I found it very interesting to read
Diane Ravitch’s chapters while watching season 4 of The Wire. The Death and Life of the Great American
School System analyzes recent education programs in the US, specifically
focusing on No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
Ravitch speaks about “accountability” as the cornerstone of NCLB. This
meant that schools should measure how much students were learning and assign
rewards and punishments based upon these rates/statistics. She spoke a lot
about how the program was focused upon the ideal of learning and reaching
certain academic goals, but not curriculum and what students were learning.
I thought that this idea was very
prominently highlighted in The Wire in one of the later episodes of season 4. In
this particular episode, Mr. Prez, a math teacher, is told to incorporate
language arts into his lesson plan to ensure the students perform well on upcoming
standardized tests. In one particularly telling scene, Mr. Prez is reading a
passage from the test preparation guide aloud to his class and realizes that
the students don’t even understand many of the words.
I think that this scene really hit
at the heart of the problems with NCLB. It was a well-intentioned plan to make
sure all children in the US were at the same level and were up to speed in
various subjects, but it did not account for the fact that many of these
students were not performing at their grade level. Many students at
under-performing schools were disadvantaged before even beginning to take the
test because of the system’s failure to teach them the basics, as was evidenced
in The Wire.
This shows the misunderstanding and
misinterpretation at the federal level of the actual problems with the American
school system. As Ravitch explains, while great power was allocated to the
states in creating their own standards for testing etc., the federal government
also assumed the massive role of implementing this sweeping legislation that
became No Child Left Behind. What does everyone think about the involvement of
the federal government versus the local or state government in the management
of the American school system?
That whole collection of episodes was a perfect example of these Ravitch readings. One aspect of No Child Left Behind that especially frustrates me is that writers of the tests did not mean for it to be a necessarily challenging test. The idea was that the presence of a test in and of itself would be enough motivation to encourage learning. But the low difficulty of the tests actually decreased standards of education. Ravitch points out that the tests were meant to measure the results of the curriculum, not determine or guide the curriculum. Because of the inappropriate power of the tests, curricula are based on tests that were written in a way that would not challenge.
ReplyDeleteIn the chapters we read, Ravitch depicted the negative impact thtoat the federal government in the management of the American school system. This is extremely visible when Ravitch discusses the cheating scandals that teachers, principals, and school systems have been involved in. As you discussed, NCLB implemented high expectations for test results in certain subjects. Yet, many of these children are not at the reading or math level of their current grade level or even the grade level below them. The teachers leading these classrooms are forced to play catch up and teach their students the knowledge they should already have. After these few months of catch up, the teachers are finally able to teach the students the material they were supposed to be learning in their current grade level. On top of all of this, teachers are added the extra stress of high expectations on mandatory standardized tests. Their job, salary, and school success depend on their student’s results on federal tests. Therefore, the teacher needs to prepare their students to take a mandatory standardized test. Yet, in order for the children to be prepared for the test they need to be caught up on material.
ReplyDeleteThis is an ugly cycle that leaves teachers with little time to teach their students the knowledge they need to succeed on the standardized tests. Where does this leave the teachers? They have to decide between securing their position in the school or closing the gap for their students. Either the teachers perform their job by educating the children or they lose their job by failing to meet the federal governments standards. That dilemma causes teachers, schools, and administrators to cheat in order to get the best of both worlds.