Education Policy for the Paranoid

Kennedy, et al, at best thought they had a trump up their sleeves, at work are naive doddering idealists.

Getting Democrats to vote for jackass legislation hasn't proven to be quite the world-on-atlas'-shoulders task that one might have hoped.

Very good. Kevin Drum rarely slips up, but I had a sense that something was funny about a leap somewhere in his logic on this.

Honest mistake. (At least he has the right idea about what sort of things it's a good idea to expect from this Admin. I'm sure you'd agree.)

"No Child" had support from at least one very interesting "liberal" educational group, the Education Trust in DC. Ed Trust had argued for some time for standards by which real student progress could be measured, and for applying these in a way that exposed the underfunding of urban and rural schools. My own translation -- I'm not an authority and have not gone back to read their (impressive) work -- was that they hoped or believed that this process would enable a reallocation of resources to support students who were -- does anyone disagree? -- getting screwed.

One problem was, that with the Bush administration the met up with people who (like Bill Bennett, notoriously) wanted to do away with much public education, with the stupidity of the massive testing regime, and with the amateurs Bush put in charge at the Dept of Education. And it quickly became clear that school districts found it in their interest to cheat on the results, rendering them fairly useless.

I can't say what the future holds for this effort. Does the Rothstein study say "junk this idealistic effort"? I don't think so though I did not read the whole piece. It does suggest a different set of measures (benchmarking) and a longer-term commitment. That's worth considering.

For many pubic educators -- I used to work with them -- the need to bring all (or mostly all) students up to a certain level of literacy and proficiency was as important as the drive to produce "stars." "Proficiency for all" is a desirable social goal, even if we approach it asymptotically. I think another Ed Trust slogan, "Narrow the achievement gap" is worth keeping in mind. Basically, for me it comes down to doing whatever possible to reduce the waste of student talent in our schools. In the urban areas I know, that's a huge task.

Kevin Drum is terrific, but I don't know what his counterproposal is. I think we could do a lot with this: pay urban teachers what they deserve, hire really good people, and stop interfering so much. In Philly, it appears that efforts at "privatization" are not helping, and privatized schools are underachieving -- many people here thought we'd have to go through this to find out what they understood long before, that the real problems aren't private v public, but the overall underfunding of the system.

Dan Tompkins

Matt, you may remember a 2002 vote on the authorization for the use of force in Iraq. Its originators were bad people with malicious intent. Other people of better will signed on for a variety of reasons, including the hope that they could be good influences on the process. They got used.

When some of us say that there's a malevolent goal in this act too, we aren't saying that everyone who ended up sponsoring and campaigning for it are bad people out to to demolish public school. We are saying that it started with people of that sort, and that others are overestimating their ability to pull anything good out of it.

sure. there's no chance that the point of this bill was to dismantle education. I mean, Kennedy voted for it, and Democrats haven't gotten rolled on anything else during Bush's term...

Oh Wait. That's why Matt's argument is retarded and invalid. It fails to take into account the fact that Democrats allowed themselves to be conned about everything else. At this point, the burden of proof is on those arguing that a Bush provision is a good thing. They have to explain how something couldn't be a scam. We no longer really need to prove that something is a scam. That should be the default position. It wasn't when NCLB was passed.

I don't know much about NCLB, but my sister is a teacher and it is her and apparently many other teachers' opinion that NCLB is designed to allow the government to declare schools failures so that funding can be shifted away from them to charter schools or private schools. This may sound like teacherly paranoia, but my understanding is that some schools automatically fail every year; the criteria get harder and harder to meet. And furthermore, those schools that fail are punished by removal of funding, when in fact what they often need is more funding.

> Does Kevin really expect me to believe that this
> is what Ted Kennedy and George Miller, the law's
> leading Democratic supporters in the Senate and
> the House, are up to? These are big-time liberals.

6-1/2 years of the Bush/Cheney Administration and an up-and-coming young pundit who is smart enough to have a whole magazine article written about him still does not understand the concept of "getting chumped". Nor how much more enjoyable it is to the chumper to induce the chumpee to chump _himself_.

Of course, in this Matthew is on the same page as most of the leading lights of the Democratic Party.

Cranky

Two problems with the Iraq resolution analogy:

1) Kennedy and Miller didn't just vote for No Child Left Behind, they wrote many parts of the law in their capacities as the head Democrats of the Senate and House education committees.

2) Unlike the Iraq resolution, Kennedy and Miller are both strong supporters of No Child Left Behind today.

Matt, your questions are answered in the comments to Kevin's post. People doubtlessly thought that they could fix NCLB later. Another case of underestimating the mendacity of today's Republican Party.

The paranoia theory fails in the face of the fact that W is incompetent. He didn't screw up NCLB on purpose, he just screwed it up. That's what W does. He screws up.

The incompetence argument is the way Bush ex-loyalists protect themselves from being blamed for the consequences of the policies they supported.

To me the most parsimonious explanation is that Kennedy is far over the hill. In a way he acted like a conservative's stereotype of a Democrat -- supporting a bad bill because at least it increased spending and federal intervention. The bill was a compromise on both sides, since a lot of conservatives didn't like the "liberal" parts of the bill.

Just a very bad compromise. Ted probably wanted to be involved in something positive, not just be a nay-sayer and speedbump, and maybe he thought he'd outsmarted the conservatives, but it turned out to be a disaster.

> People doubtlessly thought that they could fix
> NCLB later. Another case of underestimating the
> mendacity of today's Republican Party.

It isn't just mendacity though - the Radicals are very, very good at writing iceberg legislation where 4/5 of the effect is hidden beneath the surface and often does not show up for 3, 5, even 10 years. They clearly have teams of people studying 2nd and 3rd order effects and carefully developing language that maximizes the probability of the long-term, nth-order effects that they desire occuring. Do they hit every time? No, of course not. But they play the odds very carefully, and over time they get a lot of what they set out to do.

The next Dem president needs to think about this very hard (I have no hope for Reid or the other insider Dems). Democrats tend to write bills to achieve an objective; the Radicals write bills to tilt the entire playing field in their preferred direction 10 years down the road. At this point I have to say the Radicals' approach is winning.

Cranky

But Matt EXPLAINS why there was no rolling this time. He doesn't just say "How could Kennedy & Miller have gotten rolled?" Which would be silly, since we've gotten rolled plenty of times. He asks that, rhetorically, and then answers:

They didn't. This isn't what proficiency means. States set their own standards. If anything, (he might have added) they'll do it in a way that is more likely to overstate than understate actual proficiency because the governors won't want to preside over failing schools.

I'm as willing to criticize this admin as anybody - but people seem to be jumping from there to criticizing MY without actually responding to his analysis.

DT - FYI, Ed Trust helped write large portions of the NCLB legislation IIRC, so it's no surprise that they're a supporter. Also I don't think I would characterize them as "liberal" on education in comparison to the teachers unions, etc.

All - while MY raises this point, I don't think he states the full implications of NCLB's state-defined proficiency standards. This system means that there is a huge disincentive for states to set rigorous standards...in fact those that have done so are feeling the heat right now.

And what is more pernicious, labeling the vast majority of schools failing when they might not be "failing" per se, or labeling most of them as achieving proficiency when they are in fact not, as is the consequence of these state-defined standards? I would conclude the latter, and I would hope others do as well.

See this article in the NYU Law Review for a rundown of this and other issues in NCLB:

http://www.law.nyu.edu/journals/lawreview/issues/vol79/no3/NYU303.pdf

> They didn't. This isn't what proficiency means.
> States set their own standards.

In other words, states that took NCLB and its sponsers in good faith got burned. Same thing HRC claims with the Iraq force resolution. Do you see a pattern here?

Cranky

It should be noted that some of the same people who are demanding higher standards for the schools are also the same people who are demanding that ID creationism be taught in biology classes in the schools. Some kind of high standards.

Why is is credible for supporters of NCLB to expect 100% performance by students while it is not credible to expect to double, triple or quadruple the budget allocated to education?

No matter how lax the proficiency standards, somebody is going to fail them. Which, if you demand 100% proficiency, means that you're "failing." Or am I missing something?

The testing obsession was and is a bad idea, even if done with the best of good Kennedy liberal motives. Many people supported it with good intentions but that doesn't mean many others didn't supported it for bad ones. It goes to far to suggest a widespread conspiracy to kill off public education.

In any case pubic education for the majority of current primary and secondary students is in crisis not because of testing but because all the cultural trends of the last two generations have come home to roost. A library could be filled with reasons why todays students are so ill educated but the main thing is that they don't want to be educated and have tuned education out. No amount of good teaching and good schools can change that. The reasons for failure are deep in the culture.

The top decile of households continue to instill a desire for education or at least demand it for competitive advantage to move into the best colleges. As the Slate story from last week { sorry no link} noted, the lack of lower and middle income students at our universities has far more to do with sudents who are totally unprepared for higher education than for reasons of money. Huge swaths of todays highschool grads could not possibly go onto college successfully and don't even try, or care to try.

I offer no proof for this beyond the Slate mention. Personal observation of todays students however makes me think I'm right on. Blame a president who cannot speak a coherent sentence or the entertainment obsessed culture but the comming generation of Americans are by far the worst educated of any in the developed world.

> It goes to far to suggest a widespread conspiracy
> to kill off public education.

Since the Radicals have explicitly stated that this is one of their long-term goals, and since they have either strongly influenced or outright controlled US policy for the last 6-10 years, why do you think it "goes too far" to suggest that they might actually be working to achieve one of their stated goals?

Cranky

Kevin writes: "1) Kennedy and Miller didn't just vote for No Child Left Behind, they wrote many parts of the law in their capacities as the head Democrats of the Senate and House education committees."

So? The people actually running the show are the highly partisan, corrupt, and law-twisting Bush administration. Just because Kennedy and Miller wrote the law doesn't mean it's being implemented according to the spirit they intended.

"2) Unlike the Iraq resolution, Kennedy and Miller are both strong supporters of No Child Left Behind today. "

And strong supporters of the Iraq resolution tend to be strong supporters today, often to the extent of denying the facts on the ground.

I'm going from an old man's memory here, but I remeber reading an article about the guy in the NC education dept. who set up that state's testing and then worked with the DOE on NCLB testing. He said he told DOE that testing each grade for progress instead of following a class for progress would result in all schools eventually being labeled as failing (not every class will have smarter kids than the one before it). He said they wrote the guidelines that way anyway. Or, I may have dreamed all that.

It's instructive to look at an outfit that clearly does just want to destroy public education like Cato and see what they think about NCLB -- they hate it.

Does not follow. Yes, Cato wants to destroy public education, but that doesn't mean they will enthusiastically back any and all Trojan horses. Wouldn't that give away the game, anyway? If Cato was openly in favor of a bill that, on the surface, looked like a plan to give a lot of federal money to education, wouldn't that raise a lot of suspicion?

More to the point, Cato does not want to gradually weaken public schools in order to be able to make the political case that they should be destroyed. Cato just wants to destroy them. However, when NCLB's poison pill takes effect, Cato will be there encouraging us to take the next step.

Cranky - How does a system where states set their own standards lead to states getting burned?

if anything, state defined standards works to the states' advantage, in that there is no nationally defined benchmark. the ed department just has to approve the accountability plan (and they've approved some laughable ones at that).

And for the record, neither Miller nor Kennedy got rolled on the AUMF in Iraq resolution. They both voted against it.

If only our other Senator from Massachusetts could have voted with his "ultra-liberal" counterpart. Sigh...

Does Kevin really expect me to believe that this is what Ted Kennedy and George Miller, the law's leading Democratic supporters in the Senate and the House, are up to? These are big-time liberals. Perhaps they're wrong -- Kennedy's certainly not above criticism -- but it's absurd to think that they're leading agents behind an enterprise whose whole point is to dismantle the public school system.

Obviously not, but it's not so hard to believe that Kennedy actually does think that 100% achievement is a good goal, and was utterly snookered by the Bush administration.

Matt, I think you mis-read Kevin. He's not saying the point for Senator Kennedy and Senator Miller is to make the schools appear to be failures. The "these people" who Kevin is referring to are "conservatives who want to break teachers unions and evangelicals who want to build political momentum for private school vouchers."

To get those people to line up behind President Bush and Senator Kennedy for a massive educational overhaul, they needed to be thrown a bone and Kevin is pointing out what that bone is and how it helps their cause.

Go read it again and I think you'll see what I mean.

Is it possible that under objective standards some large majority of public schools are in fact failing? Or is that unthinkable just because it is ugly?

Is it possible that under objective standards some large majority of public schools are in fact failing?

An excellent point, Mr. Holsclaw. Clearly the corrective to this is to define standards by which all of them eventually fail, such as always having to improve over the previous year's performance regardless of how good it was, having to apply the same performance criteria to special ed students, etc.

NCLB critics: This bar is set unreasonably high!

Holsclaw: But does there not exist a bar which isn't unreasonably high? Gotcha!

When the requirement is 100%, it only takes one kid, answering one too many questions incorrectly, to fail an entire school.

Immigrant children who have been in this county for a year and a day, and who needless to say, are still learning English, must take and pass these tests.

Children with significant cognitive challenges (e.g., mental retardation and autism), must take and pass these tests.

I happen to think this *is* a plot to dismantle as much of the public school system as possible. But even if you don't, you have to admit that if NCLB isn't changed, that's what is going to happen.

Sebastian, in a society where an expensive elite private educational system has taken root, is it even remotely possible for an educational system that is required by law to educate the lowest common denominators to achieve outcomes that look impressive compared to private schools?

It's a Catch-22. People increasingly pull their own high-achieving kids out of the public schools because the median test scores are low, and then complain that public school test scores aren't improving.

A lot of people commenting here are getting really hung up on the 100% thing, suggesting that it's an impossible goal.

Well, hold on. Is it? There is NO standard of prociciency that we can not say functionally all schoolchildren should pass? We can't say that 100% of 6th graders should be able to read "See Spot Run" out loud and know that 2+2=4?

We aren't talking about special ed kids, here -- they don't get the same tests that the rest of the students do. And we aren't talking about kids who have literally no idea how to speak English (or whatever language classes are being taught in). If you're monolingual in Vietnamese, you just don't attend public school.

Sure, I expect (and I think everyone expects) that no matter how low a bar you set, SOMEONE will find a way to fail it. But, if the bar is sufficiently low, then isn't it fair to say that the school in question has failed in its duties to educate this student? And saying that someone, somewhere, will figure out how to fail a test is a far cry from Drum's claim that 99% of schools will be designated as "failing."

Kevin Carey points out in Quick and the Ed that the number of schools which had 100% results under NCLB in Illinois increased -- it doesn't look like the trend there is to have a higher and higher number of schools failing. Check out his post: http://www.quickanded.com/2007/03/nclb-paranoia.html

Is it possible that under objective standards some large majority of public schools are in fact failing? Or is that unthinkable just because it is ugly?

It is possible. However, it is not the case that this fact is demonstrated by special ed kids not passing the same standardized tests as everyone else. Those with learning disabilities are counted among the 100%. It has made life hell for teachers at special-ed schools.

But, if the bar is sufficiently low, then isn't it fair to say that the school in question has failed in its duties to educate this student?

My high school had several students with Down's syndrome and other forms of severe learning disabilities. Many of them could not read and obviously, it would be ludicrous to suggest that my school failed because they couldn't pass (or, for that matter, take) a standardized test. Under NCLB, these students are not exempt from the 100% requirement. If you ask me, subjecting them to the same standards as other students is tantamount to leaving them behind.

> We can't say that 100% of 6th graders should be able to
> read "See Spot Run" out loud and know that 2+2=4?
>
> We aren't talking about special ed kids, here -- they
> don't get the same tests that the rest of the students do.
> And we aren't talking about kids who have literally no idea
> how to speak English (or whatever language classes are being
> taught in). If you're monolingual in Vietnamese, you just
> don't attend public school.

No we can't.
Yes we are.
Yes they do.
Yes we are.
Yes they do.

Ran out of right-arrow characters so I couldn't quote any more of your post. You are working from a mid-1960s model of how school districts operate to serve their children. Just a simple anecdote: our elementary school rebuilt an entire wing to accomodate _one_ student who suffered a severe leg/hip injury. And that is not by any means an extreme example of how things are done in the oughts.

Cranky

For Mr. Sullivan, re: special ed kids (disclaimer: I have one who is currently in 3rd grade)

You are wrong, special ed kids *do* take the same tests. There are provisions to exempt very small numbers of them and allow them to take alternative assessments, but there are many more kids who will not be able to pass these tests because of their cognitive disabilities than there are permitted exemptions.

Most special needs kids go to the same public schools as their typically-developing ("normal")peers. The federal special education law requires that special needs students be placed in "the least restrictive envirnonment," and research has shown that these kids do much better over the long run if they are mainstreamed as much as possible. But this means that many schools are going to be labled as failing under NCLB because the test scores of children with mental retardation, autism and other serious developmental disabilities are going to be counted against them.

Also, if you are a school aged child who is "monolingual in Vietnamese," you *do* attend public school and after you have been in this county a year and a day, you take the NCLB tests. Again, when you fail, your school fails.

So it sounds like there is recognition that not all special ed kids should take the same tests. The exemptions should be broadened, taking Suburban Mom at her word. This is an implementation problem, not a repudiation of the concept. There will, of course, always be boundary cases where it's unclear whether a child is sufficiently handicapped that they ought to be taking the normal test or not. This, again, does not suggest that 99% of schools will be failing.

If our public schools are "educating" children who don't understand a significant amount of the language they're being taught in, you're damn right they're failing. Why in the world should our tax dollars be spent to send a kid to a class taught in a language they don't understand? It would obviously be a better use of resources to either teach the child in a language that they do understand, or teach the child English. If NCLB functions to show that a significant fraction of schools are teaching children in languages that they don't understand, that sounds like a worthy thing it's doing.

I acknowledge, of course, NCLB may point out the problem and then do nothing to fix it, or even be counterproductive towards fixing it. However, the basic framework of the law (require mandatory proficiency tests, then, if they're failed, yank some of the funding for that child and reallocate it towards individual tutoring for that child or towards allowing the child to change schools) doesn't seem necessarily counterproductive towards the goal. If we have a hypothetical monolingual-Vietnamese child, then tutoring the child in English or transferring her to a school where Vietnamese instruction is available (if such a school exists -- obviously, more likely for Spanish or something) is a better solution than doing nothing.

Matt, you are trusting that Bush is not acting cynically. This is SOP. They name something the opposite of what it really is.
Healthy forests, clear skies, Iraqi freedom, . . . fool me once . . . don't get fooled again. In the long run NCLB hurts public schools and will shift money and students toward charter schools (businesses) and private schools (churches). And who are the students that end up leaving with tax dollars in their pockets? Who is left in the public schools? The vicous cycle accelerates. It's over before you know it. It's a perfect bi-partisan bill to help achieve conservative ends.

For Chist's Sake, Matt. You are one gullible fellow sometimes.

Michael B. Sullivan,
I have no doubt you mean well, but it is fairly clear that you have not spent much time in a modern suburban school since the 1970s. And you seem to be assuming that the teachers, administrators, and even the much-maligned educational theorists are all incompetent idiots - whereas my experience is that they are (as a rule, with exceptions) competent, well-educated, and capable. They have just finished a 20 year program to mainstream handicapped and non-English-speaking children as the studies showed overwhelmingly that that was the best approach for _all_ parties involved (including the other kids); now you suggest that all be undone in order to satisfy NCLB requirements /set by people who have stated on record that they despise public education/. Can you see why such arguements aren't taken too seriously?

Cranky

NCLB should have been a non-starter, but it was a good con. Has there been a rash of teachers not teaching, testing, and grading students? The entire premise is dumb. Whose schools will this effect and how? Simple questions get to the motives of those involved.

What Douglas said. Except he left out the third place money gets shifted to: the companies which publish both the tests and the test prep materials.

Last year I signed up to be a volunteer "Reading Buddy" at my kid's school. I was assigned two first graders who needed help with their reading and every week I spent half an hour with each of them. For the girl who loved animals, I brought in books about dogs and cats; for the boy who liked science, I brought in "Rookie Reader" science books.

This year my Reading Buddies and I are plowing through the book their teacher felt forced to assign us: "Ohio Assessment Prep." It is a collection of short passages (many poorly written and all very, very dull) followed by multiple choice questions.

Cranky - this would hardly be the first time that, having tailored practice to maximize for one particular goal, public opinion and educational theory shifted its attention to another goal with practice following. I'm sure each of these shifts was considered unserious by the old guard, but they happened nonetheless, neh?

What is the proficiency standard?

One that an IQ 70 person can meet? IQ 90? IQ 110?

Where ever you set it there will be people who can't meet the goal and others who will be insufficiently educated.

Inequality

I can attest to the unqualified success of NCLB. I own a parent/teacher store in an affluent N California suburb. This act is aimed directly at the parents in my area and it is doing exactly what it is intended to do. The testing and lowering of standards is making middle-class parents desperate for alternatives. It is driving qualified and experienced teachers out. It is making public education a joke, and the equivalent of riding the Greyhound bus - it's for losers. Now they just have to float the voucher plan and every parent in the middle class will jump at the chance to get their kids out. NCLB is not about raising the test scores of inner city kids -

Where all this goes wrong is in the assumption that everyone has an equal ability to be educated.

You might as well assume that we are all equally capable of being NFL stars. Or running the 4 minute mile. Or being rocket scientists.

"whereas my experience is that they are (as a rule, with exceptions) competent, well-educated, and capable."

We could spend a month listing all the companies and organizations that have been run by competent, well-educated, capable people that have failed catastrophically. Its not enough. Motivation, flexibility, innovation, and good ideas count for a lot, and these are the things that have been murdered in our public school systems (through a variety of culprits).

"Sebastian, in a society where an expensive elite private educational system has taken root, is it even remotely possible for an educational system that is required by law to educate the lowest common denominators to achieve outcomes that look impressive compared to private schools?"

I don't understand what this has to do with it. I'm not asking that public schools 'look impressive'. I'm asking that they educate students to some not-ridiculously-low standard. It seems to me very possible, if not likely, that lots of public schools (and maybe even a majority of them) don't.

All italicized things are comments by Cranky Observer:

Michael B. Sullivan,
I have no doubt you mean well, but it is fairly clear that you have not spent much time in a modern suburban school since the 1970s.

Here we have a good example of why you don't try to read the mind of people you're debating with: you look silly.

My experience with suburban schools is rather more influenced by the 80's and 90's than the 70's, because I was born in 1977, and it's difficult to do careful analysis of schools when you're an infant and toddler.

And you seem to be assuming that the teachers, administrators, and even the much-maligned educational theorists are all incompetent idiots - whereas my experience is that they are (as a rule, with exceptions) competent, well-educated, and capable.

No, I am not.

They have just finished a 20 year program to mainstream handicapped and non-English-speaking children as the studies showed overwhelmingly that that was the best approach for _all_ parties involved (including the other kids);

Studies showed overwhelmingly that over the last 20 years, handicapped children performed better when they took the NCLB tests with their non-handicapped peers? Awesome! I wasn't aware that time travel was so advanced these days.

I did not suggest that handicapped children be taken out of regular classes. I suggested that those who are developmentally incapable of meeting a low bar of performance be exempted from the normal NCLB tests (which are intended to test proficiency, not to educate).

As to foreign language instruction: If any of "teachers, administrators, and much-maligned educational theorists" suggest that the best way to teach a child who literally doesn't understand any english is to plunk him down in an english-language class with a hope and a prayer, then, yes, they are idiots. I understand the difference -- as I hope you do -- between children who are having difficulty with English (and will learn in at least large part by immersion) and those who simply do not speak it, particularly as grade levels increase.

As a side anecdote, my friend recently spent a year doing once-a-week tutoring of a kid who was bilingual, but was reading english at a couple of grade levels below his class year. None the less, he could handle "Spee Spot Run," (and rather considerably more) at third grade, which you suggest is an unattainable goal for all sixth graders.

Can you see why such arguements aren't taken too seriously?

Well, I can certainly see how the version of my arguments which exists solely in your mind isn't take too seriously. Can you see how the immediate reduction of any criticism of teachers, administrators, and educational theoricts to ridiculous strawmen might prevent other people from taking you seriously?

I'm sure you mean well, too.

The top 1% (in education however acquired) probably account for around 50% of our technological and business advances.

The top 10% probably account for 99%.

The numbers may be off but you get the idea.

Investing in our top performers (from where ever they come) will have the biggest pay off. Of course something like that can't be done. The result would be too many Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. We would not have "diversity". Why aren't there any calls for more diversity in NBA players? Why are there so few short guys on the teams? Don't 5' 4" guys deserve a spot? Why are blacks way over represented? Its not fair.

So where did we put most of the "new" money? In the bottom 10%. Very egalitarian. Stupid, but egalitarian. Don't get me wrong - bringing the bottom 10% up is a good idea, but not, as has happened, at the expense of the top 10%.

> and it's difficult to do careful analysis of
> schools when you're an infant and toddler.

Clearly - which you have just demonstrated in great detail.

Cranky

By the way, I want to point out that it's not that I think that NCLB is or should be immune to criticism. There are a variety of completely valid problems with it that come from tying too many rewards to a single test -- it encourages institutionalized cheating, teaching the test, sacrificing anything that's extraneous to the test, etc. Those are structural problems that are not solved by just tweaking a variable here or there, either: they're going to be a problem for any kind of NCLB-like proposal.

I also think that in general having politicians or government bureaucrats decide "this is what is important and what we should test against" is inherently somewhat problematic, because, contra-Cranky, I do have respect for teachers, administrators, and the various people on the ground, and think that they generally have a better idea than someone in government of what needs to be taught.

M. Sullivan says:

If any of "teachers, administrators, and much-maligned educational theorists" suggest that the best way to teach a child who literally doesn't understand any english is to plunk him down in an english-language class with a hope and a prayer, then, yes, they are idiots.

Those Berlitz folks must be some really good scammers.

I know it is harder at first. For a while almost nothing can be accomplished. The end result however, is greater proficiency. Which is a very valuable skill.

BTW roughly 60% of Hispanics think bi-lingual education does not give sufficient Englih competency. Well, what do they know?

In any case you have a large population that would be willing to do the experiment. Why not give it a shot and see what happens?

M. Simon: I learned a couple of languages, and spent some time in Germany, and I know the value of immersion learning.

But the key (and I think that this is more true the older that you get) is that you're being taught a language via immersion, rather than just "being immersed." When I studied Japanese in a classroom where no English was spoken, it's not just like there were some Japanese people there talking back and forth and I picked it up. You had a teacher who was concentrating on a simple vocabulary, repeating herself, trying hard to make herself understood. You had dialog, and obviously the focus was on teaching you the language.

So, after three years of high school German, in an immersive style, I went to Germany for a month as an exchange student. Nobody was going to take me for a native, but I could get around, and needless to say my conversational German improved dramatically over those weeks. When people spoke to me in German, I could usually understand at least the gist of what they were saying. However, the classes at my host brother's school were still wholly baffling (except math, where I could bootstrap myself via the written equations). They used specialized vocabulary, the teacher was not trying to engage me, was not repeating himself and finding new ways to say things when I didn't understand, and it was all pretty fast. And, again, this was after several years of study and then a few weeks of conversational immersion, and I really was a decent speaker.

Obviously, there comes a point where immersion is pretty much all you need (plus maybe some formalized grammar instruction to get the bits that tend to be glossed over in spoken language). But at the beginning of language instruction, I don't think that anyone learns by pure immersion, not even small children (instead, their parents act as teachers, trying to engage them, repeating things, correcting them when they get something wrong).

That's not to say that we should teach all classes in Spanish. And probably the majority of latino children in the US public school system are relatively proficient in (at least!) simple conversational English.

M. Sullivan,

I learned enough Spanish in 2 weeks of immersion at age 26 to get around and by 6 weeks I could get the gist of conversations. My knowledge of Spanish was zero when I started. And I'm a technology major.

No special help. Just a Spanish/English dictionary and fear of getting on the wrong train or bus and dirty looks from waitresses when I said something stupid or unintelligible.

I'm not against an hour a day in rudimentary English training. However, bi-lingual education as it is now practiced is a dis-service to non-English speakers who want to be proficient in their new native tounge.

M. Simon:

I don't think that your experience is typical. Now, I may well be somewhat slow at languages (this isn't false humility -- I've taken enough language study to know that my ability to grasp vocabulary may well be sub-average). But I met a fair number of American expats in both Japan and Germany who had lived there extensively without picking up some very basic rudimentary skills. There was a guy I ran into in Kyoto who'd just been vacationing entirely by himself in Japan for three weeks who literally had three words of the language (all of them so badly accented I have some doubt that he was comprehensible to most speakers).

On the other hand, maybe you're right, and it typically is possible to attain fluency in a very short period of time via immersion. If so, awesome. Then we don't need to worry about kids failing the NCLB tests because they're non-native English speakers, and we can just go ahead and give them at the end of the year, at which point the formerly non-proficient students will be able to clear the low bar that we're setting.

My kids' high school "failed", while simultaneously being named one of the top public high schools in the country. I have to say, I wondered then whether the standards made any sense at all. 100% of students are never going to do anything together all at once, much less attain some ever-changing credential. Truth is, and it has ever been thus, as soon as the majority of students attain mastery of something, tests are made harder. (I'm speaking from experience-- I'm a teacher.) The point of tests is, after all, to fail at least some students. I don't particularly like that, but if even 80% of students passed a statewide competency test, everyone would be saying it was too easy.

As for English fluency-- kids and teenagers typically quickly attain verbal fluency, but written fluency lags far, far behind, and often because they are not given special help (because they -seem- so fluent) they never do catch up. These tests are all written tests, and students who are not considered ESL (because they -sound- fluent) are at a disadvantage.

But I do get the idea that the legislators and policy makers involved in this NCLB program didn't actually have much exposure to real kids or real classrooms. I'm all for higher achievement, but I don't see this happening-- I just see more kids dropping out without a diploma.

I am a 5th year public high school teacher in a middle class school district in suburban Detroit. I am politically conservative. No Child Left Behind is reviled within public education for one simple reason-accountability. Student achievement (or lack thereof) is being monitored via state-created standardized tests. Four student subgroups are monitored for progress (minority students, students with disabilities, English as Second Language learners, and economically disadvantaged). Are there problems with the law as it is currently written? Absolutely.

Is No Child Left Behind effective legislation for trying to hold public school districts accountable for student performance? To some degree.

Is No Child Left Behind 'better' than an absence of legislation? Absolutely.

I respect Mr. Yglesias' opinion about the intent of conservatives to discredit and 'destroy' public education, but I entirely disagree. Conservative and Christians want school vouchers, but this does not mean that No Child Left Behind is a massive public relations junta against public schools.
Why do conservatives and Christians want vouchers? Because there is a very palpable bias (in some cases bigotry) against both of the aforementioned groups. Also, some conservatives and Christians simply want to find a stable way of funding schools that espouse their values. In the same way that public school teachers want to continue the monopoly on their employment, and continue with schools that espouse liberal assumptions.

I can tell you that public school Superintendents, school boards, building administrators, and many teachers dislike N.C.L.B, but that is because information is actually being gathered and published to the local tax-paying community at-large.

How well were American public schools educating our youth prior to No Child Left Behind? It was virtually unknown. Superintendents were happy as long as the school board that hired them was content with the local community's perception of the schools was positive. Principals were happy as long as 'no problems' existed that would reflect poorly on them to their boss, and teachers implemented curriculum (or didn't) as soon as they shut their classroom door.

No Child Left Behind is flawed, and needs to be changed, so Adequately Yearly Progress (A.Y.P.) is determined by achievable progress. For example, if 95% of your students do not take the state-standardized test, your school automatically fails. Also, only one public high school in Michigan received an 'A' grade. What happens if that school does not achieve the same grade?

Conservatives need to stop pushing merit pay which would make the teacher accountable for student I.Q., family life, student motivation, student work ethic, and student performance. Liberals need to stop protecting teachers' unions at all costs.

A compromise seems to be seriously amend N.C.L.B to demonstrate meaningful progress among these four sub-groups (as well as the majority of the student body), and measure student growth, while keeping in mind that the students educators work with change from year-to-year and will perform differently on these standardized tests.

Conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats need to work together to make public schools work effectively, to monitor meaningful student achievement effectively, and make public schools educate our children effectively. It is easy for a Congressman or Congresswoman to rail against or protect-at-all-costs America's public schools when they send their children to affluent public schools (de facto college-prep schools) or $15,000 per year private schools.

I'm not going to be kind. Normally I like your stuff, but this is moronic.

How stupid do you possibly have to be to not understand that NCLB was intended to undermine confidence in our public school system? I've been saying this since it was passed.

The problem is god damn stupid liberals think that you need big massive federal legislation to do things, and they jumped on board this gladly. You can call me a conspiracy mongerer if you want, but why on earth would a party go from demanding we abolish the Dept of Education in 1994, to suddenly calling for this massive program in under 10 years? On top of that, do you think it's any surprise that the unfunded mandates haven't been funded? Come on, get with the program.

The best thing that could happen to America is for NCLB to fail to be renewed. It's not intended to help students. It serves other ideological purposes.

A core problem in any production system is variation in incoming material.

Even if the production system is perfect (an impossibility) sufficient variation in incoming material will ruin output.

So what are the schools faced with? IQ ranges from 70 to 180. That is a HUGE variation. Add in the variation of teacher quality and you have more possible defect generators in the system.

Do schools use statistical quality control to figure out what the system can really produce and then work to fix systemic problems? Of course not.

NCLB is not based on sound production principles. It is what you get when lawyers write the rules.

Because of wide variation in inputs school systems need to be customized for the students. The process needs to be different based on the possibliities for each student. Do we try to do that? A little. It is why we have Advanced Placement courses. However, those are in disfavor because they are not sufficiently "diverse".

Which is why we have aggitation for vouchers. With more and smaller systems they can be designed for the capabilities of the students enrolled. If the customer is unhappy they can take their business elsewhere.

What kind of production system forces the customer to accept the quality of the output without recourse? Back in the USSR?

The Other Steve,
Public schools do not need No Child Left Behind to 'undermine confidence in our public school system', public schools already do that. They are structurally organized for mediocrity. They monopoly over public funding allows money to be spent on AP classes for the high achievers, and small class sizes for the students with disabilities, and the massive middle achievers are underserved. Time Magazine, Newsweek, and US News & World Report run cover story after cover story about "Our Kids are Stressed Out" articles about how they are involved in soccer, dance, and then have two hours of homework. I challenge the entire premise of the amount of homework these students have, and maybe the activist so-called journalists should targe the largest failing agent of socialization in American society-the families that these children are being raised in.

In terms of your 'how stupid' comment, it says a lot about you, and your inability to discuss issues in a reasonable manner.

In terms of returning schools to local control--it hasn't worked in the past, and will not work in the future. The most successful government (public) education systems in the world are the most federalized. As a teacher, I do not want a centrally-planned education system, but local control is not preparing these children for a college, technical work, or a globalized employment market. In theory complete local autonomy sounds great, but devolves into teenagers throwing a party when Mom and Dad are out of town. When nobody is looking the accountability is gone.
Many people would be stunned that the assumption that parents want a good education for their children is true rhetorically, but when the rubber meets the road-"pass my kid" becomes the mantra.

I am stunned that you have fallen for this nonsense. There is no Republican program so blatant that it cannot find a "liberal" Democrat or two to sponsor it. Read the articles you dismiss so blithely. Then come here to Milwaukee and talk to my daughter's school principal, or go talk to hardworking principals in the Miami or Detroit or East St. Louis school districts, about what NCLB does to public schools in the real world. Get your head out of...

the Beltway...

and come see what real life is like in flyover country.

What they want is vouchers and school choice, and this is their way to get there. The Democrats may have developed NCLB, but remember, THEY were going to FUND it. Dumbya would rather fund the terrorists.

The schools don't want to service special needs kids as it is (I am a teacher and have an autistic child, I know from experience) and NCLB costs them so much, forcing them to teach all kids to the tests for fear of losing $$$$$. This is only going to make it worse.

NCLB *should* be good for them, in theory, but it backfires because they don't provide the funding to educate these kids with truly appropriate methods. Yet the percentage of kids exempted from testing is so low that their scores affect the schools....and if you think the gov't doesn't know that....

Low scores = more people wanting out of the public school system (because who wants to go to a lousy district?) and more wanting private school to be paid for them.

When they get rid of the worksheets developed to teach these kids the tests, kids will start to get better test scores because the teachers can then teach them how to THINK. Novel concept, huh?

Michael Sullivan, you are wrong. >>We aren't talking about special ed kids, here -- they don't get the same tests that the rest of the students do. And we aren't talking about kids who have literally no idea how to speak English (or whatever language classes are being taught in). If you're monolingual in Vietnamese, you just don't attend public school.

Sorry, but in PA, you have to be a vegetable in order to NOT take the PSSA testing. And the monolingual Vietnamese are dumped in right with all the rest of them.

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