Fixing NCLB

Jim Ryan has a piece posted at Slate on how to fix NCLB. It's worth reading in its entirety, but, not surprisingly, I disagree with some of his points. In the interest of space, I've paraphrased some of his key points; I hope I've been fair to his arguments, but, again, I would recommend going back to his original article.

Expand testing beyond Reading/Math/Science, to include history, literature, geography, art, and music. I think this is a terrible idea. I'm a huge advocate of standardized testing, but I actually favor scrapping science testing on a national level. Reading and math are special is because (1) they are fundamental to learning every other subject, and (2) they can be tested relatively cheaply and objectively compared to other subjects. On a more practical level, history, lit, art, and music curricula is decided at the locally - which is exactly as it should be. Testing for these subjects on a national level essentially establishes a national curriculum; if you thought standards are lax now, wait until you see the pablum produced by a national curriculum which caters to every interest group from every last corner of the country. And if you think you're annoyed by evolution/ID debates, just wait until we have to decide what goes into the history books.

Administer fewer tests. Ryan suggests testing only in 4th, 8th, and 11th grades. I think Ryan has it backwards; he wants comprehensive tests on many subjects every few years. Tests can be a great diagnostic tool, but they're only useful if you're getting data quickly and regularly. It makes much more sense to test a few subjects quickly, and often.

I think what we need are short, multiple choice tests on reading & math, given three times a year at each grade level. Each test should take no longer than 60 minutes each, and I like multiple-choice because they can be graded by machine very quickly. This means that a school should be able to administer, grade, and report the tests in a single day, allowing you to (a) schedule them on a Saturday to avoid interfering with the school year, and (b) get the results back almost immediately, allowing you to diagnose problem areas and adjust your teaching accordingly.

Rank schools; don't prescribe punishments. - I actually mostly agree with him on this one. Simply labelling a school as failing is the bureaucratic equivalent of giving a student an 'F' on his final without marking any of the wrong answers. Going back to my earlier point, what we need is a diagnostic allowing every school in the country to see what they are doing well, and what they are doing poorly. He also mentions another good idea: setting a uniform standards on measuring graduation rates.

Teachers and Money - This is the most curious passage. He specifically mentions low supplies of math/science teachers, and teachers in poor/minority districts, but offers a simplistic answer of 'more money'. He hints at it, but stops just short of what I believe is the full answer: 'more money, but not for everyone.' In other words, differential pay scales that reflect actual supply and demand for teachers. This is very likely to mean significantly higher pay for math/science teachers, and slightly lower pay for humanities teachers. Of course, I suspect that this is just the surface of the problem, which is exactly where he continues...

Teachers and Prestige. - Again, I think he gets it half-right when he says "respect, prestige, and decent working conditions also matter.", but I think he gets it wrong when he continues, "[the Federal government] can create a teaching program that restores prestige to the profession." Again, I think he gets it completely backwards - prestige is not something that can be created out of the ether, but something that has to be earned and developed from the ground up. This brings us back to a recurring topic here at KTM: the professionalization of teachers and teacher training. That is a subject far too deep to cover here, so I'll save that for a separate post (which I hope to complete sometime in this century).