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The No Child Left Behind law is dead.  Long live The Every Student Succeeds Act.

No Child Left Behind, has been on the books since 2002, was supposed to close achievement gaps for disadvantaged students (racial and ethnic minorities, low-income students, youngsters with special needs and English learners). The goal was well intentioned and stated by 2014, 100 percent of students would perform at grade level. Instead, things have gotten worse by almost every measure. SAT scores have declined, as have the scores of American students, compared with their counterparts in other nations, on the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) exam. The rate of progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the nation’s report card, was actually higher, both over all and for specific demographic groups, during the decade before No Child Left Behind than after it was passed.

At the same time, the law’s aspiration morphed into a high-stakes target for accountability “” not for the politicians, with their unachievable demands, but for school officials who were given an impossible burden of meeting annual testing goals. Under the law, schools that didn’t make “adequate yearly progress” faced ever more draconian sanctions, including wholesale reorganization and closings.

As a result, public schools have turned into pressure cookers. Teachers are pushed to improve test results. A vanishingly small amount of time is spent on art, music and sports, because they aren’t part of the testing regime. Students have become test-taking robots, sitting through as many as 20 standardized exams a year.

The Obama administration initially acted as if the miracle of 2014, with every student proficient in math and reading, would come to pass. But in 2012, when it became clear that the achievement gap wasn’t about to vanish, the Department of Education started giving waivers to states that wanted to devise their own definition of adequate yearly progress. While almost every state has gotten an official permission slip, federal bureaucrats retained the final word on whether a state’s plan would pass muster, and those waivers were conditioned on commitments to adopt administration-approved education reforms. In effect the department has been relying on waivers to rewrite No Child Left Behind.

The Every Student Succeeds Act shifts, for the first time since the Reagan years, the balance of power in education away from Washington and back to the states. That’s a welcome about-face. No longer can the Department of Education deploy the power of the purse, as it did with “Race to the Top” challenge grants, to prod states into adopting dubious policies like using students’ standardized test scores to judge teachers or expanding the number of charter schools.

Now those decisions are left to the states. The dread “annual yearly progress” requirement is gone, as are the escalating series of consequences inflicted on school districts that don’t measure up. States must intervene to help the weakest 5 percent of all schools, high schools that graduate fewer than 67 percent of their students on time (the national norm exceeds 80 percent) and schools where a subgroup of students “consistently underperforms.” But the states, not Washington, determine how to turn things around. That’s accountability with a needed dollop of flexibility.

While states are still required to test students annually in reading and math from third to eighth grade, and at least once in high school, they have a freer hand in designing those tests. What’s more, those standardized tests count for less in evaluating schools. At least one other measure of academic improvement, like graduation rates and, for nonnative speakers, proficiency in English, must be included. And a student performance measure, like grit or school climate, has to be part of the evaluation equation. This multipronged approach should make it easier for educators to replace some drill-and-kill memorization with more hands-on learning and critical thinking.

Civil rights groups have been tepid in their support for the legislation because they fear that some states will revert to the neglect of minority students that drove Congress to pass No Child Left Behind. They have history on their side: “Leave it to the states” was disastrous for minority students. Will this time be different? The new law maintains the old requirement that test scores be made public and that those results be disaggregated. As a result, we’ll know where the most vulnerable students are. There will be still be fights over accountability, but those will be at the state level, and advocates will need to keep up the pressure for equity.

Hope springs eternal in school reform, only to be followed by disappointment. Will the new law be any better than the old law? Only time will tell.

From the NY Times, 12/10/2015

 

The US Department of Justice estimates that between 70 and 80 percent of all prisoner are school dropouts.

The Obama administration would like to restore funding for in-prison college programs. A 1994 law prohibits inmates at state and federal prisons from receiving Pell grants, the main source of government aid for low-income college students.   The Administration believes that equipping incarcerated individuals with skills will allow them to re-enter the community and avoid future contact with the justice system and become productive members of society.

Representative Chris Collin (R., NY) argues that federal education funds should be spent on law-abiding families struggling to cover college costs. He introduced a bill called the “Kids Before Cons Act” to block federal funds from going to in-prison education.

Why is it a question of either/or? Why can’t Congress fund both?  Why do we, as a country, have to choose who gets an education and who doesn’t? If the object is to prevent recividism, shouldn’t we look for ways to prevent people going to prison by getting an education? (Currently the recividism rate is 80 percent over 5 years.)

I just don’t get it.

This was the question posed and answered in the PBS documentary, “Web Junkie”.

The show highlighted the tragic effects on teenagers who become hooked on video games, playing for dozens of hours at a time often without breaks to eat, sleep or even use the bathroom. Many come to view the real world as fake.

While Internet addiction is not yet considered a clinical diagnosis here, there’s no question that American youths are plugged in and tuned out of “live” action for many more hours of the day than experts consider healthy for normal development. And it starts early, often with preverbal toddlers handed their parents’ cellphones and tablets to entertain themselves when they should be observing the world around them and interacting with their caregivers.

In its 2013 policy statement on “Children, Adolescents, and the Media,” the American Academy of Pediatrics cited these statistics from a Kaiser Family Foundation Study in 2010: “The average 8- to 10-year-old spends nearly eight hours a day with a variety of different media, and older children and teenagers spend more than 11 hours per day.” Television, long a popular “babysitter,” remains the dominant medium, but computers, tablets and cellphones are gradually taking over. “Many parents seem to have few rules about use of media by their children and adolescents,” the academy stated, and two-thirds of those questioned in the Kaiser study said their parents had no rules about how much time the youngsters spent with media.

Parents, grateful for ways to calm disruptive children and keep them from interrupting their own screen activities, seem to be unaware of the potential harm from so much time spent in the virtual world.

Before age 2, children should not be exposed to any electronic media, the pediatrics academy maintains, because “a child’s brain develops rapidly during these first years, and young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens.” Older children and teenagers should spend no more than one or two hours a day with entertainment media, preferably with high-quality content, and spend more free time playing outdoors, reading, doing hobbies and “using their imaginations in free play,” the academy recommends.

Heavy use of electronic media can have significant negative effects on children’s behavior, health and school performance. Those who watch a lot of simulated violence, common in many popular video games, can become immune to it, more inclined to act violently themselves and less likely to behave empathetically.

In preparing an honors thesis at the University of Rhode Island, Kristina E. Hatch asked children about their favorite video games. A fourth-grader cited”Call of Duty: Black Ops,” because “there’s zombies in it, and you get to kill them with guns and there’s violence “¦ I like blood and violence.”

Teenagers who spend a lot of time playing violent video games or watching violent shows on television have been found to be more aggressive and more likely to fight with their peers and argue with their teachers. Schoolwork can suffer when media time infringes on reading and studying. And the sedentary nature of most electronic involvement “” along with televised ads for high-calorie fare “” can foster the unhealthy weights already epidemic among the nation’s youth.

Technology is a poor substitute for personal interaction. Children need time to daydream, deal with anxieties, process their thoughts and share them with parents, who can provide reassurance.

Children who are heavy users of electronics may become adept at multitasking, but they can lose the ability to focus on what is most important, a trait critical to the deep thought and problem solving needed for many jobs and other endeavors later in life.

Texting looms as the next national epidemic, with half of teenagers sending 50 or more text messages a day and those aged 13 through 17 averaging 3,364 texts a month. A Pew Research study found that teenagers send an average of 34 texts a night after they get into bed, adding to the sleep deprivation so common and harmful to them.

There can be physical consequences, too. Children can develop pain in their fingers and wrists, narrowed blood vessels in their eyes (the long-term consequences of which are unknown), and neck and back pain from being slumped over their phones, tablets and computers.

 

A friend in Costa Rica asked me to address the college and high school graduation rate. Here is what I found out:

There are 4 public universities + a newly opened technical university. There are 54 private universities but most students prefer the private universities because of price and prestige.  Only 40 percent of Costa Ricans have a high school degree. (That is where part of the problem begins.) And even though Cost Rica spends 30 percent of its GDP on education, the country has a 73% HS enrollment rate.  While Costa  Rica is more developed than many of its neighbors,  Venezuela has a 85 percent HS enrollment rate, Panama 79.7 percent and El Salvador, 74 percent.

Only 5 percent of Costa Rican’s ‘s get a college degree after 5 or 6 years.  That is from students who have graduated from high school.  When measured against ROI (return on investment) , it is not good.

I suggested a root cause analysis about why students are leaving before graduation.  Is it because the costs are too high, poor grades, separation anxiety from home and families, poor preparation, college teacher’s attitudes, or what?  That is best done on the ground and it is difficult for me to answer without interviewing students, faculty, staff.  Here is where the use of information technology would help.  Using computers, surveys could be developed to query students, parents, teachers and administrators.

The study of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) will be the essential component in job creation in the 21st century and most of the jobs will be in that field.  I was amazed when I delivered a workshop in Israel to see what the Israelis are focusing on. It is not on manufacturing but rather on jobs that use technology.

Across the country, there is a growing minority presence.  The fastest growing group are Hispanics or Latinos. According to the Census Bureau’s population projections, which provide estimates of our race-ethnic distribution by five year intervals up to 2050.  According to these projections, around the year 2043 non-Hispanic whites will become a minority of our population. Hispanics will be 28 percent of the population, blacks will be 13 percent, Asians will be 7 percent, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders will be 1 percent and multiracial individuals will be another 4 percent. Right now, four states (California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Texas) and the District of Columbia are majority-minority.  But that will change fairly rapidly if 2000-2010 rates of change persist this decade and beyond.  In this decade, we would expect Nevada, Maryland, Georgia and possibly Florida to pass that threshold.  In the 2020’s, Arizona, New Jersey and possibly Delaware and New York should follow suit.  And by 2050, we may also see majority-minority populations in Connecticut, Illinois, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Virginia, Washington state and possibly even Alaska.

From the Education Trust:  Nationally, too few Latinos read or do math at proficiency levels.  In reading for instance, 14% of Latino4th graders reach proficient or advanced levers, while 57% have not been taught to the basic level.  And, the story is worse in math. Only 9% of Latino 8th graders reach the proficient level or above on NAEP, but 60% perform below basics.

What does this all mean?  By  the end of high school, Latino student have math and reading skills that are virtually the same as those of White middle schoolers.

Neither the college enrollment nor completion rates of Latino have increased over the last 20 years.  About half of Latino young people enroll in college, but few finish. If the rates don’t change, out of every 100 Latino kindergartners, only 11 will obtain a bachelor’s degree.

I guess it depends on who you read and who you believe.

The New Orleans Schools have had a terrible reputation. The system was dysfunctional, and corrupt, running through a new school superintendent every 11 months. The FBI had so many investigations that it opened an office within the school district.
As a result of Hurricane Katrina (10 years ago) the city fathers decided to start from scratch.  All of the district’s teachers were fired.  The collective bargaining agreement was scratched. The district hired young teachers from outside the city many of who were trained in alternative preparation programs like Teach for America.

A New York Times op-ed concluded, “it is wiser to invest in improving existing educational systems than to start from scratch”. An article in New York Magazine concluded that the school reform in New Orleans, “is the breakthrough in social equity liberals have been waiting for.”

A team led by Douglas N. Harris , the Director of the Education Research alliance for New Orleans, concluded that while test scores rose dramatically because of the post-Katrina reforms.

But, “though disadvantaged students benefited, they seem to have benefited less than other groups.  There are real horror stories about how special education students and others who were suspended and expelled at high rates. And there are signs that high school dropout rates are being under-reported.”

 

“The Cost Of Teacher Turnover In Five School Districts” by Gary Barnes, Edward Crown, Benjamin Schaefer for the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, (2007)

“Low performing schools rarely close the student achievement gap because the never close the teaching quality gap ““ they are constantly rebuilding their staff.  An inordinate amount of their capital ““ both human and financial- is consumed by the constant process of hiring and replacing beginning teachers who leave before they have mastered the ability to create a successful leaning culture for their students. NCTAF’s study quantified the real costs of teacher turnover in five school districts.  Teachers leave at-risk (low-income, high minority, low performing) schools at high rates. retention in these schools has the greatest potential for a high return on investment, both in terms of performance and school performance. The district studies were the Chicago Public Schools, Milwaukee Public Schools, and Granville NC County Schools, along with Jemez Valley Public Schools, and Santa Rosa (NM) represent a range of communities, large and small, urban and rural.

What the Study Found:

1. 1.    In Granville, County, North Carolina, the cost of each district who left the district was just under $10,000.  In a small rural district such as Jemez Valley, NM the cost per teacher leaver was $4,366.  In Milwaukee, the average cost per teacher leaver was $15,325.  In a very large district like Chicago, the average cost was $17,872 per leaver. The total cost of turnover in the Chicago Public Schools is estimated to be over $86 million.
2. 2.    Low school performance and high poverty were correlated with high teacher turnover in at-risk schools in cities like Chicago and Milwaukee.
3. 3.    An up-front investment in retaining teachers can reducer teacher turnover, and thus reduce the costs associated with high teacher turnover.
4. 4.    The cost of new teacher support an development have been proven to increase teacher retention and improve student achievement.  The costs of such programs could be offset by the savings achieved through decreases in the costs of turnover.
5. 5.    Track teacher turnover and its costs annually.

According to the New York Times, African-American students were expelled at rates overwhelmingly higher than white children in 13 Southern states, according to an analysis of federal data. “The study was conducted at the University of Pennsylvania for the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education. The study focused on states where more than half of all the suspensions and expulsions of black students occurred nationwide. While black students represented just under a quarter of public school students in these states, they made up nearly half of all suspensions and expulsions. In some districts, the gaps were even more striking: In 132 Southern school districts, for example, black students were suspended at rates five times their representation in the student population, or higher.

Last year, the Obama administration issued guidelines advising schools to create more positive climates, set clear expectations and consequences for students, and ensure equity in discipline.

Among the other findings in the analysis were that in 181 school districts where blacks represented just fewer than 60 percent of enrollment on average, all of the students expelled during 2011-12 were black. Within the 13 states, Louisiana and Mississippi expelled the highest proportion of blacks. Blacks were suspended or expelled at rates higher than their representation in the student body in every one of the 13 states analyzed. The report shows data for more than 3,000 districts.

Students are being suspended for such acts such as when a student is deemed disrespectful or defiant or violates a dress code. In Gwinnett County, Ga., a suburban school district near Atlanta, the new analysis showed that while fewer than a third of the students enrolled in the district were black, they represented close to half of all students suspended and more than half of all those expelled in the school year covered by the data.

The 13 states covered by the report were: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

In addition to missing out on in-school learning time, students who are expelled or suspended are more likely to have later contact with the juvenile justice system than similar students who are not removed from school, studies have shown.