NCLB... Beginning to remedy the wrongs

This week happened to be my favorite, for both assigned readings and class discussion because these are some of the issues I want to study when I get to grad school. Our focus this week was on the achievement gap. We examined different explanations for it and for possible ways to begin to close the achievement gap. The No Child Left Behind Act sought to reform eduction and attend to the achievement gap. But due to misguided execution, NCLB may be a culprit in maintaining the gap and harming most the children it promised to help.

As stated in Hammond's reading this week, a debt is owed to those students of color and of lower status that have been historically disenfranchised by the education system; those who have been repeatedly forced into a place of disadvantage because of unequal access to quality education. NCLB is currently helping to perpetuate the inequalities faced "minority" and low-income students. NCLB was written with great prospects in mind, "a victory for American children" is what Hammond reported. Today, it seems more children are losing as a result of NCLB.

Accountability is a great point raised by NCLB, without teacher's being held accountable for their students failure is sure to go unchallenged. I believe that the way in which teacher's are being held accountable is the deficiency in NCLB lies. As we discussed, it is so much easier to quantify a teacher's success by the grades his/her class receives on a standardized test. This method is cost efficient and allows for ease in data collection and analysis. Unfortunately, a student is more than a test score and it is careless to base a student's ability and achievement on one score. The process of assessment is destroying our schools and forcing teachers to deliver low-quality education.

Ironically, this past Monday President Obama sent his plans for NCLB to congress, which would retain annual testing and data-driven accountability  but would add resources and flexibility to meet new goals. His goal is to take emphasis off yearly improvement, and federal outlines of school failure and begin to utilize broader measures of progress. The current goal of proficiency by 2014 is being replaced by the goal having all high school graduates prepared for college and a career by 2020. This is a point we brought up in class, I think that by expanding the goal beyond proficiency benefit the students in the long run. It will be visible to the students that a greater investment is being made into their futures.

Obama's plans make a shift from punative measures to a system of remediation for the lowest 5% of schools who don't meet performance goals and rewards the schools that do. Personally, I believe that this is a start. But ultimately will not completely remedy the achievement gap. Based on the reform suggested by President Obama, there is still a heavy dependence on high stakes testing for measuring student and school progress. Hammond calls for a paradigm shift in national education policy, what President Obama has outlined is just a remodel of NCLB. In the end I think it will take a complete new plan which doesn't depend on assessment, and is committed to supplying high-quality teachers and resources to all students to ensure that no child is indeed left behind.

This is a news article speaking on President Obama's plans for NCLB. It more descriptively outlines some of the attentive plans for education policy reform.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/15/opinion/la-ed-nclb16-2010mar16

This is a CNN news report on President Obama's plans for reforming NCLB. I'm curious to know what your thoughts are on these plans for reform, do you all think they have potential?
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/15/obama.education/index.html?eref=rss_us&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_us+%28RSS%3A+U.S.%29