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

April 2006

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Cover story - continued from page 4

Schools have an incentive to push out low-scoring students

Reports say that some schools, desperate to make AYP, are pushing low-scoring students out. One example: An Orlando, Florida, newspaper discovered that 126 low-scorers were dropped from the rolls of a local high school in 2003, just before the state test.

“That coincidence was unexplainable,” says David DeMond, president of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association. “It was an embarrassment.” The principal denied dismissing students to boost scores, but after the bad publicity, she was reassigned.

“That practice is severely monitored to be sure it does not happen again,” DeMond says.

A Growing Chorus for Common Sense

Don’t judge schools only by their students’ test scores. Instead, let states use multiple measures of success.

Don’t require testing every single year between grades 3 and 8.

Do fully fund Title I so every eligible child can be served.

Do ask for reports from states and school districts on what they are doing to help families and communities, as well as educators, improve student learning.

These are some of the 14 principles proposed by the NEA, NAACP, National Council of Churches, and other organizations pushing for common sense changes in No Child Left Behind to make the law live up to its lofty name.

The coalition, called the Forum on Educational Accountability, started as 27 organizations that presented their proposals in October 2004. More groups are signing on all the time—68 at last count.

Read the complete statement and list of signers online at www.neatoday.org.

Paras Face High Standards, Low Pay

NCLB sets very high education standards for instructional paraprofessionals in federal Title I programs.

The law allows districts to look at paras’ on-the-job skill in deciding whether they’re qualified, but many districts didn’t take the trouble to do that. Instead, they forced many time-pressed and money-strapped paras to take courses or pass tests in order to keep their jobs.

“Can you imagine asking a 20-year veteran paraprofessional to take a test, and if they fail, they lose their job?” asks Stanhope, New Jersey, paraprofessional Elise Falleni. “NCLB has created a lot of fear and anxiety.”

Falleni says New Jersey paras are being judged primarily through a test that does not consider work experience or knowledge of student behavior.

“The law doesn’t measure the ways [paras] work with students who are disrupting the class, or who are hyper, autistic, or physically challenged,” says Falleni.

She says many paras have second jobs and were unable to return to school to get an associate’s degree, especially since most school districts didn’t offer tuition assistance.

But Seattle para Yvonne Miller-Boyd had a better experience. District officials there worked together with the Seattle Education Association and “made professional development a focal point,” she reports. Meeting the new requirements, she adds, has boosted the paras’ self-esteem.

Now, says Miller-Boyd, the district should acknowledge the paras’ higher skills by paying them more.

He's Teacher-of-the-Year, But Not 'Hightly Qualified'

Educators don’t want unqualified people teaching, but who is “highly qualified”? That issue loomed large at the start of NCLB when thousands of veteran teachers were suddenly told their years of successful experience didn’t matter and they’d have to go back to school or take a test to prove themselves. Although some big problems remain, NEA affiliates and state officials hammered out workable solutions for most situations. But the case of Montana science teacher Jon Runnalls showed how far off the mark federal bureaucrats can be.

“In 2003, I was selected as Montana Teacher of the Year,” he says, “but through the eyes of the people in Washington, D.C., I was unqualified!

“I teach general science at Helena Middle School. They felt that if I do plants, I should have a degree in botany. When I’m teaching kids about plate tectonics, I should have a degree in geology. To do a chemistry experiment, I need a degree in chemistry.

“We’re all for highly qualified teachers,” says Runnalls, “but there has to be some kind of flexibility. A one-room schoolhouse in Montana is not the same as a classroom in Chicago. We used to determine by ourselves who was highly qualified or not, but now we’ve lost that local control.”

Fortunately, things are getting better, he says.

“We pushed for a combination of measurements in Montana—including an assessment by a supervising teacher and a Praxis-like subject test—to determine whether a teacher is highly qualified. So, I believe now I’m ‘highly qualified.’ That’s kind of nice.”

Reading First money—With Strings Attached

NCLB’s Reading First program provides money for schools to improve reading among their K–3 students—and that’s certainly a good thing. But federal officials have stirred up controversy by using their control over the funds to tell teachers how to do their jobs.

That controversy is prominently on display in the staff lounge of Cumberland Elementary in Nashville, Tennessee, which has a Reading First grant and is trying to decide whether to re-apply. “There are those who are adamant about not re-applying, and those who are just as adamant about how it’s helped the children,” says teacher Dorcel Benson.

Proponents say students are benefiting from the program’s required daily dose of uninterrupted reading (that’s 90 minutes of Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing and Ramona Quimby, Age 8). And they welcome the professional development that the grant money buys. But the mandates that come along with the benefits rankle others.

“We have to complete 90 hours of online development and keep folders tracking them, and someone comes into the school to monitor our hours,” says Benson. She considers herself a house divided on this issue. But she doesn’t like the rigid way Reading First chose their reading program for them. “We have very little input,” she says. “Like it or not, we use it.”

So at Cumberland they must use the same reading program that she used at her previous school, where she feels higher poverty rates and reading deficiencies made it more suitable. “We need more flexibility,” Benson says.

1 Step You Can Take

A high-power, bipartisan national commission has begun considering changes in NCLB. It’s vital that they hear from working educators. Help yourself and your students by sharing your story .

Also, check out our NCLB timeline below:

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