Results tagged “NCLB” from PEDABLOGUE

Education Week is reporting on a study that the makers of the ACT have recently put out that points to the gap between what high schools and college teachers want their students to be ready for when they come to college.

The new survey found that college professors generally want incoming students to have a deeper understanding of a selected number of topics and skills, while high school teachers in all content areas tend to rate a far broader array of content and skills as “important” or “very important.”

In other words, the "array" of content coverage is a sign that HS emphasizes breadth, while college tends to emphasize depth of work in a single content area. I'm not sure if this happens because of the assumptions of high school teachers about what college actually expects, or if it is merely a symptom of a larger neurosis regarding testing (prompted, perhaps, by NCLBA). "Breadth" is easy to test and grade, and errs toward assessing memorized knowledge over analytical and critical thinking, which usually takes essay reading and concentrated analysis in itself to generate a response.

Thus, the report itself shows the outcome:

the survey found a general lack of reading courses in high school and a decline in the teaching of targeted reading strategies after the 9th grade. In contrast, college instructors of remedial courses rated such strategies as very important and reported devoting a large percentage of time to teaching them.

I am not damning all High School in some generic, demonizing way. One of the things colleges have to offer is a shift in this paradigm of thinking. I think breadth is perhaps JUST AS important as depth for that level of learner, and I would simply suggest that some sort of balance should be sought. Whether or not an institution can support that kind of balance, in a frenzy to establish assessable outcomes, is debatable. But until teachers begin supporting reading in every way they can -- which means being active readers of their own student's writing, in addition to simply assigning texts -- the culture will not change.

I'm teaching an Introduction to Literary Studies course this term, and one of the early assignments in the class asked students to create a "collage that reflects your perspective on literary study". To explain the assignment, I developed a handout that explained what collage artists think they're doing and other requirements for the task. When I passed that around the room, I projected a graphic of a collage I'd made once on the No Child Left Behind Act, and explained my creative process...reporting how I discovered the theme along the way, and suggesting that the collage still meant more than what I intended it to mean.

I was thoroughly impressed by what the students came up with for this homework assignment. Many of the students went far beyond my expectations, and I asked a few if I could share their work here.

I liked Melissa Kaufold's collage entitled "How Do You See Me?" (above), because it interestingly represented the identity of an English student, with competing voices (mostly negative) surrounding the figure -- who herself is a multifaceted construct (the four-fold face) ostensibly holding an armload of books that obscure the rest of her body. A very colorful thought balloon reveals the value in her thoughts about literature, impervious to the onslaught of negativity espoused in the "external" world; the strength of these thoughts is reinforced by the thick black boundaries lines that protect these "thoughts" from interference and keep them relatively cohesive.

The collages of the class as a whole seemed to inherently lean toward conflicts like these. In her collage, "Transcendence" (below), Julia Leksell took an artful approach to semiotics, employing negative/white space in an intriguing way that differed from many of the other collages the students created. Here, she took control over the bricolage of symbols to add her own imagery to the piece, where she portrays a dove-like ascent or emergence from what seems like a pile of abandoned and contradictory signs and symbols:

The diagonal lines in Leksell's postmodernist piece make me imagine that the pictured bird is hefting a weighty net of language, struggling but succeeding to rise. I like the positive message here.

Attempts like these to come to some cogent "perspective" on literary studies opened up the floodgates of discussion in class, and allowed everyone -- whether creative writer, journalist, or literary scholar-in-training, to participate on a fairly equal plane.

I followed up the assignment by having students swap collages and write up analyses of them. We discussed this process as one inherent to both artistic production (crafting sense out of found language and fragments) and criticism (analyzing the whole by breaking down the structure into its parts). This two-pronged approach to the assignment created a dialogue between creativity and criticism in a really successful way, I think. It both raised the question, "What is literature?" and unveiled that it is, if anything, a conversation that meaning-making demands.

[POSTSCRIPT: After posting this entry, Dr. Davis from Teaching College English asked if I'd share the guidelines. They're relatively specific to the context of my class syllabus, but I'll gladly share it here, if it helps in any way:

Collage Assignment Guidelines in MS Word .doc format

The National Education Association is celebrating the election of Barack Obama. The American Federation of Teachers is celebrating the election of Barack Obama. My students and many of my colleagues are celebrating the election of Barack Obama.

I cheer along with the crowd. But the confetti is thinning out in the air, and realism is settling back in. Already the pundits on tv news are asking Obama to "show me the money" when it comes to the economy. I hope we will remember how and why education matters even when the accounts run low.

Education Week has an article surveying Obama's challenges on the education front, once he gets in office.

"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term,” said Mr. Obama at a rally in Chicago’s Grant Park.

But Mr. Obama said in the past month that he considers education an important ingredient for addressing the country’s long-term economic problems. In the Oct. 8 presidential debate, he rated education as a priority on a par with expanding access to health care, reforming entitlement programs, and developing new forms of energy.

Indeed: Education is a health issue, it is an energy issue, it is even a war issue. It is not simply a childhood issue. It seems patently obvious to me that we need to combat ignorance worldwide if we genuinely seek civility, peace, unity and understanding.

Obama's education agenda is pretty clear cut and reasonable. The challenges he faces will mostly be financial, but the pay off will be attitudinal. There will simply be less anti-intellectualism in government than there seems to be now (in my view) and more support for both early development and college learning -- fundamental ways of repaving a foundation for the future. And virtually any reform to No Child Left Behind his administration proposes will likely be applauded by teachers everywhere.

Education.com gives a clear overview of Obama's plans for reforming education at present, but to get a deeper sense of Obama's thinking about education in America, read his July 5, 2007 speech to the NEA, where he discusses something he terms the 'these kids' syndrome and outlines why we need to reform No Child Left Behind. It not only encapsulates his promises (which he may or may not be able to fulfill) but also his accurate perception of the problem in schools.

Nevertheless, as Education Sector points out, Obama wasn't necessarily elected on an public mandate to change the education system and the current economic crisis will still drive his attention. Even so, Education Sector recommends the top 8 Education Ideas for the Next President.

As for the thoughts of college professors on the future, Scott McLemee's latest IHE article, "Turning a Page" surveys teachers by asking them what book they would recommend to the future US president and why. (In comparison, here's W's official reading list...and the unofficial, as well).

Edutopia this month published "NCLB Confidential" -- an interesting article by Roberta Furger that explores a few elements of the No Child Left Behind Act that are often ignored because so much of the debates surrounding this act focus solely on the issue of testing and student accountability. I've written here before about one of these neglected areas (the NCLB Act's relationship with military recruitment). Furger's essay takes a look at two components of the Act that are starting to raise problems: how the Act mandates both "parental involvement" in the school and the employment of "highly qualified teachers."

The latter phrase -- "highly qualified" -- is semantically deconstructed by the article. The NCLB makes clear what the standards are for qualification and they are apparently flexible in this criterion, accepting alternative forms of certification. But to be "highly qualified" does not equate with being "high quality" though that's what people initially assume. Some are arguing that this could lead to hiring low quality teachers or generally lower the standards regarding what it means to teach well. Furger cites Barnett Berry, from the Center from Teacher Quality, who challenges the specious way that NCLB defines "qualified" teacher, as simply having a basic teaching preparation and baseline education:

"...someone with a degree in biology, with no knowledge of how to teach second-language learners, no knowledge of how to find the right resources to engage kids, no knowledge of technology applications in school, no knowledge of how to work with parents or children whose culture is different from their own, is 'highly qualified.'"

In other words, being "minimally" qualified is elided by supervisors and administrators as meaning "highly" qualified. Interesting point.

Does certification alone qualify a teacher? Barry also participated in research that asked, "Does Teaching Certification Matter?" -- which challenges research that claims that having a teaching certificate did not make a student more or less prepared to teach than others who had a college degree. His group found that they were indeed still good teachers, but could be better ones, and generally, that preparation is really the issue, not certification.

[Note: Barnett Berry has started an interesting new weblog, Building the Teaching Profession.]

This collage appears in Eye Contact, the literary magazine I advise at Seton Hill University where I teach. The theme for this particular issue of the magazine was "truth." I clipped words and phrases out of Weekly World News to create this piece. When I began, I thought I'd build a collage of freaky and bizarre headlines, but I found myself instead pulling out the more "normal" terms and assembling them in an abnormal way. The "shout out" style of the excessive typography, I'm hoping, renders everything strangely familiar. I believe the "left behind" phrase at the center originally referred to that whole "Left Behind" Armageddon novel series phenomena, but for me it seemed to progressively suggest something entirely different about the No Child Left Behind Act as I built this collage around it as a centerpiece. I'm still not sure what it all means, if anything at all, but I had education and today's kids in mind as I built up the layers. I'm happy the students accepted it into the magazine (blind jury process). I'm looking forward to seeing the weblog for the magazine develop next year into a full-fledged online version of the mag.

I try not to bring politics into Pedablogue, but I also try to keep my eye on current policies and trends in K-12 education, so I can have a sense of what is shaping the minds and beliefs of students who will be coming into my college classroom in the decade to come. In the process, I often learn alarming things -- like the policy rider on military recruitment that was added to the No Child Left Behind Act -- or about shifts in student attitudes -- like the personality profile of the "Millenials" who are in my classes today.

There are "curriculum wars" raging right now, and it's hard to avoid reading about the ideological conflicts surrounding what is taught in public schools. This morning, for example, I stumbled onto the debates about sex education funding that are presently happening in Washington DC. This issue carries a lot of political baggage, but I thought it might be worth raising because of a recent report that sheds light on what is actually being taught in most "abstinence only" curricula.

The federal government will spend approximately $170 million to support "abstinence-only" education programs in fiscal year 2005, more than twice the amount spent in 2001. Given that 50% of high school kids engage in sexual activity before they graduate -- and that STDs among teens is on the rise (though pregnancy is on the decline) -- it follows that some sexual education is prudent. The question is what should be taught, and how.

Whether you're for or against abstinence-only education, you might be interested in a recent congressional investigative report, "The Content of Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Education Programs" (.pdf). This study, sponsored by Democrat Henry Waxman, discloses some surprising information about what is actually taught in such courses. The bottom-line: over 80% of the abstinence-only curricula, used by 2/3 of all grantees receiving funds from the gov't, "contain false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health." Here's a random sampling of what some schools are teaching kids that might surprise or anger you:

• exposure to sweat and tears are risk factors for HIV transmission
  
• the popular claim that ‘condoms help prevent the spread of STDs,’ is not supported by the data
  
• a pregnancy occurs one out of every seven times that couples use condoms
  
• tubal and cervical pregnancies are increased following abortions
  
• a 43-day-old fetus is a “thinking person”
  
• women need “financial support,” while men need “admiration”
  

None of the above claims are supported by scientific fact. Some curricula reinforce gender stereotypes; other support ideological agendas, like the pro-life movement; others are simply based on assumptions, fears, and myths.

In terms of outcomes, the government report also finds that abstinence-only programs do not meet their goals, as well. Studies cited in the report show no overall effect on sexual behavior or contraceptive use by teens who are exposed to this curriculum -- and one recent study found that they may actually increase participants’ risk. The present administration, democrat watchdog group PoliticsandScience.org claims, refuses to acknowledge this lack of proof and explains how officials often bend scientific data to support their views on abstinence in unscientific ways.

I understand the rationale of "abstinence-only" teaching. But, personally, I believe in an "abstinence-best" rather than an "abstinence-only" curriculum, that seeks to persuade students that abstaining from sex is the best choice, rather than commanding them to believe it is the only option. It seems more realistic to me. In terms of pedagogy, I believe that teaching should not be commanding: that is, we shouldn't teach what thou "shall not" do, but what we "should" do: what is reasonable, what is intelligent, what is sound, what is supported by evidence. Teaching should be enlightenment, not pushing subjects further into the darkness. If we teach based on a paradigm of fear, we assent to a culture of ignorance, as the results of Waxman's study seem to suggest.

Besides, as James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth put it, "The only 100 percent way to avoid a car collision is not to drive, but the federal government sure does a lot of advocacy for safety belts."

Maintaining this blog has helped me keep abreast of issues in High School education that I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise. Usually I'm interested in literacy issues and preparedness of freshman that come into my classes. But sometimes I learn about policies and trends that surprise me.

For example, did you know that the No Child Left Behind Act has a stipulation that requires schools to give the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all their students to military recruiters? I didn't. And it troubles me a bit.

David Goodman's article, "No Child Unrecruited" -- from the Nov/Dec 2002 issue of Mother Jones -- reports that "buried deep within the law's 670 pages, is a provision requiring public secondary schools to provide military recruiters not only with access to facilities, but also with contact information for every student -- or face a cutoff of all federal aid." A little research at the Dept. of Education website turns up an Oct 2002 Press Release that confirms this and explains the policies and laws regarding military access to student records. I was surprised to learn from the release that "the Department of Defense has developed a national high school data base to document recruiter access. Presently, 95 percent of the nation's 22,000 secondary schools provide a degree of access to military recruiters that is consistent with current law."

Apparently a student or a parent of a student can "opt out" of providing directory information at their school, and this will ostensibly prevent them from being included on any list the school provides to the military. But there are still questions about student privacy rights, compliance with the "opt out" provision, and suspicion about recruitment strategies that have some educators angry.

Goodman also wrote a related article in early 2002, "Recruiting the Class of 2005," about how militant JROTC programs are increasing their presence on campuses -- especially in poor school districts -- by offering free books, materials, and other incentives for schools to expand the JROTC presence. Goodman writes: since 1992, "the number of jrotc units and cadets has doubled. There are now nearly 500,000 students enrolled in the program at some 3,000 schools nationwide, and the Defense Department plans to spend $234 million on jrotc this year -- nearly quadruple what it spent a decade ago."

This isn't exactly a "back-door draft" and as a veteran of the Army myself, I think that military service is a perfectly valid way to build a post-high school life and give back to the country. But the privacy issues here concern me and I don't understand why military recruitment policy belongs in an education law that ostensibly deals with student learning and school accountability. Who are they really accountable to?

Is the No Child Left Behind Act creating a hierarchy of "haves" and "have nots" even before any sanctions are placed on schools that don't meet assessment standards?

In "School Pushes Reading, Writing, Reform" by Linda Perlstein in today's Washington Post, we learn that some schools, primarily, schools "that have low test scores and large numbers of poor children" are dropping their science and social studies curricula to focus on helping struggling students pass reading tests. "Two strata of schools are being created," Perlstein writes, "one in which students gain broad knowledge and the groundwork for becoming scientists, and another in which children will, in some ways, be left behind."

This is the very problem that many educators have predicted: if you institute standardized tests and enforce them by making the schools' funding dependent on them, then the schools will teach to the tests. Even if this shift in focus improves reading skills, it must sacrifice other portions of the curriculum to accomodate them. But I suspect that there's so much analysis and anxiety about this going on, that the students are not only being taught in very closed-minded ways, they are also being overtested, which means that classes that teach are being turned into classes that test. And there are many problems with relying on monolithic testing procedures.

For an outsider like me, who has very little to do with primary or secondary school education (beyond teaching and advising a few future English teachers -- and preparing for the future graduates from today's educational system), the NCLBA seems awfully complex and problematic -- and no one seems to like it. Pennsylvania offers a roadmap to figure out how to implement it. PBS's Frontline has a special page dedicated to it -- "Testing our Schools" -- with some fantastic links to opinions and information online about the act's various issues. I've only heard of a few arguments in favor of the Act's strengths (primarily, the money it dedicates to teacher development), but even those are skeptical. I'm still trying to learn more about the NCLB. Right now, it seems to me that the ends (accountability and improved basic skills) do not justify the means (holding funding over school's heads and over-assesing students).

The NEA opposes it, and some strong activist groups like Fair Test and Pencil's Down are adamantly against it. The handful of high school teachers I know in the trenches seem to generally oppose it and parents seem to agree. Reading around online reinforces my suspicion that the NCLB is punishing schools for failure rather than rewarding them for success. When polled, more than half of US parents would rather use federal funds to reduce class sizes, whereas only 10 percent would put those funds toward implementing and enforcing the NCLB. In fact, 3/4 would oppose cutting off funds to schools if the schools fail to meet the standards (these polls were conducted by the Civil Society Institute).

There is a lot of sabre rattling about this act, and it's a political hotbutton -- especially in an election year. Is a "Chalkboard Rebellion" in the works? Is the No Child Left Behind Act nothing more than a marketing scheme by the Bush Administration? A form of fascism we haven't seen since Nazi Germany?

Some reactions to the NCLBA are a bit over the top, but it's certainly an issue that's hitting home. It will be interesting to see how this plays out during the elections.

As I watched Primetime Thursday's special on the "Cheating Crisis" last night, I felt the full range of familiar emotions: frustration with students who don't realize that they're only cheating themselves out of learning experiences, anger at the audacity of students who proudly plagiarise, vindication when the students who in the early segments were claiming ethical high ground were confronted with their own cheating by a surprise 'trap' that a teacher sprung on them... I even felt I could identify, in a strange way, with the freelance writer who writes papers for students as a fulltime job, for twenty bucks a page...

I already knew about a lot of these problems, but I kept wondering: so what's the solution? I've read a lot about what teachers can do to better police their classes and prevent cheating in the first place; I've also heard the arguments that the change really needs to come in the students themselves, who need to value ethical behavior. And I realize that this is a cultural issue whose origin lies in multiple cloudy areas, ranging from TV news reportage of big business cheaters (like Enron) to the ease of text manipulation in cyberspace. But Primetime made it clear that the problem is worsening and that it may very well be a "crisis" in the educational system as a whole. If the problem is systemic and out of control, I'm wondering what academic institutions can do to help save us from the "crisis"?

One solution that seemed to leap out at me is instituting smaller student-teacher ratios. The more intimate teachers can become with their students, the less likely they'll try to sneak a peek at a graphics calculator or videophone. Cattle herding students through huge lectures halls generates the anonymity that allows and encourages cheating. This should be obvious, but it's more cost effective to some institutions to have large lectures with grad student recitations/discussion sections than otherwise. A lecture hall reduces the number of faculty necessary, the number of classrooms needed to schedule, and so on. It will take institutions really caring about this problem enough to cap classes at a reasonable level and do what it takes to reduce the student-teacher ratio, even if it means losing money.

Another solution might be to ban some technologies from the classroom...but I don't mean to get rid of them. The trick might be to prohibit student-owned storage and transmittal devices and instead to substitute them with technology that the institution provides. To actually have non-networked computers already at the desks or calculators that are distributed by the teacher for the purposes of working the texts. Technology should be used as a tool, but one that enhances learning. As with many technologies, using it for its own sake seems to become part of the pleasure of cheating with electronic gizmos -- it's "fun" to IM a friend in class...and only one step away from passing quiz answers.

I'm still a proponent of turnitin.com, though I realize that students can subvert it, that there are copyright issues still being debated, and that it is not a magic solution to the problem of plagiarism. Education is what will solve it. But I do still think turnitin.com is a good idea for now. I simply think it arms teachers with technology to fight cheating technology; like giving an anti-aircraft gun to a country without an air force, institutions can arm those teachers who are unsavvy about plagiarism and technology. It can also make some students think twice.

And finally, I think institutions need to have a "zero tolerance policy" for cheating. At one point, the "plagiarist for hire" in the program mentioned that when he writes an A paper, everybody wins: the student gets his A, his parents are pleased that their boy is succeeding, the teacher feels like they've done their job, and the institution doesn't lose a student. The institution needs to be willing to risk losing a student in order to gain a reputation for being academically sound. I think a zero tolerance policy would actually attract good students who want to reap the rewards of doing their own work -- in a classroom where there's an even playing field -- and that parents, too, would prefer to send their children to such a place.

I'm not sure what changes can be done in high schools to help students see the value of working for the sake of learning, rather than cheating for the sake of the grade (or for the sake of time management, or a host of other reasons...). But I do wonder if the emphasis on assessment in the "No Child Left Behind" era is a contributing factor to all of this. I have no basis to make such a claim; just a sense of uncertainty....but as a teacher of Freshman Composition, I will be confronting the products of today's high school head on, and do my best to at least talk about this issue and help my students see the value of learning for its own sake.

The edublog community is buzzing with ire, in response to news reports that US Secretary of Education Rod Paige referred to the National Education Association -- 2.7 million teachers strong -- as a “terrorist organization.” In fact, the NEA is formally asking for Paige's resignation, while Paige himself is issuing a formal apology.

The stir is strong. In my inbox today, the activist organization, Give Kids Good Schools provided a link to a webform concerned citizens can use to file thier protest about this obviously inappropriate comment. While you're there, you might want to dig around their website to learn more about this interesting organization, which is currently pressuring the government to put it's money where its mouth is and back up the No Child Left Behind act with adequate funding. You might find their "fast facts about America's teachers" page a refreshing reminder of how valuable teachers really are...and also how little they are rewarded for it.

One statistic that shocked me:

A teacher in his or her twenties makes about $8,000 less per year than other college-educated professionals. The gap widens to $24,000 for those 44-55, and it is worse for those with a master’s degree - climbing to a $32,000 difference.

While I've always known that teachers make less money than, say, bankers, I hadn't thought through this point about age differences and the discrepencies among those holding a master's degree. But now that I see it, it's obvious. But don't be mislead: it's also still advisable for teachers to get Master's anyway -- though they'll still make 32K less than others, they'll likely make 10K more than they would without one. In other words, teachers need to earn a Master's degree if they want to be equitable with those professionals who have a BA. This means sacrificing time, as well as money, to improve society and reap the rewards of helping others grow.

The democratic candidates have begun taking stances on issues in higher education, as reported in a new (free!) roundup article in The Chronicle. I don't have a personal favorite, but I did like reading about the incentives for getting more students to teach (similar to the imaginary "No Teacher Left Behind Act" discussed here awhile back). The fact that education is an issue at all is the important point. Last time around, the Democratic Platform promised a "revolution in education." We'll see what happens this time.

In the interests of equal time, here's a page that lists the Republican (Bush's) positions on education from Campaign 2000 . Here, too, is a link to the No Child Left Behind page at the Dept of Ed. You can see the Green party's platform on education -- and all the Libertarians and others -- at the Issues2000.org site from years ago.