words that require the children to understand the words before they can make a decision about the correct answer. If I had just moved here from another country, I would put my head on the desk and sob. The TLN focus group also stressed that the NCLB accountability systems in their states are not designed to measure student progress from a beginning and end point, nor do they produce reliable evidence of the impact teachers have on each student’s long-term academic development. Podcast: Kids on the Bubble Laura Reasoner Jones and Anthony Cody explain why they still see children being left behind five years after NCLB’s passage. Page 4

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Teacher Leaders Network - NCLB

Executive Summary The Future of American Education in the Making It is Time to Align NCLB Intentions and Consequences The Teacher Leaders Network Encounters NCLB from the Classroom NCLB Demands Results and So Do We Attention Alone Does Not Equal Effective Accountability Standardized Tests Fall Short of 21st Century Demands For What Future Is NCLB Preparing Students? As Testing Expands, the Curriculum Shrinks The Drive for Data Presents Potential for Significant Change Data Systems Don’t Keep Pace with Real-Time Instructional Needs AYP Highlights the Good, Bad, and Ugly of NCLB Does “Highly Qualified” Set the Teaching Bar Too Low? Teaching Quality Must Be More Than a Number Every Student Deserves a Highly Effective, Well-Trained Teacher Conclusions References

Teacher Leaders Network - NCLB

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