No Child Left Behind and liberals

No Child Left Behind works on the assumption that the primary, if not only, reason why some children perform below grade level on tests is because they received inferior education.

If the above paragraph were true, then No Child Left Behind would be a fabulous law. Because it sets out to measure how well schools are performing and financially punishes those schools that are failing to properly educate children.

No Child Left Behind works on the important truth that people respond to incentives. And we see that this theory works very well. Since No Child Left Behind has been enacted, schools all over the nation are now "teaching to the test" in order to boost their students' test scores. This is a fine example of how people respond to incentives.

So why do liberals hate this law so much? Do liberals just instinctively hate anything that Bush does? Do they believe that government should just give money away to school districts without any sort of accountability?

No Child Left Behind does not force any school districts to "teach to the test." If school districts know of better ways to properly educate students, why aren't they using those methods? Before "teaching to the test," the majority of students performed at grade level on the tests. Why don't the schools in poor neighborhoods just use the superior teaching methods of the schools in the middle class and upper middle class neighborhoods? Obviously, educators have absolutely no idea how to increase the performance of students and therefore they are stuck using the only method that actually improves test scores, which is the "teaching to the test" method.

Only when liberals come out and acknowledge the fact that children come to school with a biological level of intelligence which no amount of educational technique can change, only then do they have any right to criticize No Child Left Behind. Because the irony of No Child Left Behind is that it agrees with the liberal dogma and then dishes out the appropriate bitter medicine. But to continue with this analogy, if a doctor prescribes medicine based on an incorrect scientific understanding of the disease, the medicine can do more harm than good.

Is "teaching to the test" bad? It depends on the type of test. If you are teaching a knowledge based subject like History or Biology, teaching to the test simply means that the teacher is teaching the required curricululm. But things are different for reading tests which really are as much IQ tests as they are tests of teachable reading skills. Perhaps the best way to help children read better is to have them read a lot, and constant drilling of reading test questions is only coaching them to take reading tests and doesn't develop useful real world reading skills. Furthermore, repetitive drilling of reading test questions may come at the expense of other teaching that would be more useful for lower intelligence children. But in order to create an appropriate curriculum for lower intelligence chilren, we have to begin by acknowleding that they have lower intelligence in the first place and that no amount of education will alter their brain biology.

Comments

[The Engineer]

I don't disagree with what you've written, but IQ isn't the whole story. The fact is that SAT scores peaked in 1963. So something happened to schools since 1963 to impair kids ability to take the SAT (because IQ score didn't decrease). Teaching methods are one factor, the broader culture may be another factor.

[Half Sigma]

Engineer,

(1) The genetic IQ of the population should be declining by 1/10 of a standard deviation per generation based on birthrates of the intelligent vs. the unintelligent.

(2) A larger percentage of the population takes the SAT now, and the additional test takers are more likely to come from the middle of the bell curve rather than the right.

[The Engineer]

HS,

1) Flynn Effect contradicts this (IQ scores are increasing).

2) True. But if you look a little further into the issue, SAT scores decreased for the same socioeconomic cohort that was taking the SAT in '63.

The years 1957 to 1963 were a golden age for the public schools. Part of it was the reaction to Sputnik. People took education very seriously over that timeframe.

Not coincidentally, New Math was introduced right as SAT scores peaked. Baby boomers started graduating in '64. Thus, the schools changed and the culture changed.

[superdestroyer]

So why do liberals hate this law so much?

For several reasons:

1. NCLB has actually begun to show how poorly most students are doing. Inner city schools are being shown as incapable of teaching anyone.

2. In reporting of subgroups is showing that black and hispanic students in majority white schools perform at a much lower level than their white counterparts.

3. NCLB is also showing how few kids make any real process. It is showing that the public schools are much more of a jobs program than an education program.

[Peter]

People have been saying dire things about the state of public education for decades. Funny thing is, for all these doom-and-gloom predictions this country keeps getting more and more prosperous. If the predictions were to be believed, we'd have been reduced to subsistence agriculture by now.

[JewishAtheist]

Hilarious analysis of liberals, as usual, HS. NCLB is, by your own admission, bad policy, but liberals who hate it must hate it because of their True Hidden Agenda.

It's not some wacky liberal conspiracy. NCLB simply takes too much time away from teaching, between teaching to the test, testing itself, paperwork, and penalizing schools for problems you admit are beyond their control.

When is the left (and the right for that matter) going to admit that NCLB is a failure? Why are inner city schools incapable of teaching? Why do minority kids do worse than whites? It all comes down to race and intelligence. Schools need to teach the dim how to balance a checkbook, reading, basic math and other life skills, not history or art or literature (which they have no interest in anyway) so that when they drop out or "graduate" they aren't out trying to steal my car.
By the way JA, there is no hidden liberal agenda. It is pretty out in the open as far as I am concerned. For the public ed racket it involves more funding, each and every year, resisting evaluation of teachers to see if they have any ability themselves, social promotion, PC stupidity, lack of discipline and the denigration of white, western culture. The same with higher ed as well. Of course these right thinking liberals are using my money and their kids go to good schools which, surprise don't have many, if any minorities. This is the best analysis of liberals and how they operate as any I've ever read. See here:
http://www.rice.edu/sallyport/2006/fall/sallyport/segregation.html

Key sentence: "While whites, especially those who are highly educated, may express an interest in having their children attend integrated schools, in reality, they seek out schools that are racially segregated. In the study, researchers found, on average, that the greater the education of white parents, the more likely they will remove their children from public schools as the percentage of black students increases."

[JewishAtheist]

This is the best analysis of liberals and how they operate as any I've ever read.

It's an analysis of educated white people in general, not liberals. My complaint with HS is not necessarily that he's wrong about specific policies, but that he invariably blames things on "liberals" which can be just as fairly attributed simply to "people."

As you admit parenthetically in your first sentence, the right is no better than the left on this issue. While teachers' unions are of course liberal, their first allegiance is to the teachers, so any policies which put teachers' interests above students isn't because they are liberal, but because of whom they represent. Blaming "liberals" for teachers' unions makes as much sense as blaming "conservatives" for the NRA.

[The Engineer]

>>Blaming "liberals" for teachers' unions makes as much sense as blaming "conservatives" for the NRA.

Well, libs paint conservatives as enablers of the NRA all the time.

You have to understand that the Democratic party, which is where libs go to bed, is a wholly bought subsidiary of the teacher unions. Teachers, public employees, and trial lawyers fund and populate the Democrats. Because they fund the party and get out the vote, Democrat politicians won't do anything to challenge the unions.

The NRA doesn't have that kind of power over Republicans. There just aren't that many passionate gun owners.

If you could find me a Democrat who is liberal and not on the same page as the teacher unions on EVERY SINGLE ISSUE, I'd be more sympathetic of your argument. I just don't think that there are any. For example, find me a Democrat that is working to implement school vouchers. There simply are none.

[bbartlog]

Flynn Effect contradicts this (IQ scores are increasing).

You might want to start thinking about the Flynn effect in the past tense. It seems to have played out in the developed world. But give it another twenty years and fetal selection and/or genetic engineering will pick up the slack :-)

[bbartlog]

Hey, the trial lawyers and AARP own part of the Democratic Party too! It's not just the teachers' unions...

I think if you look around you can find some Democrats who support school choice (Anthony Williams, Joe Lieberman if you still count him as a democrat...). 'Working to implement' may still be a high enough bar that your statement is true though.

[SFG]

Race and intelligence? Possibly, though enough inner-city kids have lousy environments that I can't rule out an environmental component either.

Has anyone ever looked at first-generation African immigrants? My impression is that they tend to do better than native-born blacks, and have no admixture of 'white blood'.

[JewishAtheist]

The Engineer:

Perhaps the Christian Right is a better example than the NRA. Most "conservatives" who comment on this blog, for example, probably disagree strongly with the CR on a good many issues and yet the CR wields a ton of power in the Republican party.

You'll find liberals mostly agree with teachers' unions on issues like education funding and school vouchers, but I doubt they (we) would agree on how hard it should be to fire a teacher or reward him/her based on merit. In other words, we agree on the large question of how important a priority public education should be while perhaps disagreeing on the nitty-gritty of teachers vs. administration issues.

[The Engineer]

>>I doubt they (we) would agree on how hard it should be to fire a teacher or reward him/her based on merit.

Again, find me an elected Democrat who disagrees on these issues. You simply won't find one.

Look, NCLB was a bipartisan bill. Yet the biggest complainers are guys like Teddy "The Swimmer" Kennedy, who SPONSORED THE BILL!!!

It amazes me how much teachers dislike this bill, especially teachers in "good" districts. It has to be one of the best pieces of legislation in the history of manking, because it has all the right enemies.

[JewishAtheist]

>>I doubt they (we) would agree on how hard it should be to fire a teacher or reward him/her based on merit.

Again, find me an elected Democrat who disagrees on these issues. You simply won't find one.

A quick google shows that Ted Kennedy supports merit-based salaries for teachers. Is he liberal enough for you? http://www.tedkennedy.com/journal/1234/kennedy-response-to-bushs-no-child-left-behind-speech

For the record, Dems like Kennedy are mostly criticizing Bush because he did not sufficiently fund NCLB.

It amazes me how much teachers dislike this bill, especially teachers in "good" districts.

Yeah, it's just crazy that the most qualified people to discuss the matter disagree with you. I can't imagine how that could happen. In other news, it amazes me how much scientists dislike creationism, especially scientists in "good" institutions.

[The Engineer]

>>Yeah, it's just crazy that the most qualified people to discuss the matter disagree with you.

Well, yes, but it's also crazy for another reason. Presumably, teachers at better districts would be chomping at the bit to show how well they perform. Not so. Could it be that the perception of quality in education is not the reality?

[trumwill]

Well, yes, but it's also crazy for another reason. Presumably, teachers at better districts would be chomping at the bit to show how well they perform.

As I understand it, the NCLB puts a very high premium on progress rather than a single standard. So in that sense they have to do considerably better just to avoid the same punishments that much worse schools have, so the fact that they're doing better isn't much of a consolation.

It's much easier to improve your grade from a 65 than a 90.

[The Engineer]

My take is that the good districts are being rated on how minorities and handicapped score. The dirty little secret of public education is that minorites don't do any better in "good" school districts than in "bad" ones. NCLB exposes this fact.

Teachers in good districts want to be rewarded for the average student's performance, not the performance of minorities.

[David Alexander]

The dirty little secret of public education is that minorites don't do any better in "good" school districts than in "bad" ones.

I remember reading an article which I think was either in one of my readings for class or the New York Times which discussed that the black children in Princeton, NJ were doing considerably worse than the white children. IIRC, the majority of the black children were the children of the maids and other affilated servants of the upper class who live there, so if we play the IQ game, it's safe to presume that high IQs weren't recorded in these pupils.

Teachers in good districts want to be rewarded for the average student's performance, not the performance of minorities.

Teachers don't want their performance based on some bad kid in the class who refuses to learn. Even if NYC Department of Education would give $25K bonuses for raising scores in an inner-city school, I wouldn't waste my time because there's going to be a lot of kids, especially in the intermediate schools (Grades 6-9) where the majority of the children have no interest in learning.

[Spungen]

Do they believe that government should just give money away to school districts without any sort of accountability?

Every teacher I've heard talk about this thinks low student achievement has two causes: 1) Allegedly low teacher pay and high workload, 2) Outside environmental factors such as parental attitudes and low family incomes.

I think teachers are paid plenty, especially for people who only work 9 months of the year. But I can see where a lot of what happens is beyond their control whether you buy the nature or the nurture side.

[trumwill]

According to this, teacher salaries in the US are #2 or #3 of the "G8" nations. On the other hand, they work the most hours.

I'm inclined to put most of the blame on the students, their parents, and our national culture. A good school helps, no doubt, but if a kid wants a good education it's there for the taking. But we don't really want to seem to ask anything of anybody except the educators themselves... and that's asking a lot of educators.

That said, I'm not at all a fan of the system that we have in place and if I have kids I will seriously consider homeschooling.

[Spungen]

That said, I'm not at all a fan of the system that we have in place and if I have kids I will seriously consider homeschooling.

JOC, do you picture yourself doing the teaching?

[trumwill]

Yeah. That's probably the most intimidating thing about it. My other main concern is socialization. My wife and I both have pretty restricted social comfort zones and homeschooling may make matters worse for them in that regard. There'll be a lot of homework involved in that decision.

[The Engineer]

>>A good school helps, no doubt, but if a kid wants a good education it's there for the taking.

Absolutely, except for a couple of things. First, education methods are trendy, and quite a few of them don't work, like New Math and Whole Language. You can be a great parent and have a studious kid, but if the education methods include Whole Language, you could still end up with a kid who can't read.

[Spungen]

the education methods include Whole Language, you could still end up with a kid who can't read.

It's that bad? It seems to me that smart kids (like Will's seems likely to be, especially considering his wife's a doctor) just learn to read naturally. They will already know how before they get to first grade and deal with any methods of instruction. I could read books like "Stuart Little" by myself by the time I was four. The only instruction I had was people reading to me while I looked at the book, and being taught the alphabet. I've heard many similar stories, mostly not from people who grew up in rarified intellectual environments. So I figured actual teaching methods, at least for young kids, were just for the problem cases.

[The Engineer]

>>The only instruction I had was people reading to me while I looked at the book, and being taught the alphabet.

You need phonics to become a strong reader. Yeah, a lot of kids come to kindergarten already reading, and they did exactly what you did, which in fact works a lot like whole language (you look at the word and guess the meaning).

But that's not the way to develop strong readers. Guessing only gets you so far. Phonics takes you a lot further.

[David Alexander]

But that's not the way to develop strong readers. Guessing only gets you so far. Phonics takes you a lot further.

IMHO, Phonics has a limited effect on a language like English where words have very little connection to how they look and how they sound. I'm not saying it's useless, but it's highly overrated, and in many cases, word exposure combined with phonics would be a better solution. Although, the idea of phonics helps greatly when learning foreign languages where words actually look like how they're spelled, like in French...

As always, I'll bring up my anecdotal cases of my niece and nephew. My nephew's had some phonics in his classes, and I can tell because he attempts to sound out words he's unfamiliar with and he does so rather decently. In contrast, my niece has no experience with it and in 90% of the situations where my nephew attempts to sound out the word, she'll ask a grown up to say it for her first.

[Jay]

"Only when liberals come out and acknowledge the fact that children come to school with a biological level of intelligence which no amount of educational technique can change, only then do they have any right to criticize No Child Left Behind." This has a racist connotation. What have you been reading the "Bell Curve"? I strongly question the basis of this statement because it is the same prejudicial and refuted reasoning used to argue that blacks have inferior intellect.

You were essentially arguing that poor students are genetically inclined to be less intellectual than more affluent students. There are without a doubt some people that inherently have a knack for analytical thinking. Guess what? Some of those people are poor. However, I don't find it plausible that the majority of people have that natural ability because most are influenced by their environment to develop or value those skills.

Also, there's multiple forms of intelligence and it's narrow-minded to discount the intelligence of others by implying that no other form of intelligence exists. Tell a child prodigy musician that there's only logical-analytical intelligence.

[The Engineer]

>>What have you been reading the "Bell Curve"

That's a putdown?

[SFG]

"First, education methods are trendy, and quite a few of them don't work, like New Math and Whole Language."

Actually, a lot of the 'holistic' stuff isn't so bad when you apply it to good students; the teachers I've talked to say it's really, really damaging with bad ones, though. Kind of like the way cooperative learning works great when you have smart kids who want to learn but not so well when discipline is a major issue. Of course, the egalitarianism of ed-school orthodoxy prevents anyone from considering this.

"This has a racist connotation. What have you been reading the "Bell Curve"? I strongly question the basis of this statement because it is the same prejudicial and refuted reasoning used to argue that blacks have inferior intellect."
Man, Jay, you haven't been reading this blog too long, have you?

"You were essentially arguing that poor students are genetically inclined to be less intellectual than more affluent students. There are without a doubt some people that inherently have a knack for analytical thinking. Guess what? Some of those people are poor. However, I don't find it plausible that the majority of people have that natural ability because most are influenced by their environment to develop or value those skills."
Of course it's both nature and nurture. Nature also feeds nurture; people are going to create a certain environment based on their behavior, which is in turn affected by genes. What we are criticizing is the old-school Boasian idea that biology and genes have NO effect whatsoever. I am fully aware of the lousy environments these kids have and am willing to tax rich people to help correct them. But I am not expecting full equality, only a decrease in inequality.

[Half Sigma]

I had the whole language method in the first grade and I never had any problems learning to read.

I agree with SFG, these methods work well on smart students but poorly on the dumb ones.

[SFG]

My pet theory is that new educational methods are tested on upper-middle-class Jewish and Asian children. Can anyone confirm or disprove?

[Half Sigma]

I believe that educational theorists use their own childhood, or their own children, as the basis for their ideas.