Schools closed, children forgotten in the back corners of decrepit classrooms and teachers disgraced in cheating scandals — these are the ironies of No Child Left Behind.
Former-President George W. Bush signed NCLB into legislation in 2001, altering funding formulas for public schools. The legislation attached money to annual test scores, academic progress and report cards.
Fourteen years later, as the U.S. searches for fixes to its ailing education system the nationwide debate over Common Core rages on, which ends up as more of a states’ rights debate than about learning mechanisms.
NCLB failed. Instead of improving our future workforce, the legislation left it stagnant.
What NCLB did was ravish impoverished schools. The New Yorker released a heartbreaking article in July highlighting the tragedy of the Georgia standardized testing cheating scandal that resulted in firings, prosecutions and convictions of teachers and school administrators.
Teachers, under the direction of their administrators, would strategically erase incorrect answers on scantron sheets, replacing them with the correct answers. This kept the school’s scores acceptable, but not at their true value: underperforming.
Accuse them of doing it for bonus pay or to keep their jobs, but these explanations fundamentally misunderstand the socioeconomic environment surrounding the schools caught cheating. Certainly, some teachers cheated to keep their jobs, but others, like those at Parks Middle School in Atlanta, cheated to keep the school open.
They cheated so that their students had a safe place to be during the day. They cheated so they could continue to improve their students’ already difficult lives. At Parks, they cheated to delay and fight the consequences of poverty.
Despite the noble reasons of the Parks Middle School teachers, our society does not forgive them for defrauding the system. That shouldn’t stop supporters of standardized tests from taking blame.
NCLB created a funding formula with the capacity to breakdown networks of students and teachers within schools that successfully kept kids away from the evils of drugs and violence in poverty.
Even in schools not threatened by losing funding, standardized tests force teachers to instruct their students solely for the test and not general learning purposes. When they teach the test, they fail the students, but if they don’t teach the test, they could lose their jobs.
The tragedy is our government doesn’t know how to reach academic results in impoverished communities without leaving thousands of children to fend for themselves.
In the all-around success of charter schools, New Orleans is inconclusive, with some schools excelling and others flat-lining.
A study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes shows positive results nationwide. According to the study, among 41 urban areas studies, charter school students learned significantly more than their public school counterparts.
Charter schools aren’t the answer for education’s crisis though. Public schools can’t and won’t be overhauled completely, and charter schools may not be the right institution for certain cities.
The problem with testing-based education reform is it’s not aimed at creating long term results. Instead, legislators look for immediate overhauls to put on their trophy shelves. The only way any education reform works is through gradual implementation and improvement.
Test scores will plummet when you throw new standards of learning and testing requirements at a bunch of fourth-graders who were behind the curve to begin with. Not only do their teachers have to bring them to required reading and math levels for fourth grade, but now they have to teach them a brand new set of materials for the standardized test tied to a school’s funding.
NCLB failed because of its implementation, and Common Core will fail just as NCLB did if a gradual process of applying the standards does not occur.
Start with kindergarten, then add the standards as that group of students move throughout the education system. Without long-term implementation processes, Atlanta won’t be the only cheating scandal to make the news. Baton Rouge or New Orleans will be next.
Justin DiCharia is a 21-year-old mass communication senior from Slidell, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter @JDiCharia.