Tag Archives: No Child Left Behind

Education, State of Illinois

Question of the Day: How should Illinois fill the NCLB void?

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While the goals behind No Child Left Behind were admirable, experience has taught us that the law has some serious flaws that are hurting our children instead of helping them. Teachers are being forced to teach to a test, while subjects like history and science are being squeezed out. And in order to avoid having their schools labeled as failures, some states lowered their standards in a race to the bottom….

Yesterday, I announced that we’ll be giving states more flexibility to meet high standards for teaching and learning. It’s time for us to let states, schools and teachers come up with innovative ways to give our children the skills they need to compete for the jobs of the future.

— President Obama, Weekly Address, 9/24/2011

States are going to be able to get waivers from the federal standards of “No Child Left Behind,” but in order to get those waivers, they will have to present another plan for improving school performance. Illinois is reportedly looking at applying for a waiver (WJBC, Chicago Tribune). Nearly all educators agree that the federal No Child Left Behind standards were unrealistic. But now that states have a chance to write their own standards, what should they be?

The question of the day is: What standards should Illinois put in place to replace federal NCLB requirements and improve school performance?

Education

Ravitch: “Race to the Top” worse than “No Child Left Behind”

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At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Terry Knapp spoke to the council and encouraged them all to read a new book by Diane Ravitch called “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education.” He wanted them (especially the Mayor) to read it before next week’s education symposium with Education Secretary Arne Duncan and school reformer Paul Vallas.

The book is available from Amazon.com here, but you can get a pretty good synopsis of her thesis by watching this lecture (two parts, approx. 15 minutes total, from the Radical Film and Lecture Series at NYU, via YouTube):

“Diane Ravitch is a historian of education. She is Research Professor of Education at New York University. She is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.,” and “From 1991 to 1993, she was Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander in the administration of President George H.W. Bush,” according to Politico.

While listening to her speech, I couldn’t help but think about Peoria’s charter school, which is heavily promoted by business interests, not the least of which being the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce. I also thought about how the school board was not even invited to next week’s education symposium — a telling omission. And finally, I thought about this article I recently read from the New York Times: “A charter school created and overseen by Stanford University’s School of Education was denied an extension of its charter on Wednesday night after several members of the school board labeled it a failure. Last month the state placed the charter school, Stanford New School, on its list of persistently lowest-achieving schools.” Ravitch is quoted in that article as saying:

“Maybe this demonstrates that schools alone cannot solve the very deep problems kids bring to school,” said Diane Ravitch, the education scholar and historian. “You cannot assume that schools alone can raise achievement scores without addressing the issues of poverty, of homelessness and shattered families.”

It’s too bad Ms. Ravitch won’t be at next week’s symposium. It would be interesting to hear her spar with Duncan and Vallas.