The Civil Rights project at UCLA (formerly at Harvard) in a 2006 study, Tracking Achievement Gaps and Assessing the Impact of "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) on the Gaps, reached the following conclusions:
NCLB did not have a significant impact on improving reading and math achievement across the nation and states.
NCLB has not helped the nation and states significantly narrow the achievement gap.
The Bush administration’s hard spin on its failed education policy doesn’t straighten out away from NCLB issues either.
Spellings recently said about the Reading First program, “If ever there was a program that was rooted in research and science and fact, this is it,” she said. “This is [like] the cure for cancer.” Two months later her own Department’s research arm issued a report saying the Reading First program had no real effect on reading comprehension in Grades 1-3.
It’s time for Congress to reject the hype and outright falsehoods too often marking the final months of Bush policy.
It’s time to fundamentally overhaul NCLB and shift its focus from testing, labeling, and punishing.
It’s time to support states and districts to build capacity, use comprehensive meaningful measures of student learning and school quality, and provide resources for proven programs like smaller class size.
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1 comment:
You are SO right! (or rather, teh UCLA researchers are-!) I am a school nurse at two inner city elementary schools in S.F. CA. Th eacheivement gap has little to do with teacher competency or teaching methods. It ahas everything to do with the parents: poor attendance, failed hearing and vision that never gets corrected, untreated dental decay that causes pain & distraction, post tarumatic stress- we have a very high level of community violence in fact this very morning my second grade studen't father was shot to death across the street from the school at 8:45 AM and we had another lockdown at noon. How can these kids learn in these circumstances? It isn't the school that has failed, it's society! And Thanks Prez Bush for cutting funds for after school porgrams and *trying* to eliminate the hot lunch program! (Congress overrode him on that) We all know hungry kids with nuthin to do after school learn better, huh?
Suzi in Sf
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