Today’s new NAEP data is mixed news with enough kernels for people to argue that current policies are/are not helping improve achievement especially for traditionally under-served kids, are/are not hurting advanced kids, some encouraging results for early grades but not for high school etc…it’s a stimulus program for education partisans! Short answer, we need to do a lot better but all is not lost. But, you don’t need a weatherman…Sam Dillon predictably finds the clouds for you.
From The Times a new land speed record for hot button terms:
“We saw stronger gains and more progress in narrowing achievement gaps before No Child took effect,” said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at Berkeley. “The punch that centralized accountability packs seems to be weakening. We’re lifting the basic skills of young kids but this policy is not lifting 21st-century skills for the new economy.”
If only he’d said we need a paradigm shift it would have been the perfect quote…
Update: The Dallas Morning News and Sandy Kress take on Dillon’s dour take.
“All is not lost.” That’s a great endorsement for a law which cost tens of billions of dollars. So NCLB,
a) did some net harm
b) did nothing
c) did some good, or
D) who knows?
Focus on the big picture. What is the purpose of education, raise test score up to age 13, but not even until 17?
What you would have felt in the 1990s when we were seeing real improvement if you would have known that data-driven accountability would have yielded so little.
It would be interesting to know what happens if you pull these national results apart by jurisdiction. Have any states or cities experienced unusual gains or losses, and if so, can that actually be connected to particular policy choices or environmental changes? Has anybody reported on that?
Just to finish the thought – I know we have to talk about national results, because we’re talking about national legislation. But it’s not all that tight a framework and there is a lot of room for local variation.