NCLB Hits Home

For the unfamiliar, NCLB stands for No Child Left Behind, the latest fad in education (in the tradition of such educational revolutions as phonics and the New Math). This legislation, pioneered in Texas and advocated by the Bush administration, has the stated goal of improving the educational process in the United States by holding schools accountable for the progress of their students. Academic achievement for each school is measured and tracked via standardized tests. Those schools that fail to show progress can receive failing grades and lose federal funding.

Let me first say that while it does not produce in me quite the same visceral reaction it produces in many educators, I'm not a big fan of NCLB. Yes, I believe that schools need to improve their performance, and I believe that there is a lot of inertia to be overcome in the American educational system before that will happen. But I don't think NCLB is the way to bring about the necessary changes. I see two problems¹ with NCLB: the reliance on standardized tests and the underlying Skinnerian philosophy of reward-and-punishment.

Standardized tests are always controversial, and rightfully so. One of the most common standardized tests, the SAT, was actually conceived as an intelligence test. Over the decades, its purpose and definition changed to what it is now: a test of 'scholastic aptitude' - whatever that is. This is indicative of one of the big problems with standardized tests: it's hard to define exactly what they measure. Standardized tests show only a moderate correlation with student grade point averages and content-specific assessment. They are also notoriously unreliable at predicting either future academic achievement or professional achievement. About the only thing that a standardized test reliably predicts is a student's ability to score well on other standardized tests.

Those who have taken Psychology 101 are familiar with B. F. Skinner and his theories of operant conditioning. Most educators now believe that Skinner's approach is outdated and ineffective.² But this is precisely the philosophy upon which NCLB is based: punishment for failing to meet established standards. So, in order to avoid punishment, schools learn (or become 'conditioned') to meet the standard, which is high scores on standardized tests. To achieve this end, schools stop teaching the curriculum and start teaching students how to do well on the tests. The result: test scores go up (if your district is fortunate), federal money rolls in, and students graduate - in many cases knowing less about the material than students in previous years did. And if your school doesn't happen to meet the standard, you lose the funding.³

And so we come to this irony: it seems that NCLB has turned to bite the hand that fed it. Because of a failure on the part of the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to comply with the demands of NCLB, Texas stands to lose $7 million in federal education funding.

Under NCLB, states are required to inform parents when schools fail to meet the established benchmarks. When a school fails for two consecutive years, parents can transfer their children to a different school. TEA failed to release their report before classes started this fall, and parents have been unable to make the desired transfers. By current estimates, a preliminary report will be released in mid-November, with the full report following in February.

One of the biggest knocks against NCLB is that it asks schools and teachers to reach unattainable goals. So, if the state department of education can't even get the results out on time, how can teachers and administrators be expected to meet the myriad other requirements?

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¹ "Only two?", I hear some of you asking.
² Ironically, most of these same teachers still use reward systems as a way to motivate students.
³ Although how schools are supposed to improve academic performance while spending less money on teachers, supplies, and infrastructure is a mystery to me.