NCLB Reflections

I recently shared this link to an opinion piece in Time Magazine by Claudia Wallis with the network of Courage & Renewal Facilitators. I posted it with some trepidation, knowing what a sensitive subject the No Child Left Behind legislation can be. I am delighted to share here the rich dialog that has begun.

Dr. Sally Z. Hare

Many of us have thought that NCLB was the Bush Administration’s effort to destroy public schools -- and open the doors for vouchers and parochial and private education. This is an interesting article from this week’s TIME that implies that, at least in part, that may have been true.

Whatever the reality, we all know that more than ever, it takes courage to teach and to lead in our public schools.

As facilitators, we do indeed stand in what our friend and teacher Parker calls a tragic gap. And I believe that, more than ever, our ability to stand there and support public education is the key to sustainability for our democratic way of being.

With love and courage,
Sally

Sally,

Thanks for this article. Those of us with recent experience in public schools have struggled with the effect of high stakes testing on teaching and learning. In Texas, students have to pass the state assessments to be promoted in third grade, fifth grade, eighth grade and in order to graduate. I worked with an alternative school last spring and many individual students had taken the exit-level tests many times and failed to pass them. Therefore, they did not graduate.

I worked with a 20-year-old who had taken the math test nine times and failed it. He knew the material, but freaked out each time he took the test. The great news is that we worked with him on test anxiety and he finally did pass the test and he did get his high school diploma just before he turned 21. But we had several students who still failed to pass the test and some of them gave up and will never graduate. These students then count against the school for being dropouts. It is a deeply flawed system for students.

Additionally, the pressure and stress on principals and teachers is unbelievable. Texas has a more stringent accountability system in addition to NCLB. There are sanctions for not meeting the standards in both the state and the national systems. It does take courage to work in this environment.

My purpose for letting you know these stories is to ask you to please be aware of the stance of local and federal candidates on this issue. Also, candidates who have the broader agenda for equity in education support NCLB, because it focuses on all students. Some candidates support NCLB and do not deeply understand that it is really not serving poor, Hispanic and African American students well. Educators must carefully study the education agenda of all candidates, whatever your political leanings.

Rosalyn Bratcher


Sally and Rosalyn,
I want to echo the truths you both offer us through your words and stories. Part of the biggest challenge most educators fight over and over again is this beast called NCLB. We fight it in the classroom and we fight it as staff developers here in Portland. Your story, Rosalyn, is one of billions across the country, ones where the powers that be force the focus on what they choose to see as not working rather than what is, both in enormously broad strokes as well as minute, individual ones. Time and again, I find in my work as a national consultant as well as local teacher of teachers that inviting teachers to focus on what is working in their classrooms and what their students are doing shows documentable and less-documentable growth and smart risk taking. I have yet to come across one educator who entered teaching with the strict desire to find what is broken with children, and yet one of the overarching effects of NCLB in preK-12 education (Head Start is included now too!!!) is a culture of fear and a continual focus on what is not working as defined by the use of assessment tools that assess very limited educational practices. NCLB and its sweeping and powerful aftershocks continues to point many toward who needs to be fixed in our classrooms. Who the heck decided our students were broken? Broken-hearted maybe, but broken and in need of repair: no. Are they hopeful for us to sit with them and listen to their wisdom, their connections, the multiple and brilliant ways they make connections in what they are learning and their lives? You betcha. Start there and see what happens with our successes in the classroom, our parent communities and our conversations beyond. Many of us in the Courage movement know the powerful truths that come from our own tragic gaps-- what I've learned from my work with young people is that our students just want us to show up in their lives like we do in our own.

Sally and Rosalyn, thanks for shining some light on this misguided arena of power and action that takes away from our children instead of supporting them and those that stand beside them. I have hope that at least one of our future leaders will find the dire culture of fear in our public schools and invite change through the power of presence, time and knowing.

Namaste
Andie Cunningham

Thanks so much for this, Andie and all. Your words also echo my life-long experience with children in classrooms and schools, " that our students just want us to show up in their lives like we do in our own." NCLB is leaving childhood behind because it focuses not only on presumed deficits, but on the future... future citizens...future global markets....instead of the present lives of the children before us. This is, of course, what good teachers have always known how to do... to be present... to show up every day ... to let children know that they are known. Now, not to say that we didn't and don't still have an educational crisis! The crisis is that we need legions of young energetic, highly trained and skilled and highly compensated young teachers and school leaders entering the field and staying in the profession as they do in other countries around the world! That's when leaving no child behind would really mean something in our country. Politically, neither party gets this yet and I think it is important to let Obama people know we know that. Kennedy was the key co-sponsor of NCLB and couldn't get it funded adequately and didn't focus on the teacher and leadership crisis. Obama has education on the back burner and we have a nearly 50% drop out rate in our cities and some of our rural areas like mine because of NCLB. Our voices are important. Glad to be in the conversation.

Peace,
Chip Wood

Thanks for initiating this wonderful conversation. I have been teaching in a rural community where the poverty rate is hovering around 70%, the teachers and children can't drink the water in the school building, and there is still lead paint in some of the older classrooms, there is toxic mold and chilling cold all winter. The teachers in that building work harder and give more heart and soul to that community than any other teachers I've met, yet there have been 5 principals in 7 years. Every year they are asked to go back to the community and do more with less, to fix the "broken" child, achieve GLEs, be HQTs and on and on.... and then be labeled as as an "identified school." For NCLB not only points out the inequalities in our school communities, it takes a narrow look at the challenges of our communities living in poverty. There are deep and complex reasons that these school communities are failing.

Not only has the Bush administration negatively impacted teaching, but it has made providing social services, mental health, medical and childcare services more difficult. How are families supposed to cope? They are so concerned with heating their homes and finding work that education is on their back burner. What will it take for our political parties to engage in this conversation authentically? I am grateful (thanks Chip) for the message that "our voices are important."

Carol Egan

Gratitude to each and all for speaking up on this important topic. We have "known" since Head Start opened it's doors in the 60's that intervening early rather than remediating later not only makes more sense but costs less money (a lot less money!) and helps to build life-giving communities. The whole child and the child in context deserves our consideration and respect, not just their test scores.

Even, if like me, you have been an advocate for children and families since then, it is important to BOTH continue to build capacity to stand in the tragic gap AND also keep our voices strong. We are in evolutionary times.

Candace Brey