Do we really want to replace NCLB?
In last week’s Ed Week, in a Commentary article, Replacing No child Left Behind, Richard Rothstein writes:
“We all want better math and reading assessments. But we should also invest in better tests of history, sciences, and the arts, and develop tools to evaluate student behavior, judge a school’s disciplinary climate, see whether students know how to cooperate, and measure whether schools are enhancing physical fitness and appropriate health choices and habits.”
Although his proposal at first blush does seem reasonable — test or measure, not just the acquisition of math and reading skills, but all the variety of intellectual, personal, and interpersonal skill and knowledge acquisition, that, as we would readily admit, ought to be fully and equally represented in the learning environment of the school.
Also, it does seem to have happened, as Rothstein and others have been making clear, almost since the day that NCLB was enacted, that math and reading, because they are the only ones tested, are pushing to the side, or entirely out of the picture, music and the arts, history, social studies and the sciences, not to mention the whole gamut of important individual and community goals.
If a few activities have withstood the math and reading testing push, such as sports, theater, maybe some vocational pursuits, it’s because these activities were not in need of tests to give them importance in the eyes of the learner.
But while Rothstein’s diagnosis of the situation we now have with NCLB is accurate his prescription for improvement is totally unrealistic. What he suggests won’t happen. For to come up with accurate, reliable, objective tests of the kinds of things he mentions is prohibitively expensive, not to mention insuperably difficult to do.
If we’ve chosen to most of all test math and reading it’s not only because these are important subject matters, and in the case of reading if not of math, essential. But it’s also because we can do so objectively, and to most people’s satisfaction.
It might be possible to come up with objective history and science tests, but most likely the history and science tested would be facts, information, and we’d be testing only the student’s memory of those facts, not his or her understanding of them.
But the arts? The student’s behavior (in class, in the school corridor, outside of school?), the school’s disciplinary climate, and all the rest, — “whether students know how to cooperate, and measure whether schools are enhancing physical fitness and appropriate health choices and habits.” Not a chance.
In regard to most of these things that Rothstein lists teachers, and parents even more so, will judge the same children in widely differing ways. There may be children of whom we could find general agreement about how well they cooperate etc. but this sort of agreement would be rare.
Furthermore, in regard to most of the things that Rothstein would like us to measure we would have to rely primarily on the teacher’s opinion, and this, of course, would reflect the particular values and interests of the teacher as much as the progress of the student.
There now is a baby, and the baby is NCLB, or the objective measure of math and reading skills. And while these skills are not all there is, or all that should be, a living baby is what we have and we shouldn’t risk losing it while discarding the admittedly dirty bath water. To clean that water, without threatening the baby, would be the way to go.
