Coalition calls for overhaul of law

NCLB critics: School curriculum turning into test-prep program --Photo by DAVID GUNTER Farmin-Stidwell Elementary School principal Anne Bagby sets high academic standards for her more than 600 students, while advocating the celebration of childhood through the joy of learning.

(This is the last of three articles on the issue of education, including local public school budget challenges, growth in the area's charter, private and virtual academy student population and the impact of No Child Left Behind in the classroom.)

SANDPOINT -- When President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) into law on Jan. 8, 2002, he was riding a tide of overwhelming bipartisan support from Congress, which passed the legislation by a vote of 381-41 in the House and 87-10 in the Senate.

The Democratic chairmen of both the House and Senate education committees, Rep. George Miller and Sen. Edward Kennedy, stood behind the president at the signing ceremony. Dozens of Republicans hailed the law as the new benchmark for improving performance in public schools.

Initial support was so widespread that then-Secretary of Education Rod Paige called the National Education Association (NEA) "a terrorist organization" when the union came forward with concerns about how the legislation would impact the classroom.

Six years later, Miller has pledged to seek "significant revisions" in the law, while Kennedy finds himself in a very small minority fighting to reauthorize NCLB this year -- something even administration officials say is highly unlikely. Quoting current Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, lawmakers have broken ranks with the president and now profess publicly that they merely "held their noses" when they voted for NCLB in the first place.

The general tone from members of Congress who are asked about the act -- which requires 100 percent of students to perform at grade level in math and reading by 2014 -- is that it sounded like a good idea at the time.

What first appeared to be a model piece of legislation is now seen as "Bush's Law" and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle -- including U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo from Idaho -- have proposed numerous revisions to the act. In the spring of 2007, 65 Republicans in Congress put their names to a petition that supports letting states opt out of NCLB without losing federal funding.

The president, meanwhile, has threatened to veto any changes to the act and Congress seems disposed to simply run out the clock on the Bush administration and revamp -- or perhaps dismantle -- NCLB once the dust settles after the November elections.

What's so bad about accountability?

One of the foundations of NCLB -- with federal funding dangling as the carrot on the end of the stick -- has been to create an environment where "highly qualified" teachers fill classroom positions across the country. To a great degree, whether or not they are deemed to be qualified

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is based on results from a series of standardized test scores that emphasize reading and math proficiency.

"But there's more stick than carrot," said Joel Packer, director of education policy and practice at the NEA office in Washington, D.C. "The system measures and holds schools accountable based solely on reading and math scores. It has become a 'scripted curriculum' that has teachers frustrated and demoralized because they are less and less able to use their professional judgment.

"I was just in Boise meeting with the Idaho Education Association," Packer added. "They think (NCLB) has narrowed the curriculum and cut back on music, art, foreign language and science."

The reason schools have abbreviated those subject areas -- and the reason some have even shortened recess and lunch break times -- is to create more time for preparing students to test well. If this doesn't happen, the "accountability" component of NCLB requires that the facility be flagged as a "failing school." And if a school falls under that designation for two years, sanctions can include loss of federal funding, teacher cutbacks and a mandate that the district pay to transport students to "successful" schools.

In 2007, the Center on Education Policy researched 350 school districts and found that 44 percent of them had cut back on time devoted to "untested areas" -- including play oriented activities such as physical education and recess -- by an average of 30 minutes-a-day.

"What gets tested gets taught," said Jack Jennings, the center's president and CEO, when he announced the survey results. "Under No Child Left Behind, there is reading and math -- and then there is everything else."

No child left untested

"There is a great deal of evidence that the national curriculum is turning into a test-prep program," said Dr. Monty Neill of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest) in Cambridge, MA. "And this preparation is starting as early as kindergarten in some districts, where those classes are starting to look like a highly regimented second- or third-grade classroom.

"When we start a test-drill process for 5-year-olds, we're hurting our kids cognitively, emotionally and socially," he added.

Here in Bonner County, the Sandpoint Charter School has elected not to make test scores an absolute priority. The school cleared the bar of "adequate yearly progress" set by NCLB every year except for last year, but principal Alan Millar has no plans to shift attention and resources to put additional focus on test subject areas.

"There's more to a student than a test score," he said. "We've made a philosophical decision for our school to be teacher-driven. That's one of the ways we keep their passion alive for being in the classroom.

"Our focus is not on putting kids in a room and drilling them until they can pick the right slot on a computer test," Millar added.

Gaming a 'perfect' law

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has called NCLB "nearly perfect."

"I talk about No Child Left Behind like Ivory soap: It's 99.9 percent pure, or something," she said near the end of 2006. "There's not much needed in the way of change."

In his State of the Union address last month, the president prodded Congress to reauthorize the act, saying "last year, fourth and eighth graders achieved the highest math scores on record," noting that "reading scores are on the rise."

Alabama is one state that, on the surface, appeared to have dramatic improvement under NCLB. Based on statistics states are required to report annually to the U.S. Department of Education, Alabama rocketed from 22nd place to fifth in the nation about a year ago. The number of its schools showing adequate yearly progress surged from 50 percent to nearly 90 percent in the same reporting period.

As it turned out, Alabama school districts rigged the results and, in effect, told the administration what it wanted to hear. The state limited the number of test scores it reported to show improvement in closing the gap between the scores of white and minority students. Although 80 percent of its schools included Latino enrollment, less than 9 percent of them reported test scores for those students.

Also culled out were test scores of developmentally disabled children, as Alabama schools arbitrarily determined that there would have to be at least 40 such students attending a school before those results would have to be counted.

Lastly, the state borrowed a loophole used by neighboring Tennessee, which stated that no district in the state would have to be labeled as having "failing schools" as long as it made its target in just one subject and in just one cluster of grade levels -- elementary, middle or high school.

Putting all of the above to work, Alabama emerged as a shining example of how well NCLB was working in America's schools. On paper, no child was left behind -- they were simply left out of the equation.

"Many states did exactly the same thing," said a November 2007 report by Education Sector, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. According to the group's findings, at least 28 states had used one or more of the "gaming" techniques that shot Alabama into the 90th percentile of so-called performance.

Elsewhere, results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress Trial Urban District Assessment report conducted last year showed little overall improvement in math and reading since the act became law and no closing of score gaps between minority and white students.

A push back gains momentum

As of this week, almost 145 national organizations -- including the national PTA, nearly every church denomination and prominent civil rights groups -- have signed on to a Joint Organizational Statement on No Child Left behind sent to Congress with suggested changes to the existing legislation.

Among the concerns listed in the statement are "over-emphasizing standardized testing, narrowing curriculum and instruction to focus on test preparation rather than richer academic learning; over-identifying schools in need of improvement; using sanctions that do not help improve schools; inappropriately excluding low-scoring children in order to boost test results; and inadequate funding."

On the funding side, the Bush administration says it has increased NCLB funding by 41 percent "since 2001." But since the law wasn't signed until 2002 and implementation didn't begin until after that point, that comparison seems questionable. Using 2002 as the base point, with the U.S. Department of Education's own statistics as the data, the federal government funded about $22.2 billion that first year and has proposed that approximately $24.7 billion be provided in 2009 -- an actual increase of only 10 percent.

At the same time, states have been forced to make up the difference between the "authorized" funding that was promised when NCLB passed into law and the amount that has been delivered over the past six years. That funding gap -- totaling the difference between 2002 and the proposed 2009 administration budget -- has climbed to more than $85 billion.

Turning to the issue of testing, an August 2007 PDK/Gallup poll found that 7 in 10 Americans believe that NCLB's focus on testing encourages educators to "teach to the test."

"So untested programs like field trips, artists-in-residence and real investigations into science are decreased or eliminated," said FairTest's Neill. "Fortunately, there are still principals who are resisting these influences and allowing their teachers to actually do the work of educating children."

Defending the 'joy of learning'

Anne Bagby, principal at Farmin-Stidwell Elementary School in Sandpoint, packs an enormous amount of energy into a small frame. As the building administrator for the largest elementary school in the district, she needs it.

But Bagby goes from energetic to passionate when the subject of NCLB comes up. She views her school, which has more than 600 students and the largest population of elementary grade special education students in LPOSD, as a place to stand firm for the rights of children.

"The schools that are doing nothing but preparing for reading and math tests all day long are fundamentally changing the nature of childhood and exploration," Bagby said. "At Farmin-Stidwell, we believe that learning is a joy and childhood is filled with magical experiences.

"Our halls celebrate the talents and skills that children produce in their art classes," she continued. "We dance, we play, we make music -- and we work hard."

Contrary to its name, Bagby said, No Child Left Behind leaves many students out of the loop. Its goal of having all students perform "at grade level" pays no attention to the child who is already at that point and needs resources to reach advanced levels.

At the other end of the scale, a student who comes in far below grade level and improves by leaps and bounds throughout the school year, but still tests even a point or two below the standardized score requirements, is called a "failure" by NCLB standards.

"That child didn't fail," the principal said. "That child made unbelievable progress.

"In concept, No Child Left Behind is not a poor thought," she added. "But what they missed is that there are no targets for the bright kids and it also ignores individual student progress for the kids who are struggling.

"Education is a journey and childhood is more than passing tests," she continued. "It's not about one day and one data point. It's every day -- the right stuff, at the right time, every day."

Bagby believes that this approach will always be valuable in the education of children, whether or not NCLB is carried on when a new administration goes into office.

"No matter what happens there," she said, "we'll be able to hold our heads up high."