NCLB, The End

A Blueprint for Reform has four main goals to improve NCLB. My last post covered the first two goals, which touched on the human aspect of education. The final two goals address standards, assessments and support.

- Goal three: Implementing college- and career-ready standards and developing improved assessments aligned with those standards.

- NCLB: Educators' greatest criticisms concerning NCLB was the vast standardized testing to measure Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Having students complete countless hours of practice exams did not create life-long learners, nor did it truly show what students knew.

- Blueprint: One change will be for "schools to use data in fundamentally different ways. Schools are measured not only by achievement level but also by growth." In order for schools to do this, the Department is investing $350 million toward states bettering assessment.  New assessments could be portfolios or projects.

- Goal four: Improving student learning and achievement in America's lowest-performing schools by providing intensive support and effective interventions.

- NCLB: NCLB set expectations for students who did not have the opportunity for early childhood interventions that subsequent NCLB guidelines create. These students probably entered school behind and although NCLB calls for increased funding for preschools, it did not take the situation of present-day students into account. When these students did not meet standards, NCLB guidelines punished their schools with decreased funding.

- Blueprint: The Department will fund schools to increase teaching areas like art and foreign languages to create learners and not test-takers. "The Blueprint also will provide funding to support high-quality instruction in these subjects, especially in our highest-need schools." Blueprint is more proactive in this way: it provides a well-rounded education before students become discouraged and behind.

Educators often prepossessed about the negatives of NCLB because the laws, regulations and agendas were more endless checks in an already long checklist. NCLB created some reasonable requirements, but with sensibility came nonsense. For example, it required that each school district "prepare and disseminate annual local report cards that include information on how students in the district and in each school performed on state assessments." Schools should communicate with parents in this manner; however, the state assessments were unfair. For instance, Illinois mandated that all students take the ACT. The ACT is meant to test college readiness. Not all high school students will go to college, nor should they all. Additionally, when schools struggled for their students to do well, schools bought practice tests and programs from (yep) ACT. For one part that was right, another was very, very wrong. Perhaps educators can positively say NCLB began an educational reform movement.

Perhaps not. Even if NCLB's inventors intended well, the reform measure was wrought with loopholes and potential abuses. As a high school teacher, I sat through meetings analyzing how many more students needed to answer one more question correctly to get an AYP score. I created binders of practice tests. I coached my students on test taking. I debated what to cut from local objectives. Cheers to the end of NCLB.

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