No Child Left Behind

1. No Child Left Behind Print media, government publications, and the policy’s implications

2. Presentation Overview: • Reviewing some of the available resources to the public, namely: • New York Times articles spanning the last four years • White House’s publications regarding NCLB • The Educational Departments material on the same • Two separate comprehensive reports regarding charters.

3. Presentation Goal: • I would like to attempt a snapshot on some of the key issues that this Act raises and at best hope to better inform of the most wide reaching federal program into education since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Furthermore, I would like to press upon the history of private influence upon the public sphere of education both historically and present day.

4. Goals of Schooling: Democratic Equality: “Argues that a democratic society cannot persist unless it prepares all of its young with equal care to take on the full responsibilities of citizenship in a competent manner.” Social Efficiency: “Argues that our economic well- being depends on our ability to prepare the young to carry out useful economic roles with competence.” Social Mobility: “Argues that education is a commodity, whose only purpose is to provide individual students with a competitive advantage in the struggle for desirable social positions.”

5. So what? • These three basic goals create a fundamental contradiction in the purpose of schooling. • However, what I want to expressly focus on is the effect industry has had on education through the lens of social efficiency.

6. Social Efficiency • “In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a heterogeneous alliance of leaders from business, labor, and education launched an effort to make the school curriculum more responsive to the needs of the occupational structure.” (Labaree 22)

7. Social Efficiency • “Over the years, the idea that schools should be making workers more than making republicans has undermined the ability of schools to act as a mechanism for promoting equality of access and equality of treatment. The notion of educational equality is at best irrelevant to the expansion of GNP, and it is counterproductive in a capitalist economy, where the pursuit of competitive advantage is the driving force behind economic behavior. Under the pressure to be economically productive, schools have adopted a structure that is highly stratified.” (Labaree 25)

8. Thus… • Over time the public good (equality and equity) have been in conflict with capitalist stratification. This binary is further complicated by several other factors, but regardless the root of educational inequality is the systems opposing goals. From here I will now move into the present educational platform and how it represents this binary.

9. First I want to start off with a look into the Education Department’s snapshot of NCLB. Here we have their “10 Facts About K-12 Education Funding.”

10. The first of the ten is that “The U.S. Constitution leaves the responsibility for public K-12 education with the states.” The message is that the federal government is here to “supplement, not supplant, state support.”

11. This appears a move to rhetorically not overstep the bounds of state versus federal government, a cornerstone of our democratic framework from both a historic and modern framing. I bring this up not only as a random point, but to press the notion of federal power versus state and local; and furthermore to question whether or not this program is overlooking a fundamental problem of nationalizing schools. America is not uniform and to try and create a national doctrine may be futile in it of itself. But in the same vein that is over generalizing the goals of NCLB, many of which have a commonly accepted social value. Implication

12. Another fact presented is that the U.S. “is a world leader in education investment. However, nations that spend far less achieve higher levels of student performance.”

13. Implication This fact seems to legitimize the NCLB Act and refutes the idea that lack of funding is the catalyst for school failure. However, in opposition to that statement this statistic merely shows an average, while negating to show that many students receive far less the estimated $9,000 per student. Furthermore, the chart only documents secondary education, and not K-8 which is where the bulk of the NCLB program is invested, thus the relevance of such a statistic seems jaded. I bring this up as a means of illustrating the rhetoric versus reality that the Department of Education is painting.

14. The next four facts all fall under what I would categorize as increased funding facts. The fourth fact points out that from 90-91 the federal share of K-12 education has risen from 5.7% to 8.2%, which by my calculations comes out to be roughly 41 billion dollars compared to state and local funds which make up about 416 billion dollars nation wide. Now these numbers are by no means mere drops in a hat, and even though comparatively the federal government pays far less, 41 billion dollars is a substantial amount of money.

17. HOWEVER:Is it worth it for states to take the money while attempting to meet the extremely high accountability standards?

18. “There are no federal education “mandates.” Every federal education law is conditioned on a state’s decision to accept federal program funds.” However, as the federal government has increasingly become a larger contributor to educational funding is it feasible to think that schools, especially those in poorer communities, could in fact turn down such monies after relying on it for so many years. The problem as I see it is that those who are the most strapped and struggling seem to have the least latitude to accommodate these new standards.

19. At this point I want to shift gears and look at several Times articles that show some of the short comings of this policy and bear with me as I attempt this adventure of sorts. After reviewing a number of articles, about 150 roughly spanning the last 4 years, I wish to point out some of the common themes that occurred over and again and highlight articles that exemplified these.

20. Confusion related to NCLB Look at parental confusion in regards to accountability and choice.

21. To reiterate the consequences of NCLB, schools listed as failing face such consequences as allowing students to transfer, provide tutoring, replacing administrators and teachers, and even closing problem schools and allowing for the implementation of charter schools.

22. First, under the evaluation system, which varies from state to state, many schools are labeled as failing or rather have “failed to make “adequate yearly progress” (New York Times, 1/27/04). In fact “about 26,000 of the nations 91,400 public schools are on probation” for this failure.

23. Thus a great number of schools after consecutive years of failure now have to offer school transfers to students who opt to move, or rather the parents who choose such action.

24. What I am questioning is the reliability of placing the burden of choice solely on the shoulders of parents, many of whom are not familiar with the vertiginous workings of public education. By creating a confusion around what constitutes a failing school parents start off less equipped to judge whether or not their children are receiving quality education or not.

25. According to an Aug. 29th, 2003 article the capacity of parents even comes into question. “The challenge in New York, and in other large urban systems, is that parents are especially hard to reach. Some are so poorly educated that they would be better served with a letter at a fourth-grade reading level, rather than the dense, acronym-filled communications they receive. To make matters worse, critics say, many parents speak no English, and even if they got a letter in their own language, they would have a hard time calling providers to compare services. And many are single parents, working long hours at jobs where it is not possible to make personal calls on company time.” And this is just the tip of the ice berg, for there are parents out there who just don’t care or do not want to be bothered with the burden of navigating the paperwork, people, and all in all bureaucracy that goes hand in hand with this policy.

26. Yet even those parents who do attempt to choose schools run into roadblocks in regards to student choice. In an Oct. 15th, 2004 article Eva S. Moskowitz a Council committee chairwoman in New York stated that “she suspected many parents were not made aware of their right to transfer out of failing schools and objected to the decision to disallow high school transfers (a move that I believed passed), particularly given that not all of last year’s eighth graders got one of their top 12 choices.” And this problem is seen across the country where schools move to block transfers or limit them, let alone allow students to go to schools of their parents choosing. In an Oct 1st, 2003 article it states that, “In Chicago, 19,000 applied for transfers, but Mr. Duncan approved just 1,100. In Los Angles, there were 229 transfers.”

27. To complicate matters, school choice doesn’t appear to be the answer either due to transfer problems leading to overcrowding in schools who are already strapped. In a previous quotation of the New York school system I mentioned a move to disallow high school transfers, which was based on the problem that arose in ’03 from overcrowding brought about by the allowing of 8,000 transfer requests, many of whom were sent to schools that were themselves failing. (Oct 1, 03). This problem arises from the provision in the law that according to the same Oct 1st article that, “If a school has failed to make adequate progress for two years, yet is not a Title 1 school…then it can receive transfers under federal law.”

28. Therefore, what are we left with from this vantage? The key aspect of parental choice is that it allows a loophole for failure and blame. To break this down, by placing the burden of choice on the parents it makes them to some degree responsible for the possible failing of the act or rather the failing of the entire public school system. Now I am not looking at this as some devious and malicious move to dastardly break down the system, but rather as an outcome that could come about without anyone realizing it until its too late. This at times ill choosing of schools by parents or even the appearance of choice can allow for a further breakdown in the system rather than improving it as it is believed to. Roughly I see parental choice turning into a scapegoat for failure and a move towards allowing more privatized schooling. So what?

29. And since I see no better time than now I would like to move into the most overlooked aspect of NCLB and that is the move towards charter schools, which I find is a paradox of the Act. On one hand the Act looks to increase accountability and tighten federal control of schools by pushing for uniformity, but in that same vein it allows for virtually unregulated charter schools.

30. First I want to touch upon what the White House puts out on charter schools or rather lack there of. According to the White House “Fact Sheet: No Child Left Behind Act” there is Expanded Choices for Parents: Enhances options for parents with children in chronically failing schools - and makes these options available immediately in the 2002-03 school year for students in thousands of schools already identified as failing under current law. Public/Charter School Choice: Once a school is identified as failing, parents will be allowed to transfer their child to a better-performing public or charter school. Charter Schools: Expands the charter school initiative, creating more opportunities for parents, educators and interested community leaders to create schools outside the education establishment.

31. And in another White House document found on its web page outlining NCLB there is an overview of Title IV which is entitled “Promoting Parental Options and Innovative Programs” stating that it “Promotes Charter Schools” whereby “Funding will be provided to assist charter schools with start-up costs, facilities, and other needs associated with creating high-quality schools.” All in all this aspect appears one of the most vague parts of the NCLB Act, but at the same time has the most disastrous potential, especially as we near the bench marks related to school failure. We are now nearing the time whereby consistently failing schools can be revamped and made into these charter schools, schools that fall out of the realm of accountability.

42. According to its abstract, “This paper examines survey data from principles of 1,010 charter schools nationwide during the 1999-2000 school year, along with 2,847 teachers in the same schools. Issues considered include how local activists and charter-school movement leaders define fairness in public education; how schools vary in basic resource levels, teacher quality, and support for low-achieving or disabled students; disparities linked to charter-school type; disparities linked to the ethnic makeup of schools; and gaps between charter and regular public schools. Sadly, charter schools suffer from inequities in basic resources, teacher quality, and student support that mirror disparate realities of regular public schools.”

43. And here are the major findings in relation to three main areas. • Disparities Linked to Charter School Type: • Charter elementary schools and high differ un teacher quality and staff ratio, whereby elementary schools have a better child to teacher ratio but high schools have more qualified teachers. • Start Up charters mobilize fewer resources than conversion charters. And conversion charted compensate teachers $5, 100 more annually. • Charter schools serve a significant number of low SES children, about 43% are eligible for Title I funds. Yet only 4.5 % draw on these available monies.

44. Less than 5% of charter school students are identified as English learners even though there is a sizable Latino population in these schools. 15 % in elementary schools and 23% in high schools. • Charters run by private companies (opposed to locally managed charters) rely more heavily on less experienced and uncredentialed teachers, where 55% work with emergency, provisional, or probationary certifications. • Only 1/3 of private run charters offer innovative or specialized curriculum compared to 48% of locally managed charters who do the same.

45. Disparities linked to the ethnic make up of schools: • Charter schools serve larger shares of African American and Latino students than their respective proportions found in regular public schools. But ethnic segregation is comparatively greater. ¾’s of all black charter students are enrolled in 273 schools and they make up 80% of these schools opposed to 54% representation among a comparable set of public schools. • Charters serving predominately black children rely more heavily on uncredentialed teachers, about 60%.

46. Gaps between charter and regular public schools: • Charter schools face tighter financing overall. • Regular schools attract and retain a much larger proportion of credentialed teachers. Just under 9% od regular public schools teachers are without a credential compared to 43% of charter school teachers. Also on average charter school teachers have seven fewer years of classroom experience.

47. U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Eugene W. Hickok today released the following statement regarding Evaluation of the Public Charter Schools Program, a report from the Department's Policy and Program Studies Service: "The findings from the study show that the Public Charter Schools Program is achieving its intended purpose: to provide states with flexible funding to support new charter schools. As can be evidenced by their growing popularity, charters are an important educational option for the nearly three-quarters of a million students who attend them—students who are, according to this report, disproportionately from low-income and minority backgrounds. These schools are popular because they respond to an unmet need: the provision of freedom and flexibility in the classroom in exchange for accountability for results. They provide real options for families who previously had none. And they demand continuous evaluation of both students and schools. This study is a part of that evaluation process.”

48. Continued… • One part of the study examined charter schools in five states and found that more than half of charter schools in each state (and 90 percent in Colorado) were meeting state performance standards in the 2001-02 school year (the year prior to the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act). However, charter schools were less likely to meet performance standards than traditional public schools. But that is all the study shows. It does not mean that traditional schools are outperforming charter schools or vice versa. The study is a snapshot, and it is impossible to know from one picture whether charter students are catching up or falling behind. Other more sophisticated studies have shown that charter schools do, in general, help students make faster progress than do traditional public schools, though charter students have more distance to cover. This should not be surprising, since the families most desperate for the new options charters provide are the ones whose children have been left behind by the traditional system.

49. Highlights of the Evaluation of the Public Charter Schools Program FINAL REPORT • Based on three years of data (collected in school years 1999-2000, 2000-01 and 2001-02), the national evaluation of the PCSP found that: • PCSP money is the most prevalent source of start-up funding available to charter schools. Nearly two-thirds have received federal PCSP funds during their start-up phase. Charter schools primarily use PCSP funds to purchase technology and curricular and instructional materials, as well as to fund professional development activities. • Charter schools are more likely to serve minority and low-income students than traditional public schools but less likely to serve students in special education.

50. Highlights continued • Charter schools, by design, have greater autonomy over their curriculums, budgets, educational philosophies, and teaching staff than do traditional public schools. Because some state charter school laws allow schools flexibility in hiring practices, charter schools as an overall group are less likely than traditional public schools to employ teachers meeting state certification standards. • In five case study states, charter schools are less likely to meet state performance standards than traditional public schools. It is impossible to know from this study whether that is because of the performance of the schools, the prior achievement of the students, or some other factor. The study design does not allow us to determine whether or not traditional public schools are more effective than charter schools.