What’s wrong with Leave No Child Behind? I’ll tell you.

April 29, 2005 · Comments

So last night I was all set to settle in for a couple hours of pure escapist reality TV (Survivor followed by The Apprentice) and I get reality that I didn’t need.

I can go through and pontificate on everything I found wrong with what Bush said last night, but let me concentrate on the point that is nearest to my heart…Leave No Child Behind. I wanted to throw something at the screen when he was talking about it, because the man **just doesn’t get it.**

So here it is…the problem with LNCB isn’t the concept. It’s a very, very good thing to have the goal of literacy for all children we are educating in this country. A child from a so-called “bad” school whose family is struggling to make ends meet or is at a disadvantage because of their ethnic or racial background should not fall through the cracks. We should be identifying those children who need extra help and we should be giving it to them. Sounds peachy.

But the implementation and consequences of this law? Give me a break. Connecticut is planning on suing their way out of it, as the Teacher’s Union and other states are already taking action against it.

Why?

Let’s put it this way…you’re a website developer and you present your site to your client. The goal is to get certain action out of your site visitors and that’s where your success is measured. Which will get the job done?

1. You present the site and get little to no feedback on its success or failure until it’s way too late to do anything about it.
2. Your site traffic is tested every 15 minutes, each test using a different server, different pages and a different measure. All you get is a report of the results and a directive “fix it, or else.” Maybe the server was down during one of the tests, maybe you can’t compare the results of one server to another to draw a conclusion. You know you have a problem, but if you spend all your time running tests all over the server you don’t have the time or the information to try and fix it. You get no assessment of the data, no suggestions, no constructive feedback and certainly no funds to implement the changes necessary even if you could figure out what those changes are. The funds you do get come with a memo that says “Based on the test results we need you to take the money we gave you already for site enhancements and instead spend it to fix the problem. Don’t ask us how to do that, just do it. Or else you’re going to have to spend the money to send your visitors to other sites.”
3. Your site traffic is tested at consistent milestones. You know it’s not about how often you test, it’s about how you assess the data. Your traffic from one month to the next is compared based on similar traffic patterns. Adjustments are made for time of day or network-wide outtages. You can see the progress from the beginning because you’re testing the same page over time and you know what changes you need to make to new pages based on what you’re learning. You get the results in a format that clearly indicates the trends and assesses where the weaknesses are. You are trusted as the expert to come up with a plan to fix the problem, you know how much it should cost and you are given the money to make it happen. You can even give extra attention to the pages that are performing well to make them do even better.

\#1 was our education system before LNCB. #2 is LNCB now. #3 is what it should be.

We are testing these kids to within an inch of their lives, but we can’t assess the data if we’re comparing Johnny one year with one teacher to Melinda the next year with another teacher. We are forcing children to be tested based on their chronological age, regardless of a diagnosed disability that makes them cognitively younger. We are turning teachers into robots. We are turning kids off to learning. We are forcing school districts to spend millions of dollars throwing money at a problem with no clue whether or not they’re hitting the right target. Oh, there’s a problem…but if you spend the budget to fix what you think is a bad link and the problem is really that you misnamed the page, what good is it?

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