Four individuals of varying professional backgrounds and experiences with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act sat on a panel last night about the effects of the legislation on local public schools. Education Action! sponsored the discussion.
NCLB, signed into law in 2002, is a federal education reform bill aimed at achieving accountability in public education by mandating that states develop standards and basic skill assessments in order to receive federal funding for their schools.
Junior Alison Gross, a member of Education Action!, gave opening remarks about NCLB to a filled Alumnae Lounge, first outlining the case in its support.
"Proponents of the law praise No Child Left Behind for its accountability measures and say that holding schools to a high standard of learning achievement will help close the [achievement gap]," she said.
Next, Gross explained some opposing views: "Critics respond that the overriding premise of the law is likely flawed, that schools are under-funded and that the assessment tests under No Child Left Behind are too high-stakes and are inaccurate measures of students' progress in school environments."
She then introduced Sid Smith, the superintendent of the Malden school district and the former director of curriculum and instructional practices for Boston public schools, who was the first panelist to speak.
"I'm on pretty much the pro-side," Smith said. "I favor NCLB for many, many reasons, although I think it has some shortcomings."
He praised NCLB for encouraging states to develop standards and holding them accountable for the guidelines they establish.
"Lots of school districts have had objectives for years and years and years long before NCLB came about - lots of them professed to have standards," Smith said. "But the difference when NCLB came into place is that states now had to actually address those standards."
He mentioned statistics that indicate NCLB's raised standards are causing students to perform better than ever in some parts of the country.
Despite these achievements, Smith feels that NCLB is under-funded.
"Even though on the federal level there's been a 59 percent increase in federal investment in education, that slice of the pie - the federal slice of the pie - is still very, very small," he said.
Smith also expressed concern that the arts were being sacrificed in some school districts' curricula to satisfy NCLB requirements, but said this is a failure caused by funding, not by NCLB itself.
Alicia Kersten, a Somerville High School history teacher of six years and a 2000 graduate of the Tufts masters in teaching program, spoke next.
She said that NCLB helps teachers justify assignments to their students.
"I'm not going to say that you stop being an enemy and become a friend, but maybe more like a 'frenemy,'" Kersten said. "They don't like that you're giving them all the work, but they understand that you didn't set this bar, you're not making it up. They have to get there to graduate and they're more willing to let you help them."
She did express reservations, however, about the future of NCLB.
Currently, the federal government only requires the administration of assessments in the subjects of reading and mathematics. The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests satisfy these NCLB requirements.
But according to Kersten, students who fail MCAS exams are then placed in MCAS preparatory classes, which specifically teach to the tests. She feels these courses could discourage students who already may be disinterested in their educational experiences from continuing their studies.
"I'm really nervous about what their high school experience is going to become if it's driven by testing," she said.
The next panelist was Anne Clark, a founding faculty member at the Boston Arts Academy (BAA), a public high school for the visual and performing arts.
Clark said that she feels the English and math MCAS tests are "largely justifiable," but expressed a recurring problem she has encountered in her role at the BAA: What do you do if a student passes a course, but fails the related MCAS?
Among the options she mentioned, such as making the student retake the course or placing the student in a prep class, she found no clear answer.
"I just don't believe that kind of system was thought out. I just can't imagine it was, and I certainly don't think that it's sustainable," she said.
Clark also feels that MCAS tests fail to accommodate special education and ESL students. "I have not been satisfied with the way [Massachusetts] and other states address students who have severe disabilities and students who are English language learners," she said.
The final speaker was Lisa Guisbond, a policy analyst for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest), an organization that deals with education reform as it relates to the evaluation of students, teachers and schools.
"By watching my son's educational progress, it became very clear to me that the best education is one that meets the individual needs and lifestyles of individual students, and what we have now thanks to state and federal high-stakes testing policies ... is not promoting that kind of education," Guisbond said.
As such, Guisbond was highly critical of NCLB.
"Tragically, looking at the impact [of NCLB] across the country, the first victims often are the ones that are intended to be helped - they are low-income, minority, special needs and limited-English-proficiency students.
Guisbond feels that the combination of "over-reliance on high-stakes testing, unrealistic achievement targets and punitive mandates" sometimes causes schools to act in ways that undermine the quality and equity of students' education.
She praised the recommendations of education activists like Jonathan Kozol and groups like the Forum on Educational Accountability that propose what she sees as viable alternatives to NCLB.
