In terms of ideology or teaching philosophy, I think I’m in the opposing camp, rather than Dan’s, but what concerns me is that the two camps seem to have so much trouble talking to each other. It’s like ships passing in the night.

On the other hand, I think Dan is a little naive, and needs a little perspective. There are such things as schemes that are intended to SOUND like they are solving the problems, while actually being designed to EXACERBATE them. I suspect that many who are sceptical of NCLB are those who have been around a while and seen things like this (yet another “back to basics” campaign) come and go so often that they can see the political machinations behind them.

I wouldn’t assume that everyone (or anyone) who has reservations about testing is a lazy bum who doesn’t care about their students and doesn’t want to be held accountable. They may just know something that you don’t. The whole debate may be about more issues than you think it is. Keep an open mind, be cool, and don’t be an asshole.

In response to TMAO’s quote: “NCLB says test. Test everybody. Report what happened. If you under-taught, expect people to point it out. You will have many years to improve. Do so.”

The issue is the validity of the test, not whether or not we are testing. (I think that’s what Jeff is wrestling with.) The “one test fits all” approach is infuriatingly simple-minded. I agree with “assess; assess everybody; report; improve,” as long as the MULTIPLE modes of assessment are valid in terms of what’s being assessed.

The larger issue behind this, which probably requires a different conversation, is our (national) definition of the purpose of education. I think I see it shifting (or at least a need for a shift), but the current system as it’s generally enacted is not shifting. What do we think education is about? What are its goals? What should it be preparing students to do? Only after we have a clear, united answer can we even begin to decide on the best way to evaluate those goals.

Yes, we do agree. Poverty is the mountain. There are others too, of course, but poverty is probably the most profound. Can we get across that mountain? Of course. But we have to at least acknowledge quite forthrightly that it’s there. We are in quite a state of denial about this at this time in our history …and there are many deniers who have fashioned themselves as prominent ed policy experts.

That’s why I do think it probably is nitpicking for you to bemoan the fact that your colleagues want to “list poverty first, but not the insufficient response.” (I’m having a hard time understanding where you’ve encountered the culture of abdication you talk about. It certainly can’t be prevalent at your school. Have you taught elsewhere and found it so? If that’s the case, you were wise to get out. Your masters class? I’m asking not be a smart ass, but because I really don’t find this to be a prevalent trait among the teachers I’ve encountered in my still rather young career.)

Do folks really want to avoid discussing insufficent responses? Maybe they just don’t know how to have this discussion. Are you simply assuming abdication on their part because you don’t like their responses to what might be a rather lame assignment in your masters class (and what is almost always the lame and shallow way we discuss public policy in this nation at this point in our history). Why not ask this: Yes, poverty is a major obstacle. Now, how can we as teachers and aspiring administrators best respond to the circumstances? Don’t bemoan. Speak plainly and steer the discussion. We so very rarely ask each other questions like this–whether it’s about education or energy or much else. Folks working in schools that don’t resemble yours probably don’t get much of a chance Most of our leaders certainly don’t challenge us. As a result, we all probably need a little practice and sense of good faith.

So…

Student success = true assessment measure

Student failure = flawed assessment measure

That’s not a dichotomy I can accept.

If we can’t even teach to the test right, how can we demand the freedom and autonomy to teach whatever we want?

I don’t know about you, but when I give an assessment and a huge number of my students fail, I tend to try and figure out what went wrong with the assessment. My first instinct is that I somehow tested the students on something that they weren’t prepared to answer based on my teaching, and I base my teaching on my assessment of my students’ needs. So it becomes a question of Did I assess crucial knowledge in a way that makes sense with the ways in which that knowledge was imparted/arrived at?

If, on the other hand, I give an assessment at which most of my students succeed (and success can be interpreted in many ways), I feel as though I have given a real assessment of what they know. And I now know what they know, what they still need to learn or discover, and how quickly we can move on.

If “teaching to the test” isn’t helping more students pass the test, and thus show that more teachers and schools are doing their jobs, and if so many teachers are really trying to teach to the test, I wonder if that means these tests can’t be taught to.

I don’t really disagree with anything here, except to say that it is not poverty that causes low achievement. It is our response to the conditions found within poverty that do so. This is not symantics of nit-picking or Iraq-style reality evasion. It’s everything. Every last bit of everything we do resides in our responses to the challenges and obstacles that are erected. Folks who list poverty first, and not the insufficient response, are refusing to get in the game and blaming the shape of the field.

Hi Chris,

You seem to want NCLB to be more than it is or was intended to be (either under its Clinton or Bush incarnation). NCLB says test. Test everybody. Report what happened. If you under-taught, expect people to point it out. You will have many years to improve. Do so.

Do you want federal laws that provide the roadmap for doing better?

As for teaching to the test, with all of this going on, you’d really think we’d be doing better on those darn tests. But we aren’t. We’re still getting our butts handed to us on a yearly basis. If we can’t even teach to the test right, how can we demand the freedom and autonomy to teach whatever we want?

NCLB has done nothing to help elevate the teaching profession. Agree. “Delivering instruction” (what a wonderful observation) has become a common term in our district, especially at evaluation time. Certainly good teachers should be able to ignore this stuff, but how we talk about what we do is important. However, I’m not sure NCLB has really pushed education or the conditions of children in American cities to the forefront of the American consciousness. If anything, public education policy has been further marginalized as it has branded and packaged with the same slick slogans (“No Child Left Behind” – a bit Orwellian, really) that have reduced so many other important issues into subliminal assurances that things are handled (‘Mission Accomplished,” “Plan for Victory,” “Energy Security”). The State of the Union speech had one innocuous throwaway paragraph on education. NBC confused Transportation Secretary Peters with Education Secretary Spellings – and we’re to think education reform is a real priority in the Beltway? Poll after poll shows little public understanding of the law. Few in the teaching profession have any real knowledge of it, either, something Dan our sponsor here is quite right to highlight. But that’s a fundamental problem with both the law itself and the implementation at all levels. As education policy and funding is become federalized, schools and teaching and public involvement are still very localized endeavors. For much of our history our local schools have been where public life begins in this nation. As the feds assume more and more control, we must try to understand and confront the implications of this shift. If not, we create a huge void into which the privateers will swoop: when it becomes mostly about influence peddling at the top and distancing the public from how and where decisions are made, the corporate types will always prevail.

TMAO, you know I’m a huge fan—your writing is perceptive and important to me and my teaching. The successes your school has achieved are due in large measure to what has always worked both pre-NCLB and today: competent, committed, focused leaders who work hand-in-hand with their staff to establish a sense of mission and purpose for the entire school; talented teachers and support staff who work well together and are recognized, supported and appreciated by their leadership; creativity and people willing to take risks; teachers who really love to teach and who believe that what they do is transformative. Your school as it is operating today would be successful with or without the looming cudgel of API/AYP, although indeed those might be things that work to motivate and focus. Schools that operate like yours does now have always been successful, even with large numbers of ELL and poor kids. They have also been all too rare. NCLB has done nothing to change that–they are still all too rare, even in your own district.

That said, I’m a standards-kind-of-gal. Standards keep my teaching focused. They give me something to measure my teaching against. They have never sapped my creativity. I also love tests and assessment. I give them quite often…all kinds of tests: multiple-choice, free write, project-based, holistic. Assessment and accountability for what I do in my classroom doesn’t scare me in the least, in fact, I agree with Dan it is essential component of my professional competency.

But let’s also look at the reality of what happens in schools all over California as they prepare for the state standards tests and the exit exam. With the requirement that 95% of enrolled students be tested, charters start dumping kids for any number of reasons and don’t really have to tell anyone why. Publics dump kids who have been gone for 45 days. Extrapolating from what happens in my district, these are not small numbers of kids, but in a state that in ten years of trying still hasn’t figured out how to track students as they move from school to school, district to district, or drop-out altogether, we have no real idea how many kids are being left behind.

This is why I’m not as alarmed as you, TMAO, by the number of folks in your master’s class who cited poverty as a reason for the achievement gap (NCLB is another matter). They’re not wrong. But what we do from there is the rub. Effective school and district leaders, in my estimation, need to recognize what poverty means in terms of the services and programs schools need to offer, the funding decisions schools and districts need to make and the type of teachers and staff they need to hire. They also need to be willing to lobby at higher levels to help frame the political discussion and really begin to affect public discourse. The students at my school who disappear are almost all in very dire straits—my best teaching and the best teaching of my very good colleagues (I know only a few teachers who have embraced a culture of abdication) are sometimes still not enough to keep them coming to school on a consistent basis.

I’ll end this too long comment with Chris’ quote: “Let’s keep the debate going, let’s keep demanding better schools, but let’s find ways for the conversation to be richer, deeper and more productive than the conversations that NCLB provides.”

Wow Dan great blog. Thanks so much.