No Child Left
Behind
Accountability in any vocation is an important element. We hold doctors
accountable for what they do while we are under anesthesia, and we trust they
will make informed decisions while we are in their care. We hold contractors
accountable for the construction of our homes, and we trust our houses will
stand for many years. And, we hold our schools accountable for teaching our
children, and we trust that they will develop in every child skills that s/he
must to have to be successful in the 21st century. How we measure each of these
groups of professionals differs, but each must be held accountable for important
reasons. The No Child Left Behind legislation is one way the government has
responded to the call for accountability in education.
While the focus has turned on occasion to improving particular areas of
teaching, such as with the launching of Sputnik and ultimately the call for an
improvement in American science and math education, this is the first time such
an encompassing and in-depth analysis of the American education system has
happened. In an attempt to ensure that all children are learning a core
curriculum, the focus of education appears to have shifted away from the child
and more towards the collection of data. As a parent and educator, I am happy we
are holding each other accountable for teaching. Perhaps we will no longer have
the teachers who simply show up when the bell rings, put in his time, and leave
again when the bell rings at the end of the day, having given little or no
thought to the success of his students. However, also as a parent and teacher, I
am concerned with the shift in focus. We have certainly moved away from the art
of teaching to a focus on testing and data gathering. The focus of education is
no longer on the whole child, but rather on the material that child can
regurgitate on a standardized test.
To hold schools accountable, the government has called for each school system,
and ultimately each school, to create a yearly report documenting its
performance in a variety of areas. The ultimate goal of this report (AYP) is not
to simply summarize the data collected, but to use the data as a means for
improving current practices. To create this report, they must collect data.
According to the article “Data-Driven Decisionmaking,” school districts collect
different kinds of data in order to make decisions about the educational
process. For example, schools may collect data on demographics as well as data
on student performance. They must then determine how to use this data to make
informed instructional decisions.
Much like a doctor collects data through a battery of tests to rule out various
health problems, schools, too, collect information about their students.
Ultimately, they use the information to make critical decisions. A school may
examine the data collected on test scores in order to select topics for staff
development. Along this line, the authors of “Data-Driven Decisionmaking”
indicates that “superintendents and board members know how to lead and support
data use in the district.” This implies, then, that all members involved in the
educational process will understand the data collecting process and understand
how to make these informed decisions. When looking at my own school board, I
question whether they truly understand what the data indicates. While most of
them on the board have children in our school system, only one has any training
in education other than being a student. I doubt they have received extensive
training in data analysis, and yet, they make recommendations and decisions
based on this very data.
Like the first article, the link to the No Child Left Behind Indiana web site (http://www.doe.state.in.us/esea/welcome.html)
provides users with a plethora of information that supports the implementation
of NCLB. For example, I examined the link to the Indiana Accountability Plan.
Here the premises of NCLB are outlined, and each criteria is broken down with
examples of individual critical elements, examples for meeting statutory
requirements, and examples of those not meeting the requirements. This link
alone can help schools indicate how to collect the necessary data and how to
present it in such a manner as is considered acceptable.
Unfortunately, collecting data is extraordinarily expensive and time-consuming.
In fact, according to the “Education’s Data Management Initiative,” in 2004
states spent 45,000 hours collecting data and $1.2 million in order to meet the
federal government’s requests for data.” It is no wonder that teaches complain
of feeling stretched for time, and school systems worry about meeting the
financial burden of No Child Left Behind.
However, collecting data is an important element of teaching, and one that
surpasses the collection of only tests scores. “Using Data as a School
Improvement Tool” defines data as “any information when taken together and
analyzed can be used to produce knowledge.” (http://www.ncrel.org/datause/qkey11/qkey11.pdf).
Good teachers use the information they gather formally and informally to
influence their instructional strategies as well as the depth of the curriculum
When making important decisions by analyzing the data, a large group of people
must be involved. This same resource indicates that the Leadership Team, which
is responsible for determining the data to collect and the examination of that
data include members not only from administration, but representatives from the
teaching community as well as parent and business members. They also do not
ignore the daily data a teacher collects in his or her classroom.
Ultimately, the No Child Left Behind is a difficult mandate to fully embrace.
The premise behind the policy is important, and with one no one would disagree.
Who in his right mind would say, “Of course, I want to leave children behind in
their education!?” It is extremely important to hold schools (teachers and
administrators) accountable for fully educating children. However, we must also
understand that the NCLB policy cannot be reduced to just giving standardized
tests once or twice a year and using that information to make decisions.
Instead, NCLB has stirred the fire, requiring everyone involved in education to
sit up a little taller in our desks and to make sure we are doing what we say we
are.
Using information collected through standardized tests is only a small part of
the picture. Instead, we must help teachers, administrators, government
officials, and parents move beyond this misconception, and move to accept the
fact that every day teachers use information/data gathered formally and
informally to influence their teaching. As mentioned before, data is anything
that can be analyzed to produce knowledge.
We would never accept a contractor’s promise to build us a home that will
withstand the first rainstorm and find that the home he built us sways in the
first winds. We would also never accept a doctor’s promise to remove our tonsils
only to wake to find he has removed our left foot. The same should be true for
those who have entered the profession of education. When a school and those
within its walls promise to teach children, we should expect that to be true.
Unfortunately, we have had to have such a strict mandate imposed to make this
so.