Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (59758)	6/8/2007 10:32:05 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Something Works By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Friday, June 08, 2007 4:20 PM PT School Reform: Test scores are up since No Child Left Behind went into effect. Was NCLB the cause? Hard to tell, but arguing against its success just got tougher. In an inexact science such as education, statistics can be spun to prove just about anything. There's always some explanation for failure. The appearance of success is often challenged. No one ever gets the last word. So we won't be surprised to see plenty of cold water thrown at a report released last week by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center on Education Policy (CEP) on test results under the No Child Left Behind law. The center acknowledges flaws and gaps in its data. Nevertheless, the caveats can't obscure the fact that the trends it finds are mostly positive. In most states where testing has been in place long enough to establish a meaningful track record, scores have been rising. In most of those states where the gap between the test scores of white and minority students could be tracked, the gap was narrowing. Something is working to raise test scores and, if test scores are an accurate gauge of learning, to make American students better educated. We would be surprised if that something isn't NCLB, since the law has probably had more influence on teaching and curricula than anything else since its enactment in 2002. If it's not this law, then it's the broader but related movement toward higher standards and more of what detractors call "high-stakes testing." Along with NCLB, some states adopted new or tougher high school exit exams. Call it the no-excuses movement. It's met political resistance, yet it's moving forward and doing quite a bit of good. With NCLB up for renewal this year, it's time to ask where the movement and its most important law go from here. It's not enough just to say, "Do more of the same." Left as it is, NCLB is headed for trouble, either through a backlash against its harsh treatment of "failing" schools or through a watering-down of state tests. Both of these fates could be averted by updating the law to add rigor and realism in the right places. Rigor is needed on the testing side. As long as states are free to set their own standards, they will be prone to bend those standards under local pressure to make their schools look good. Already, some states' test results deviate widely from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a nationwide gauge of learning based on samples rather than comprehensive test results. Frederick Hess, an education expert with the American Enterprise Institute and one of the authors of the new CEP report, notes that Oklahoma claims 93% of its fourth-graders are proficient in reading and 86% proficient in math, while NAEP says just 26% and 29%, respectively, meet that standard. It's only fair that NCLB, which really is just a set of conditions on federal aid to schools, should make that aid contingent on states accepting national benchmarks for math and reading. Realism is needed on the subject of NCLB's requirement that every student in America be "proficient" in reading and math — that is, showing significantly more than "basic" skills — by 2014. Hess rightly calls this target "grandiose." When the law was enacted, 2014 was a distant date and the 100% proficiency target posed only a distant threat. Like the title of the law, it was bold, idealistic and in happy denial of human limits. Now, however, schools are looking at potentially harsh near-term penalties for failing to meet this goal, which is impossible for all of their students to meet. At the same time, there is still plenty of room to do better, so improvement — measured by national standards — should be required for every school and every state. That is the way to build on NCLB's success. ibdeditorials.com