NEA: April 2006 NEA Today Cover Story - NCLB: It Doesn't Add Up

April 2006

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Cover Story - continued from page 1

Testing crowds out learning

Wish you had a dollar for every hour one of your students spends filling in test bubbles instead of experimenting with magnets or reading the latest Junie B. book? Cheryl Chapman must give her second-graders in DuPage County, Illinois, a constant stream of standardized tests.

“I give them a week’s worth of tests every six weeks in language arts,” Chapman wrote in an e-mail. “Our lit program is so highly scripted, a second-grader could teach it. I’ve let them at times. I use it because I have to, but I supplement like crazy.”

Chapman administers another language arts test three times per year, plus several kinds of math tests. “All kids are supposed to graph their progress on the computer, even first-graders,” says Chapman. “Our administrators think the graphing will make the kids more motivated, but I haven’t seen the research to support this. It’s just a big stress-out.”

The results are supposed to provide insight into what kids have mastered and where they need help, but Chapman says they don’t add “any information I don’t already know if I just teach it.”

Recently, Chapman’s husband asked her why she planned to retire early, at age 60—after all, she loves teaching. She answered that she no longer sees what she does as teaching. “My job is to protect my students from the local repercussions of this Administration’s educational policies,” she says. “I wish Americans would wake up and see that these policies create little stressed-out robots, not thinking, creative, smart kids.”

One Size Does Not Fit All

NCLB applies blanket rules to all students and all situations—a one-size-fits-all approach. NEA members know that doesn’t work.

One glaring example is the requirement that special education children meet the same standards as children with no disabilities. More schools fail to meet AYP because of low scores for special education students than any other group.

Recognizing this problem in the law, federal officials first arbitrarily decided that 1 percent of students would be allowed to meet more appropriate standards. Later, they added another 2 percent. But that’s not nearly enough, say special educators like middle school teacher Tracy Keuler of Salem, Oregon.

“In our special education classes, we have slow learners with low IQs and other learning disabilities. Special education gives them their best chance to achieve even the smallest academic gains. It’s a slow, often frustrating process.

How can they be expected to pass the same tests as other students? I am so tired of hearing the entire building’s scores were brought down because my kids didn’t pass!” Keuler laments.

“What if the government decided physical disabilities could be eliminated through standards? What if there were a mandate that doctors must bring their patients to ‘normal standards’ and all patients must be able to walk? The government does not seem to believe that our students’ disabilities are real,” she adds.

“NCLB tells kids that there is something wrong with them if they don’t meet the ‘standards.’ Kids who have true disabilities should be applauded for what they do, not made to feel worse.”

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