May 2, 2008

NCLB in the Classroom: Observations from the Front

Posted by Aaron Tang at 3:54PM

• 1 comment
• Email
• Print
• Reprints
• Share

Debates about No Child Left Behind (NCLB) often come down to fractures based on perspective. Many of the educators I've met ground their opinions on the law in their experiences in the classroom. To these educators, NCLB's annual testing requirements have turned schools into factories where innovative lessons have been replaced by rote test preparation. Moreover, the annual tests have placed onerous expectations on students, filling some youth with such anxiety that they shut down or disengage from school entirely.

On the other hand, policy makers analyze the law from a perspective that can be characterized generously as a birds-eye view, or cynically, as an ivory-tower view. From their vantage point, requiring regular standardized tests in schools is crucial to ensure that schools are successful in their core purpose of advancing student achievement. Moreover, detailed, thoroughly examined data on how our students are doing within each racial and socioeconomic grouping is absolutely necessary if we want to close down the pernicious achievement gap affecting low-income and students of color.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that for most of my time in the education policy arena, I've fallen squarely in the latter camp. But now that I've taught and gone through a year where standardized testing has been a serious challenge, I am better able to understand the nuances of the debate.

The basic problem boils down to a simple fact: students of all ages and all backgrounds are already not inclined to test-taking. Now, some tests are easier to stomache than others. Tests that are relevant and reasonable are always better than tests that seem arbitrary and unnecessary. Tests that students feel well-prepared for are also more likely to be taken seriously than tests that seem overly difficult.

On both of these fronts in my school this year, however, NCLB-required standardized testing did not fare well with my students. Since passing the tests is not required for grade promotion (which, contrary to popular belief, is usually the case with most of these tests), the students did not see any direct reason to try hard on the tests. Moreover, the tests asked many questions that were inaccessible to the students, particularly on the math and science sections. So students who were already uninspired to try hard on the tests found themselves frustrated with confusing questions.

When that happens, the natural inclination for almost all of my students was to quit trying. There was a lot of random bubble-filling going around my room, and test sections that should have taken an hour only took 15 minutes. And there were a lot of angry students lashing out at teachers and other staff members who they perceived to be the reason why they had to take the seemingly unreasonable tests.

But here's where the rub is. Because the students did not try hard on the test, the data from the tests will not actually be a reliable way to measure our school's success! So the education policy maker's original goal of getting data to evaluate schools will not be met, and the process will only anger children and their teachers in the process. No wonder why there are so many educators who are upset!

Yet to demand that NCLB's testing requirements be shelved also misses the point. Because the real root cause of the controversy over the tests is that many of the students, in my school at least, find them so difficult that they refuse to try. Addressing this root cause problem by demanding an end to standardized tests makes as much sense as a shopping mall getting rid of its security cameras when it finds out that there has been an outbreak of theft.

The solution?

The best I can think of is for states and the federal government to enhance the ability of schools to reward students who try hard on the test. This means rewarding not just absolute achievement levels, but improvement from one year to the next -- a trend that is emerging already. If my students saw that making significant gains on the test could result in them receiving a cash incentive or some other kind of reward, I firmly believe they would have tried harder, and policy makers would have more accurate data with which to judge our school.