ATTN Suu and Nigel: this is why your fellow students derp so hard

[Cain]

11 years since No Child Left Behind!

You are a college professor.

I have just retired as a high school teacher.

I have some bad news for you. In case you do not already see what is happening, I want to warn you of what to expect from the students who will be arriving in your classroom, even if you teach in a highly selective institution.

No Child Left Behind went into effect for the 2002–03 academic year, which means that America's public schools have been operating under the pressures and constrictions imposed by that law for a decade. Since the testing requirements were imposed beginning in third grade, the students arriving in your institution have been subject to the full extent of the law's requirements. While it is true that the U.S. Department of Education is now issuing waivers on some of the provisions of the law to certain states, those states must agree to other provisions that will have as deleterious an effect on real student learning as did No Child Left Behind—we have already seen that in public schools, most notably in high schools.

Even during those times when I could assign work that required proper writing, I was limited in how much work I could do on their writing. I had too many students. In my final year, with four sections of Advanced Placement, I had 129 AP students (as well as an additional forty-six students in my other two classes). A teacher cannot possibly give that many students the individualized attention they need to improve their writing. Do the math. Imagine that I assign all my students a written exercise. Let's assume that 160 actually turn it in. Let's further assume that I am a fast reader, and I can read and correct papers at a rate of one every three minutes. That's eight hours—for one assignment. If it takes a more realistic five minutes per paper, the total is more than thirteen hours.

Further, the AP course required that a huge amount of content be covered, meaning that too much effort is spent on learning information and perhaps insufficient time on wrestling with the material at a deeper level. I learned to balance these seemingly contradictory requirements. For much of the content I would give students summary information, sufficient to answer multiple-choice questions and to get some of the points on rubrics for the free response questions. That allowed me more time for class discussions and for relating events in the news to what we learned in class, making the class more engaging for the students and resulting in deeper learning because the discussions were relevant to their lives.

From what I saw from the free response questions I read, too many students in AP courses were not getting depth in their learning and lacked both the content knowledge and the ability to use what content knowledge they had.

The structure of testing has led to students arriving at our school without what previously would have been considered requisite background knowledge in social studies, but the problem is not limited to this field. Students often do not get exposure to art or music or other nontested subjects. In high-need schools, resources not directly related to testing are eliminated: at the time of the teachers' strike last fall, 160 Chicago public schools had no libraries. Class sizes exceeded forty students—in elementary school.

Now you are seeing the results in the students arriving at your institutions. They may be very bright. But we have not been able to prepare them for the kind of intellectual work that you have every right to expect of them. It is for this that I apologize, even as I know in my heart that there was little more I could have done. Which is one reason I am no longer in the classroom.

[McGrupp]

Based on what I've heard from friends who have worked in education this seems extremely spot on.

[Doktor Howl]

NCLB was also inevitable, given the American punishment culture.

[Suu]

I read this earlier. It's so disgustingly true.

My Roman history professor, 2 years ago, said in front of the class, "Look, I know most of you are products of No Child Left Behind, but would it behoove you to actually do some damn work?"

On the bright side, a better chance to get into graduate school for me, because you aren't getting through undergrad without writing papers.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yep.

This is one of the reasons I literally do not give a flying fuck whether my children do well in, or even graduate from, high school. It's utter shit. I would rather they drop out and spend the next couple of years doing self-guided learning, and then take the GED and got to community college for a couple of years before transferring.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

In fact, I feel that in many ways they are better off without high school transcripts at all.

[Suu]

The note is correct in that the students ARE bright. They aren't DUMB by any stretch, and some of them really do want to learn and try, but they aren't being taught properly. This is one of the main reasons why I don't want to teach high school. If I did, I'd actually want to, you know, teach.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

None of this is making me feel good about the kids starting school again in the fall...

[The Johnny]

The children are our future; is this not the future you wanted?

BRB gonna go punch myself in the balls while I meditate on this.

[Telarus]

I agree. I also think that No Child Left Behind suffers horribly from the "Incorrect feedback makes retaining knowledge difficult" science finding (which I can't find the link to at the moment).

[Cramulus]

Over in educational publishing (where I work), there is an enormous focus on "efficacy". Basically, the need to measure improvement. And this is a big part of NCLB - state standards, being able to identify who is not being educated effectively, etc.

Prior to NCLB, there were fewer ways to evaluate (at the federal level) whether or not a school was doing any good at educating its students. Efficacy is also important to publishers because it becomes an empirical measuring stick they can use to move product. "Kids who used our books got 20% better grades than kids who used our competitors books."

And when we follow this trend down the long curve, we can see that emphasis on high stakes tests and one-size-fits-all state standards is ultimately decreasing the quality of education. But how would you actually measure that without coming up with ... well ... some other kind of state standards?

If we are to overturn NCLB, and I hope we do, we need to come up with a better means of measuring student advancement. IMHO the emphasis on efficacy needs to be paired with an emphasis on validity --- that is does state standard 1.3.1.4 represent mastery of a real-world skill? One that's important to getting employment in the 21st century?

Schools that suck at education -- what should we do at the federal level to help them out? I don't like NCLB's answer (basically fire and replace the staff), but the problems which NCLB addresses (like kids in many parts of the country graduating with a 5th grade reading level) are real problems.

[Doktor Howl]

And when we follow this trend down the long curve, we can see that emphasis on high stakes tests and one-size-fits-all state standards is ultimately decreasing the quality of education. But how would you actually measure that without coming up with ... well ... some other kind of state standards?

The high water mark of American education was 1965-1983.  The model that worked then would work now, though the curriculum would obviously be different.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Cram, teachers go to college for SIX YEARS to learn to teach and to assess progress. Furthermore, they are required to have annual ongoing postgraduate training. There are tests like the SAT and college placement exams that test a student's readiness to enter college. Furthermore, every year the next teacher sees the progress made by the previous teacher. Why do we need standardized testing to assess progress?

The worst thing to ever happen to our educational system is mandatory standardized testing and tying funding to performance on those tests.

[Suu]

Cram, teachers go to college for SIX YEARS to learn to teach and to assess progress. Furthermore, they are required to have annual ongoing postgraduate training. There are tests like the SAT and college placement exams that test a student's readiness to enter college. Furthermore, every year the next teacher sees the progress made by the previous teacher. Why do we need standardized testing to assess progress?

The worst thing to ever happen to our educational system is mandatory standardized testing and tying funding to performance on those tests.

When I graduated in 2000 in Florida, we had ONE test we HAD to take, and that was the HSCT, or the High School Competency Test. It was basically a GED test. I missed one question on the whole damn thing. If you failed, you had one shot to take it again, if you failed that, you did not get a diploma. We had the CTBS testing through elementary and middle school (this was more of a placement test to see if you qualified for honors than anything) and the Florida Writes Exam, which was administered in 5th, 8th, and 10th grade. That was exactly like what was on the GRE, it assessed your essay writing skills, because they STRESSED these things. You need writing and comprehension skills to succeed.

When I was in 10th grade, they put me in the beta for the FCAT, the test that would become Florida's downfall. This thing...OMG. They grabbed me from class and said, "Take this." 2 hours of my life, with no prep, and I got a 75 on it. A solid C.  The math was stuff I had not taken yet, and even though it counted for absolutely nothing, and doesn't show up on my transcript, it nearly brought me to tears. There is no more CTBS test, no more Florida Writes, only the FCAT. I did better on the SAT and the ACT than that fucking beta test. It seemed entirely unreasonable to test 10th graders on calculus and difficult vocabulary that was at least on the senior level. But, they accepted it. That's why Florida schools are so fucking bad. It's not the students, it's not the teachers, it's not the schools in general, it's that fucking test. Students are graduating with test answers, no writing skills, no vocational skills, no logic or anything. The Rhode Island test is even worse, and the schools in Providence are absolutely terrible. This is a relatively low-income area with lots of immigrants, of COURSE the tests aren't going to yield good results, and neither is closing the damn schools that have the low scores. It's not fucking fair to these kids.

[Don Coyote]

This all kinda makes me think maybe I don't want to teach.