The federal government should have a role in education. But to date, it has not been on the leading edge of improving education in the United States.
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was a poorly disguised political attempt to leverage the federal government's 7 percent (on average) contribution to school budgets into a club to create the public perception that all public schools are failing, that teacher tenure (mistakenly confused with seniority) is the cause of the perceived failure, that "expensive" teachers' union perks should be eliminated and NCLB-defined "failing" schools should be turned over to lower paying private corporations hiring only "at will" employees who can be easily fired.
Negative side effects of NCLB include: the bullying by administration of senior staff that we endured in Edmonds (and also reported locally in Ki-Be); lower Washington Assessment of Student Learning scores after the experienced teachers were driven from the classroom; the test cheating scandal in Atlanta (Texas had these before NCLB went national from there, but they were sandbagged); the narrowing of subjects taught in schools (emphasis on math, reading and writing to the detriment of art, music, social studies and physical education); the devaluing of the importance of different teaching styles; the drive for all teachers to teach the same lesson on the same day in the same way; the loss of classroom time in order to teach test-taking strategies rather than subject matter, the abandonment of higher end students' needs while resources were diverted to improve the "low hanging fruit," and on and on. Under NCLB, if you failed to reach the unrealistic goals, your funding was taken away. Somehow you were expected to succeed with even fewer resources than you had before.
Race to the Top (RTTT) holds out money to improve education, but also comes with the required acceptance of rules (national curriculum standards) and theories (value-added methods of teacher evaluation-VAM) of dubious value. VAM is an assessment theory in which a mathematical algorithm is applied to the state test scores of students that claims to factor out the "non-teacher factors" (poverty, hunger, bullying, poor parenting, gang influences, sexual assaults, drug use, etc.) and give a "true score" of the teacher's effectiveness upon which teacher salaries can be calculated (again with an eye to lowering teacher pay and benefits, not paying for superior performance). An example of one of the many fallacies of this theory comes from my life. I struggled with math, working hard to earn C-plus to B grades. Along came geometry in my sophomore year. Because I am a strong visual learner, I found it easy; I got an A.
The teacher, however, had little, if anything, to do with my sudden "progress;" algebra III and trig the next year produced C's again. With VAM perimeters applied, however, she would have been judged a superior teacher. If an excellent math teacher is assigned to teach English, their VAM score might not be so good because they are teaching out of their subject area. (Principals have been known to deliberately place teachers in unfamiliar subjects as a bullying tactic.) Advocates of this false theory should understand that valid teacher evaluations can only be done through direct observation. Several school districts around the country have successfully implemented observation-based evaluations.
Principals are supposed to be the first line in the discovery of teachers who are underperforming. In practice, however, they either don't know what good teaching looks like, don't know how to counsel teachers to improve or don't have the time it takes to do the job adequately. Successful programs include teams of master teachers who assist struggling teachers as well as performing their regular evaluation function.
Federal guidelines should encourage the adoption of curriculum, methods and evaluation systems known to produce good results. "Reform" should be encouraged from the bottom up, rather than the top down.
-- Richard Reuther, Richland
