Stangler: Education policy needs revision

McKay,

As an education policy thinker and a special education teacher in an inner city school in Kansas City, Kansas, this editorial was a really excellent review of many of the problems with the No Child Left Behind Act. Very impressive and a much stronger understanding of the issues with this act and with education policy, generally, by my lights than much of even the strongest national coverage I read on this issue.

The penalties associated with NCLB - namely the required removal of administrators and teachers after 4 years of not meeting Annual Yearly Progress standards - are the most counterproductive of the federal mandates that I have encountered or seen thusfar. You're argument that authority should be redevolved to local governance is dead on, I believe. And schools should operate with much more substantial autonomy, being more responsible for both successes and failures on their own rather than both strictly regulated by Federal, state, and local governments and school districts, and then held accountable for decisions many of which are not within their control because of regulation. The current system is a terrible catch-22 where schools and teachers are tightly controlled and simultaneously held strictly and harshly accountable for decisions many of which they are not given the freedom to make on their own.

I teach in a school that is going throught this nightmare, right now, and it is a sad, sad comment on how politics can very seriously overwhelm more noble efforts in education in the name of satisfying a never-satiated public appetite to crack down and tightly control any problem it bears witness too, even when such control may be the very thing that most undermines the ability of many schools (and people) to be more successful, and certainly more responsible for their failures and successes.

And it is very refreshing to read a journalist, nevertheless a younger journalist, who has such a strong grasp of some very complex and counterpoductive political realities.

Ben Sutherland benfrankln@yahoo.com http://benfrankln.blogspot.com/

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• Posted by benfrankln on March 1, 2007 at 7:20 p.m.
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Stangler: Education policy needs revision

While I may be a BizGrad, I come from a family of teachers. And I've been hearing about the problems of NCLB for years now from my brothers and sister and their spouses - teachers all, just like Mr. Sutherland above.

The most common lament is that they are forced to 'teach the test'. This should come as no surprise, as so much is riding on those all-important test scores. Aside from the obvious problem of spending so much valuable classroom time on material of dubious value, there is another ramification. This test-focused teaching has also regrettably sparked a spate of cheating on the part of many teachers around the country, a phenomena that has been documented numerous times in the press - also no surprise as desperate people resort to desperate measures. Legislators should have seen these problems coming, and done something about them in the original NCLB act. Now that the results are obvious, they really have no excuse.

Congrats on another fine article McKay. But I will leave you and the other commentors with one thought:

The Federal Government does provide signficant funding to local school districts - funding that in many places, such as the inner cities, represents a necessary lifeline. But with all funding must come accountability. Accountability is a very popular word right now; unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be that popular when the subject is student performance in public schools. So, while you may well criticize the Bush Administrations' accountability standards as I and my family have, what say you to improve them?

Accountability must be real. There MUST be real consequences for those schools and administrators who are given resources but cannot deliver the results expected by parents and their duly elected representatives. What should those consequences be, exactly? I challenge. Tell us what to do with public schools and teachers that consistently fail.

Or, given the tone struck so far, is your answer to follow the Republican advice of 13 years ago, and abolish the Dept of Education altogether? Which should it be? Funding with real accountability? or total local control - no inteference from Washington but no meaningful help either? Those are the only choices you're going to get.

I'm eager to see some posts on this subject.......

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• Posted by KUBizGrad on March 2, 2007 at 1 a.m.
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