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Re: [Phys-l] NCLB: End It, Don't Mend It


Regarding testing...
I found a study that compared several nations high school scores on standardized test and the Lawson test of scientific reasoning. While the US was behind at certain grades on the standardized tests, the US was not behind on the Lawson test.
I think the study was from OSU. On my phone now & can't look it up.


Paul Lulai
Physics Teacher
St Anthony Village Senior High
3303 33rd Ave
St Anthony Village MN 55418

(w) 612-706-1146




----- Reply message -----
From: "John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>
Date: Tue, Nov 1, 2011 11:35 am
Subject: [Phys-l] NCLB: End It, Don't Mend It
To: "'Forum for Physics Educators'" <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>

The basic problem is that both the federal solution and the state solution
are looking at the wrong things. NCLB is actually just a version of the
most common state solution, test the students and blame the teachers. If
you do away with NCLB you are still left with the similar state solutions.

Neither the state nor the federal solution are looking at a more positive
solution of empowering teachers and retraining teachers in what works.
Instead both take a top down approach. As a result you now have school
districts which are making all teachers in a subject teach the same page on
the same day. TX has mandated 4 years of science and math which means that
the higher level courses are now dumbed down.

Let us look at some ideas:
1. Some states are trying to teach creationism in schools. This is
prevented by federal court oversight as far as the state standard is
concerned, but local teachers still do it.
2. Most administrators in the states and boards of education are totally
ignorant of the relevant research. In TX for example the members are
elected so fundamentalists end up on the board, and with the connivance of
the governor the head of the board is one of them. Such boards end up with
people who have little experience in the classroom, and are not aware of the
research.
3. Most every other country in the world has centralized control of
education, except for the US. And these countries generally score much
better on certain evaluation tests.
4. Many high scoring countries have vocational/industrial training as an
alternative to the straight college bound program, but the US has generally
lost these. In my son's school they put the goof-offs in the auto mechanics
course! Such programs often have half time schooling paired with an
internship.
5. Totally local community control of education has not shown to be better
than state control. For example tight local communities have been known in
the past to overtly teach their religion in class to the exclusion of the
few minority students. This has been done by teachers explaining the
majority religion, and then the minority students are put on the spot to
explain their point of view. So some sort of higher level control is
necessary.
6. Total local control may improve schools in Berkeley, but what about in
Kansas or TX?
7. Traditionally schools in the US have been designed to teach the
prevailing political/social orthodoxy. This was though necessary for
socializing immigrants. Should this still be done? For example TX is
trying to take many references to Jefferson out of the texts so that his
"wall of separation between church and state" is not considered reasonable.
8. Medicine advanced through research, and the old guard had to die or
retire so the new ideas could take hold. While this was going on, the
general public had not idea of what constituted better medicine, and we
still have no way of reliably evaluation which doctor to see. It is crap
shoot, but fortunately the general expertise has increased, but at an
exorbitant cost. Meanwhile MDs have retained a large amount of respect,
unlike teachers.
9. Similarly surveys find that parents like their local schools, even when
the test scores are low. So education is a crap shoot as far as parents are
concerned. Also there is a metastudy which showed that overall private and
public schools achieve the same test scores, so they are doing the same
things. This was also shown by Shayer&Adey.

Whether local, state, or national control of schools is desirable all
depends on what these bodies do. As long as the established research is
ignored, and religious/political biases are pushed in the schools the hope
for improved education is vaporous. Just inserting a profit motive is
unlikely to improve schools either. Elected school boards such as in TX are
often a disaster. But an appointed board might be worse. The TX state
board is split, but under a fundamentalist governor an appointed board would
have a totally free hand. So an impotent board is better than a really bad
one. But both are worse than one composed of experienced teachers who have
read and used the research. The worst TX board was headed by a dentist.
McElroy, show openly promoted his religious orthodoxy and circulated
religious tracts to other board members, at the same time that a staff
member who advertised a lecture on evolution was forced to resign.

Doing away with current NCLB might be a good idea. But doing away with
federal investment in education research and methods development would be a
disaster. Indeed this is currently happening so successful teacher
retraining programs like Modeling might end up having not funds. This is
typical, as promising innovations are generally abandoned in education. The
federal role should probably be one of promoting and funding good research
based approaches rather than mandating.

In sum centralized control can be either good or bad, but total local
control would probably make schools worse. So rational centralization is
probably good.

I would cite a couple of incidents where centralized decisions were good.
In a small NY community near where I grew up, they still had baccalaureate
services in school. The Baptist minister always presided. But one year a
class had a majority of Catholics so they asked for the priest. The
principal said he had to take it up with the board of education. The
Catholic parents said he never took it up with the board for the Baptist, so
if he did they would take it up with the NY state and have him removed. The
priest was asked, and then all the Protestants said they would not attend.
What actually happened is that the Baccalaureate was mobbed and the genial
Irish priest gave a nice non-denominational motivational talk, and he didn't
have horns or a tail. So he ended up being accepted.

In TX in Sante Fe, near Galveston, the school was openly promoting the
majority religion by electing single student to lead prayers at games.
There were many other violations as well. The Supreme Court ruled nearly
unanimously that this was illegal and had to be stopped. Meanwhile all
kinds of horrible things were going on like dumping garbage in the litigants
lawns and the Jewish city manager's lawn. He had nothing to do with it!!!

So federal oversight is probably necessary at some level just the same as it
was needed to get rid of jim-crow laws, but tight federal control may not be
needed. Incidentally Perry has come up with proposals to "reform" TX
colleges which have been called anathema by the schools. So here is an
example of where central control may not be good. Fortunately he has no
power to implement his program. A good political/social system is a balance
between centralization and decentralization. The extreme of either one is a
disaster. It is currenly popular to ignore the role of the federal and
state govenments in bankrolling desirable projects. This is gross mistake.
But they should not bankroll undesirable projects!

Is there any evidence that a totally decentralized education system would
work better?

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


I certainly agree with the concept of leaving education to
the local governments to tailor to the needs and resources of
individual communities. The "null hypothesis" is the route of
choice - I totally agree with that sentiment and I am glad
that you see that as reasonable.

My comment about having something else in place was in
response to the hodge-podge patchwork that the current
administration is employing. Districts that cannot meet NCLB
standards are being given wholesale dispensations from the
requirements - whereas moderately and strongly performing
schools are still having their feet held to the fire.


On 10/30/2011 05:03 PM, LaMontagne, Bob wrote:
People have to realize that there are school systems in certain
parts of this country that are so bad that "crisis" does not suffice
to describe them. [A]

NCLB may be the wrong way to affect accountability in schools, but
something should be ready to be put in it's place if the plug is
pulled.

It is not self-evident that we need any such "something". Also,
asking for "something" is a bit vague.

1) Why should we reject the null hypotheses?

2a) Why should anyone think that NCLB (also known as ECLBE) or
anything like it will help the schools mentioned in item [A] above?
I see not the slightest evidence of this.

2b) Even if, hypothetically, it might help those schools, it is
very hard to believe that it will come anywhere near outweighing
the harm that it is obviously doing to all the other schools.


Right now the only proposals I know of are
*) Continue ECLBE ("every child left behind equally)" as-is.
*) Reauthorize it with minor modifications and not-very-helpful
"waivers".
*) Just get rid of it entirely. This is the null hypothesis.
This would leave all decisions about testing, accountability,
etc. up to the individual states and local districts.

Of these, getting rid of it entirely is clearly the best option.
If you have another option, please fill us in on the specifics.
A lot of people would be very very eagerly interested.

I particularly ask all the "libertarians" and "conservatives"
why the ideas of decentralization, elimination of federal
regulation, states' rights, don't-tread-on-me, et cetera should
not apply to this issue.

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