I get the feeling, when I read this article, that its author really, really wants us to conclude that NCLB has ruined education. Try as I might, I just don't see it that way.
...[The students' energy and spirit is] what has helped make Rail Road Flat Elementary, despite its size, poverty, and social isolation, a state nominee last year for “national model of excellence” status, based on the school’s recent history of high standardized test scores.But as becomes apparent in a lapse like the previous week’s, it’s only strong discipline that keeps that energy channeled. Discipline and the kind of teach-to-the-test learning that’s become endemic in the era of No Child Left Behind. Such rote learning often gets frowned upon in the schools of better-educated, more affluent communities. Here, though, in a 549-person town named for a type of mule-drawn rail-and-mining-cart arrangement that’s been obsolete for a hundred years, “whatever works” is clearly working.
I wonder why the author sounds so surprised.
By the time the 8 a.m. bell rings, all of Youngblood’s students have filed into his middle-trailer classroom—the one with a homemade plastic label on the door admonishing THINK THINK THINK. Inside, they’re already hard at work checking their algebra homework answers. Then it’s on to in-class problems, which Youngblood runs through with the drive of a drill instructor, and tonight’s homework: percentages, rates of speed, calculating the surface area of a cube, and the algebraic order of operations. After that, it’s language hour, with assignments in spelling and vocabulary. Next come exercises on compound sentences and similes, followed hard by a spelling test.Even at recess, students can occasionally be seen sitting cross-legged by themselves, hitting the books in a quiet corner of the blacktop. From the beginning of the school year until the end, it’s a relentless, hard-hitting rhythm that doesn’t perceptibly slacken, even after the California Standards Tests are over. Don’t look here, in other words, for strategies to engage students—the students had better be engaged, or there are consequences ready and waiting. “There’s nothing entertaining about it,” Youngblood says. “It’s a grind, really. We come in, and we work all day.” His modus operandi and his theory of teaching are identical: “Just plow ahead.”
Why is it assumed that this method is incapable of engaging students? Is is the assumption that children can't handle challenges? That they can't possibly learn unless teachers make it entertaining? That they're incapable of understanding that all this rote memorization comes first and the good stuff comes later? This "plowing ahead" policy is consistent with the classical education method of filling up the heads of students with facts first, then teaching them how to argue and communicate those facts (i.e., "think critically) much later. Am I the only one here who thinks it's not a bad thing that these students are hitting the books at recess?
The real issue here, of course, is money. The school doesn't have a large tax base, and recieves less money than before from the government because it's doing so well on the state exams. There are fewer assemblies now - but did they really need 15 in nine months, before? Field trips are down, and what's there is funded by teachers and the students.
The funding issues are a problem, but I can't help but feel that by pounding the basic skills into the kids while they're still young, Rail Road Flat Elementary School's teachers are in fact doing more to ensure the future success of their young charges than if they had the cash for all the extras.
Posted by kswygert at August 16, 2005 01:47 PM