One overwhelming benefit of NCLB is that schools must break down test scores by ethnic groups. The NYT discusses the impact of this regulation:
No Child Left Behind requires schools to bring all students to grade level over the next decade. The law has aroused a backlash from teachers' unions and state lawmakers, who call some of its provisions unreasonable, like one that punishes schools where test scores of disabled students remain lower than other students'. But even critics acknowledge that the requirement that schools release scores categorized by students' race and ethnic group has obliged educators to work harder to narrow the achievement gap."I've been very critical of N.C.L.B. on other grounds," said Robert L. Linn, a co-director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing. But he called the law's insistence that test scores be made public by race and ethnic group "one of the things that's been good."
At least 40 states compiled scores by racial and ethnic groups before President Bush signed the law in January 2002. (In New York, scores broken down by ethnicity were first made public in March 2002.) But even though scores were publicly accessible, many schools felt little pressure to close the gap before the law required that they show annual improvement for each category of student, including blacks, Latinos and American Indians, or face sanctions.
The debate rages on as to whether a top-down regulation like NCLB can help fix such a long-standing problem as the achievement gap, but when schools are forced to make such data public, they're likely to do everything within their power to shrink that gap. Some schools are more effective than others:
In the Pascagoula School District in Mississippi, where 43 percent of black sixth graders scored at the proficient level in math last spring, compared with 83 percent of whites, Superintendent Hank M. Bounds recently ordered all 60 or so district administrators, even directors of technology and security, to tutor low-performing students.For Diana Krebs, the nutrition director, that has meant that after overseeing lunch for 6,000 Pascagoula children each day, she has driven to East Lawn Elementary school to work on arithmetic after school with four fourth-grade girls whose teacher said they needed extra practice.
"It's like helping your children with homework," Ms. Krebs said.
But not all states are focusing on the gap with equal energy, or in ways that will help minority children, said Enrique Aleman Jr., an education professor at the University of Utah, leaving him with what he called "conflicting views" on No Child Left Behind. Until last year he lived in Texas, where he said the law had seemed to turn his son Diego's elementary school into a testing factory.
"My son was bringing home practice tests every day, and that's not real education," Dr. Aleman said. "My view from Texas was that N.C.L.B. was hurting the kids it was supposed to help."
Test, then tutor, then test again. Too many schools are skipping the middle step.
Posted by kswygert at May 31, 2005 03:25 PM