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Study Finds 'No Child' Has Low Teacher Support
The study interview board-certified educators who criticize NCLB for stifling creativity in students and handing over increased influence to text book and testing companies
Many teachers oppose the testing and instructional requirements of the No Child Left Behind law, a new study has found.
"Many teachers came into the profession because they wanted to make a difference, and they believed they could make a difference if they taught to the whole child," said Rebecca Harper, president of San Bernardino Teachers Association. The
legislation, which became law in 2001, fundamentally changed teaching
and education in U.S. schools by requiring annual testing of school
children and "adequate yearly progress" for every subgroup of students.
The act also requires schools to provide after-school tutoring and other services for poor- performing students and mandates that schools hire only "highly qualified" teachers.
Authors of a study published last week by UC Riverside surveyed 740 board-certified teachers in California to assess the effectiveness and unintended consequences of No Child Left Behind.
The study found that 84 percent reported overall unfavorable attitudes about the act.
The bill increased federal funding for education while tying continued support to improvements in individual student scores.
"Many teachers came into the profession because they wanted to make a difference, and they believed they could make a difference if they taught to the whole child," said Rebecca Harper, president of San Bernardino Teachers Association.
"So when No Child Left Behind came in and minimized the amount of time teachers were allowed to spend on character, music and art, it soured them on the profession."
Under the act, states became responsible for creating performance standards, and through standardized testing, ensuring that at all students would meet the standards within the next 12 years.
The researchers - Patrick Guggino, who earned his doctorate in education from UCR in 2008, and Steven Brint, professor of sociology - conducted an online survey in 2007 of board-certified teachers.
Guggino and Brint asked the teachers to assess the impact of No Child Left Behind in three areas - technical areas of practice, the service ethic of teaching and professional commitment.
Among their findings:
- 61 percent said the act created an overly narrow conception of education.
- 46 percent felt it diminished creativity.
- 59 percent said it had unintended consequences, primarily less creativity in the classroom and increased influence of textbook companies to determine the content and pace of instruction.
One in four teachers surveyed said the act helped them improve as instructors. One in four also said the act had lowered their commitment and loyalty to the profession, and two in five said it had a negative influence on their own enthusiasm for teaching, the report reads.
"There is so much focus on standardized testing, and that seems to be the end-all-be-all," said Suzanne Miller, a teacher at Mountain View School in Claremont.
"Most can read by the end of the year. They've picked it up pretty well, but the trade-off is they're not painting and playing blocks - and that takes away from their fine motor development skills and their outlet onto creativity."
25 Comments so far
Show AllOur education system is broken by both government and the education industry.
This is just one symptom.
The very fact that someone can use the phrase 'education industry' points out what is wrong with America. Let's not forget that NCLB was a tremendous hand-off by then President (and it still irks me to say that) G. W. Bush to a list of profiteers including Bill Bennett, Neil Bush, Bush family friend Harold McGraw III (Does the name McGraw-Hill scare any formere students here?)and Bush Pioneer Randy Best.
Can somebody answer me a question? In 2007 Marc Fisher of the Washington Post wrote:
'No Child Left Behind is built on a mirage. At some point that's always just over the horizon, the law assumes, all children in the nation will miraculously read and compute at grade level, simply because they have been tested and tested and tested again. The theory is that somehow, when told the exact number of children who are lagging in achievement, teachers will agree to render the magic that they have thus far withheld and -- poof! -- those kids will become smart, cooperative and productive.
As we get closer to that utopia, it's becoming ever more clear that Some Children Remain Behind and that, gadzooks, Not Every Child Is the Same. Oh, and this: Staking everything on a test doesn't produce a flowering of inspired teaching, but rather what Dale, a former math teacher, calls an "obsessive focus on tests."
"You focus obsessively on multiplying two-digit numbers," he says, "as opposed to how to apply that knowledge in the real world and how to play with mathematics in a creative way." '
So here's my question, Why is it that we allow a corporate-sponsored, profit-motivated cabal (In America we call this the US Houses of Congress) to dictate educational policies? Is this so we get exactly what NCLB is designed to generate: Jeopardy Contestants, while members of the political-donor class get even richer?
Anybody got some extra SOMA???
sl8ofhand
Excellent comment.
"You focus obsessively on multiplying two-digit numbers," he says, "as opposed to how to apply that knowledge in the real world and how to play with mathematics in a creative way." '
However I would say to Dale that if the child cannot multiply two digit numbers or add them for that matter, then its quite hard to apply knowledge anywhere if you don't have it. Nor can you be creative with mathmatics till you master the basics.
I would also comment that "feel good" teaching is no answer for anyone.
The biggest problem is that all sides forgot the purpose of education and seem to be more concerned with their own little kingdoms.
Nobody said you chuck the multiplication tables. Have you ever been in a classroom and you learned the stuff already? And the teacher just keeps going over the same material over and over? And pretty soon your head is down on the desk and the drool is coming out of your mouth? That's the way a lot of classrooms are for a lot of kids whose teachers are teaching to the test. It's a simple recipe for dropouts later on, for antipathy to learning, for acting out.
Good points! There is nothing wrong with a test once a year for informational purposes. But information only.
And you can't teach to a test if you don't know what it is.
Another slant...why is it that we test only at the end of the year? Imagine the following scenario:
Student A enters Teacher B's 3rd grade class 'reading' at a low-1st level.(Some other time I'll argue that some 1st graders arrive at school already reading better than third-graders, but I'll play along with the cookie-cutter model here.) No testing is done until the end of the school year, at which time it is noted that Student A is now reading at a upper-end of her 2nd grade level. Under the model of NCLB in which every student must be reading at grade level, the teacher has failed this child, the teacher and administration of the school could even lose accreditation! But, you say, "Teacher B should be getting a hefty raise and mentoring other teachers!" Not by our yardstick, a tool the NCLB uses only to punish, and never to measure real accomplishments.
Testing at the beginning of a school year/semester/term allows us to see the difference we've made. Testing at the end is a single data point, and therefore gives us less ability to measure progress.
It is important to point our that No Child Left Behind not only was strongly supported by Bush, but by the liberal Kennedy. NCLB is a top down educational approach that stifles teacher creativity and student learning.
Unfortunately, the fundamental principles of NCLB are not going to change under Obama and his basketball friend Arne Duncan"the reform man". A look at the militarization of the Chicago schools where mass firings, and school closings have removed any local control of schooling, and have created turf wars between commuting students will demonstrate the direction of this administration.
As with every other topic of the Rhetorician in Chief, Education is no different- Race To The Top is merely rehashed ideas. If the education system were to be reformed we would best be served removing all the unfunded mandates and arbitrary measurements. Teachers are trained to educate not bureaucrats.
"The act also ... mandates that schools hire only "highly qualified" teachers."
So what is the deal with charter schools? The only way they can exist economically is to use non-union teachers. Are there really that many retired professional engineers and physicists walking around who just happen to know how to teach adolescents?
Arne Duncan wants to revise NCLB, but mainly by pusing charter schools. Does he have his current job because he did such a great job in the Chicago school system, or because he plays basketball with President Obama?
Yesterday, Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! reported the following statement from Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, who used to be the CEO of the Chicago Public School system --
"Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, said in an interview that Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing” to happen to the education system in New Orleans. Duncan told the program Washington Watch, “That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that ‘we have to do better.’”
Granted, there were problems with the school system, but Arne Duncan demonstrates absolutely NO humanity when he blames people who are already distressed and traumatized. Crassness is not an attractive trait! It's no wonder that we feel so disconnected from each other, etc., with people in charge, like Arne Duncan, who make statements like the one in this report. People died in New Orleans, and many more were displaced. The city is still in dire straits. In my opinion, Hurricane Katrina was NOT good for anyone! -- Except for big business interests!
BTW, when Arne Duncan was CEO of the Chicago Public School system, he implemented military academies into the system. He and Obama intend to increase the number of high school military academies across the country. Chicago has 6, more than any other city: 3 Army, 1 Navy, 1 Air Force and 1 Marines. What better way is there to indoctrinate young people into obedience and to not question anyone or anything? When he was asked, about his Quaker roots, being in conflict with his implementation of military academies, CEO Arne Duncan replied, "I come from a Quaker family, and I've always been against war. But I'm going to put the Naval Academy in there, because it will give people in the community more choices." Parents, teachers and members of the community gathered and protested, in fairly big numbers, but they lost out to the "powers that be."
Kay Johnson
I would like to point out that under Arne Duncan, the Chicago schools were and still are a disaster. How someone that wasn't successful in his last job is supposed to know how to do a bigger job and succeed is beyond me.
The Cronyism of this administration is beginning to make Bush look straight.
Eh. You sell Bush short. His cronyism was the stuff of legends. Obama's a cronyism pipsqueak by comparison.
That that he doesn't try...
rubbish!
once again, this article totally misses the point
NCLB SOLD the entire public education system to corporations
the testing was the mechanism put into place to phase in the takeover
proof...as if we need it....
in 2014, a school must pass 97% of their students.
if they fail, a corporation takes over the running of the school
how many schools ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET will achieve that stat?
none - and none were meant to
it was a set up
go www.sudval.org
a real chance for learning and democracy
Agreed. For a starter read John Taylor Gatto's "The Underground History of American Education".
Two of my friend are teacher's and lament daily the pressures they experience to raise a diverse group of students in their classrooms with a wide range of skills, abilities and knowledge to meet "standards" (or else). It is almost an impossible task.
They do not educate as much as prepare students to take tests. Time constraints do not permit students to explore and understand the (limited) subject matter before the next "unit" is upon them. What is deemed as essential to pass these tests is a diluted and deficient form of "education".
NCLB resigns many of them to mediocrity as it fails to educate students to their natural intelligence (currently residing around 9 types of intelligence) and implicitly assumes all students are identical, which they are not. Consequently it a student "fails" it is the teacher's and/or school's fault rather than the approach required by NCLB and NCLB itself.
Some of their students (4th and 5th grades) read abysmally at the 1st or 2nd grade level. There is simply not enough time to help such children. NCLB ignores such differences in students and ultimately penalizes the students, the teachers and the schools for a problem not addressed realistically.
What is rarely addressed in reform is a failure, for a variety of reasons, for parents to assume an active role in their child's or children's education from birth onward. Education (not to be confused with indoctrination) begins at home. Sadly, a number of parents are educationally challenged themselves, are struggling with several jobs just to make ends meet, or have other issues such as drug use, contempt of the public schools...etc.
It is likely that the creators and supporters of NCLB are intelligent people blinded by a disastrous common ideology that is hell-bent on destroying public education (for the corporate good?). Why else approach the education of our children in such an idiotic and deleterious fashion?
I'm a former elementary teacher, now in my first year of retirement. I've seen all the "reform" programs come and go. Believe me, 1000 words here is not even enough to get started. I'll just try to make one point, which agrees with Wandering Wolverine's comment.
When the MN Education Dept. sent out a PhD. to inform our district about the NCLB plan, I listened, thinking like many others that this too would pass. (We were later told repeatedly that it would NOT pass.) Anyway, after listening to the whole list of "Thou shalt..." and "Thou shalt nots...," I decided to ask a question that was burning in my mind. I said, "Thank you for your presentation. I believe I understand my role as a teacher in NCLB, but what is the role of the parents?"
"None," was her reply. "It's ALL up to you."
Stunned silence, then came the follow-up questions. She remained firm. If ANY child is not reading and doing math at grade level by 2014 (including mentally handicapped children and newly arrived immigrants,) all teachers and the principal of your school will be fired, and the school will be restructured. That turned out to be any subgroup of students. For example, if we have a dozen native Americans and they as a group fail in any one year, the whole school of 750 students fails. More diabolically, if the school makes Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) one year, the bar is raised for the next, etc. Every year. Apply that standard to Medicine, Law, Manufacturing, or any enterprise and see where it leads.
Sort of like using a sledge hammer to kill a fly on the kitchen wall. I did say I retired, didn't I?
Wandering Wolverine
"What is rarely addressed in reform is a failure, for a variety of reasons, for parents to assume an active role in their child's or children's education from birth onward. Education (not to be confused with indoctrination) begins at home. Sadly, a number of parents are educationally challenged themselves, are struggling with several jobs just to make ends meet, or have other issues such as drug use, contempt of the public schools...etc."
Kudo's to you for bringing up one of the three major reasons for the failure of our schools and one of the top two!
no shit, I "retired/tired" because of NCLB unwiped. I was a career, mentor, highly qualified teacher of the emotionally disturbed, among other areas. I taught for over twenty-six years. This horrible federal intrusion was enough to push me out. The only ones it effected were the "kids", I taught. Sorry.
school: the mechanism by which a thinking child is made a suckling pig...
dubet
"School" the mechanism/place where a child is supposed to learn "how" to think.
that is right, sir...scary folks, those who know that, though...don't want too many around...
curious, confident and independent, they may be...
I have been a high school teacher in Texas for 23 years. NCLB had its roots in Texas under then Governor GWBush.
In my years of teaching, we have had TABS, TEAMS, TAAS, TAKS, and now STAAR coming in the 2011-12 school year. All of those acronyms were for various incarnations of standardized tests. They are minimal skills tests. It seems that every 4 or 5 years, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) comes up with a new one. Each time, there is more emphasis on students passing these tests. And each year, I see students entering high school with poorer academic skills.
There are many reasons why students are not performing as well as they should; there is plenty of blame to go around. As teachers, most of us know what works and what doesn't. We know where the money needs to be spent. Sadly, we are rarely asked for more than token input, and then our pleas fall on deaf ears.
The Commissioner of the Texas Education Agency, appointed by Governor Goodhair Slick Rick Perry, is a lawyer. He could not lawfully teach a class in any public school in this state. Many of those bigwigs at TEA are also not certified educators.
As with many other organizations, one huge problem is that there are those in positions of power making decisions who have no clue about what it takes for students to be successful.
Like "skeezyks" posted earlier, it would take much more than 1000 words to discuss this topic. However, I still teach because I do care and believe in the value of education. Unfortunately, our schools and students are failing in many respects and solutions will be hard to come by under the present regimen of NCLB and its testing mania.
onelove
Hooray for you! Hang in there. Maybe we can dump Gov. Goodhair this time and get the TEA involved in seducation rather than luncheon politics.
My hats off to you.
Check out how the teachers have contributed to the Detroit children and the school system. Pathetic! How many of those kids graduate from high school? Pathetic! More children go to jail than graduate from school and I don't mean post secondary education.
Failure to the Detroit teachers and their school system. Pathetic!
Public school education pathetic! Teacher's pay Pathetic! Private schools are no different than the government providing $$$ to private entrepreneurs.It can be compared to paying Blackwater company billions to fight the dirty wars.
Check out what has happened in New Orleans and the new private school system implemented since the flood. Once the Gov. strangles the school system or a natural disaster, the FOR PROFIT schools take over.
Check out where the USA is with regard to education in comparison to the other industrial countries. Pathetic!It is not all directly due to teachers but the US private school system is better due to the lack of respect and funding for the public system. Actually, in the USA, private education is true because the USA puts more $$ in to war than education.
This is not true in Japan, Denmark, Holland, Canada, even Cuba the public system graduates a greater percent of their children than the USA.
peacekeepertwo; No child left behind,is producing the same kind of people that are responciable for the Wall street Melt Down. I mean you have people that can't think for themselves. You fill the heads of Children with facts, that may be nothing more than one persons opinion. we need to teach childern to think. The most successful teachers, are interesting to their students.
As a professional educator for more than fifty years (including 20 in administration), I have been against No Child Left Behind since its beginning. It came from the same George W. Bush supportors who have a long range plan to destroy most (if not all) public schools (with free meals, medical assistnce, etc.) and replace them with private and charter schools. In Bush's Texas home schools are legally "private schools." The Christian Right and others, especially in the South, would like to be done with having to educate minority and poor children using public schools. They favor separating them (re-segregation...) with the minority children from poor environments would be given the option to attend a private sector (or religious sector) owned and operated school for "them." Texas has many examples of what will happen if they have their way.
Please research it if anyone doesn't know. The No Child Left Behind Act originated within the think tanks and religious right organizations used by G.W. Bush as governor of Texas, where he tried for vouchers to be used to supplement private school tuitions and to separate the "good" from the "bad" kids. Vouchers were not approved, but twenty unregulated charter schools were approved by the legislature. With only a few exceptions, all of them were disasters. One who was observant could see that he, and his successor Rick Perry planned to implement the movement from public education for all children to a hodge podge of public, private and charter schools (with home schooling...again, without regulation, being included in the category of private schools). The real problem, having never been addressed adequately, of poor, and underprivilidged children starting school with little or no preparation and little or no support from home and community as they continued to try to navigate the social minefields of organized and regulated society. Rather than solve the underlying problems faced by a growing number of kids in horrible off-campus situations, and providing adequate in-school support, they chose to just cut them off. After all, they can almost always join the military.