This is an outdated article but I couldn't find it posted, so here goes.........

http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/207379/

Friday, January 19, 2007
Should NCLB be retained?
Daily Herald

The No Child Left Behind Act, which comes up for reauthorization this year, is largely a failure.

The federal law, a major plank in George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, was supposed to improve education by letting the public see which schools are succeeding and give parents a choice.

In reality, the law has imposed an inflexible, underfunded testing regimen on states that has made otherwise good schools look like outright failures.

It's not just teachers and administrators who have problems with NCLB. One of the law's past advocates is leading the charge against it. Michael Petrill, a former U.S. Department of Education official who once actively promoted the program says that the oppressive rules destroyed it.

Among the "nonsensical provisions" he lists are the mandate to hire only teachers holding degrees in the subject area to be taught (a rule that put rural districts in a bind) and inconsistencies in defining proficiency in a given subject.

"I've gradually and reluctantly come to the conclusion that NCLB as enacted is fundamentally flawed and probably beyond repair," Petrill wrote on the Education Gadfly Web site earlier this month.

Other critics have blasted the law for its lack of flexibility in allowing states to evaluate students. Utah threatened to withdraw from NCLB and use the existing Utah Performance Assessment System for Students (UPASS) instead. Federal officials scurried to Utah and threatened to pull federal funds if lawmakers didn't stop the mutiny.

The law was also supposed to give parents an accurate picture of school performance, yet NCLB tended to set up some schools for failure. It expects special education and non-native English speakers to perform at the level of their mainstream peers. A school could be labeled a failure if not enough students took a test, even if those who took it passed with flying colors.

Then there's the problem of measuring this year's students against last year's students. Such comparisons ignore group differences and make it impossible to measure progress with reasonable accuracy.

Pushing a do-or-die test does little to help education. By teaching to the test, and having to make sure everyone can pass, teachers cannot approach subjects in great depth. Academically gifted students are dampened in their opportunity to excel since each class is geared to slower learners. No Child Left Behind really means that no child gets ahead.

So now Congress must decide what to do. President Bush is pushing for reauthorization. Others would rather just scrap the whole mess, like taking out the trash.

UPASS may offer a better way to measure student performance than NCLB. While Utah educators have some problems with UPASS, specifically the emphasis on standardized testing rather than on a student's grade in class, it is a more workable system than NCLB ever could be. It tracks each student throughout his or her academic career to measure improvement. Isn't that a better way to measure school performance? We think so.

UPASS offers a fine model for a national testing system. But instead of a national standard, it's time to accept the fact that states can establish their own standards of academic performance. Federal dollars should be directed specifically to the places or programs they are needed most -- the places where students are actually being left behind. This means poor areas or schools with high immigrant counts where language is an issue. Earmarking would yield a much better result for the investment than meddling with state independence.

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