A movement I'm proud to be a part of
Fresh take on so-called No Child Left Behind
News media see real education act flaws
WEA President Charles Hasse
Among public school supporters, deep apprehension preceded the Aug. 28 release of Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) scores, and the accompanying list of 436 schools in the state that did not meet new federal requirements for "Adequate Yearly Progress." While there was general agreement in the education community regarding flaws so considerable in the so-called "No Child Left Behind" Act (NCLB) as to render its list of under-performing schools meaningless, there was concern that sensational media reporting of the new federal rankings would alarm the public and touch off a fresh round of school bashing.
It turns out we were overwrought for naught. Reporters generally concentrated on the unworkable aspects of the federal rules, and their incompatibility with state performance measures. They focused on schools that have made extraordinary gains on state assessments -- such as Chinook Middle School in my district, Highline, up 14 points in math, 7 points in reading and 12 points in writing -- only to be singled out for possible punitive sanctions under the new federal scheme.
For their part, editorial writers mostly criticized NCLB, and praised our state's school improvement efforts. In a Seattle Times editorial, for example, the paper dismissed the news that 22 percent of state schools didn't meet AYP, pointing instead to big jumps in WASL and SAT scores, and suggesting that the real issue is "whether adequate resources are being devoted to education during state and federal budget crunches."
The Vancouver Columbian's conservative columnist Elizabeth Hovde observed, "While accountability is certainly good, No Child Left Behind is unaccountable to common sense." An editorial cartoon by Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Pulitzer prize-winning artist David Horsey portrayed NCLB itself in a corner wearing a dunce cap.
The censure of NCLB is part of a national trend. A St. Petersburg Times editorial was perhaps the pithiest of all. "Gov. Jeb Bush says that Gulfport Elementary School did so well academically last year it is due for a state bonus check of roughly $40,000. President George W. Bush says Gulfport Elementary School has performed so poorly that its parents must be allowed, less than a week before school begins, to pull their children out. …This is random reform at its worst, pushing and pulling school districts, rewarding and punishing schools based on a narrow appraisal of their work."
