Del Hanson - No Congressman Left Behind

Del Hanson

With impeccable timing, just as teachers returned to school, the New Mexico Public Education Department released the latest AYP standings. Plastered over anxiously waiting front pages of newspapers, it ominously announced that about three-fourths of schools did not make AYP, up from about two-thirds the year before and about half the year before that. Letters to the editors and sound-off columns were filled with nasty comments deriding teachers and observing that “them gummamint schools” were failing worse than ever before. Instead of returning to school rooms with the floors waxed and fresh new faces awaiting them, teachers once again faced the unkind comments generated by a system that, by testing design, consigns them to not making the grade. By the year 2014, unless drastically amended, the NCLB law will leave all, that is 100%, of public schools not making AYP. Crazy? Absurd? It is the law.

So what is AYP? It is an evaluation device associated with the No Child Left Behind law which ranks schools. For all the billions of dollars paid to testing companies and weeks of school lost to tedious testing procedure, it provides actual teachers with little useful information about individual students. Instead, it paints different groupings of children within schools with the broad brush stroke of “being or not being proficient.” The tests administered are not consistent throughout the nation, with each state devising their own exams and assigning their own proficiency levels. New Mexico, believe it or not, set some of the highest proficiency requirements in the nation. Therefore, a state like Texas can have hundreds of more schools making AYP than New Mexico, not only because of student ability, but because its standard of proficiency is different. Furthermore, the passing score for proficiency does not remain constant; it is a moving target. By the year 2014, every student in public school in the United States of America must be proficient in math and reading.

In the wonderful NPR radio broadcast of the “Prairie Home Companion” starring Garrison Keillor, the opening lines describe the little hamlet of Lake Wobegon as the place where all men are good looking, all women are strong, and all children are above average. Despite common sense and the standard deviation “Bell” curve, the gurus of education will, by decree, make all children above average in 2014.

The vast majority of the public probably concludes that attainment of AYP status is determined by averaging the scores of all the children taking the exam and comparing that with the desired proficiency level. Not so. That is too easy. Instead, the population is disaggregated or broken down into subgroups which are scrutinized separately. In Las Cruces, that means there will be sub-classifications of not only male and female, but Hispanic, Anglo, Native American, Black, and Asian, disadvantaged, special education, and English Language Learners (ELL). The same student may fall into several categories; for example, a single child may be classified female, and ELL, and Hispanic, and disadvantaged (receives a subsidized lunch). In most schools, about thirty-seven categories are examined. Out of a group of 500 juniors taking test, some groupings may be large, such as 255 females and 245 males. Some maybe very small, such as special ed where there may be 54, or maybe only 31 ELL students. If any one of the thirty-seven groups does not achieve the desired proficiency level, the whole school fails. Yes, you heard correctly. It is quite possible a school suffers non-proficiency in all thirty seven categories, but highly unlikely. Instead, it is much more likely that the school is passing most categories, but still does not make AYP because a few do not pass muster. It is akin to giving a test to an entire classroom of children and announcing that they will receive punishment if all of them do not pass. When the results come back, after weeks of intensive study and preparation by all the kids, one special education student with a diagnosed learning disability fails the test. The rest pass. The whole class receives punishment, however. Obviously, it is hardly fair as well as being an horrible use of educational strategy. Notice I did not say if they all passed they would receive a reward. NCLB is underlain and predicated on punishment. And, like Dante’s Inferno, there are increasingly horrendous levels of punishment, in this case for the sin of not having all subgroups pass the test.

Let me be even more specific. Let’s say 500 students are in the testing population. Unless at least 95% of the group takes the test, the entire school fails, no matter what the scores were. Schools hope and pray that a flu virus does not rage through the population or that parents of ELL migrant children don’t pull their children out to work in another agricultural region. Of the 500 who take the test, let us presume 43 are in the sub-category of special ed. That is less than ten percent of the group. If only 23 of that small sampling pass the test, the whole school fails, even though the other 90 percent of the students passed the exam. Now, let’s look at a school across the county that only has 28 special ed students. All 28 fail the test, which is many more than the previous school. That school can actually make AYP! You see, the scores of that subgroup are not counted, because the sample falls under the arbitrary limit. This allows many smaller schools to make AYP while almost all large schools do not make it. Los Alamos High School in New Mexico has been repeatedly named one of the top 100 schools in America, but it cannot make AYP. Cloudcroft High School makes AYP. Does that imply that Cloudcroft High School is a better school than Los Alamos? No, probably not. Both schools may be excellent, but not because one made AYP and the other doesn’t. Having a dozen National Merit Finalists and the largest number of students per capita in the nation taking advanced placement courses does not make you AYP friendly. Not in New Mexico.

As an editorial writer, I have been accused by some as being a “bleeding heart liberal afraid of accountability for teachers” because I have adamantly opposed NCLB from its inception. In fact, I left the education profession because I observed that NCLB robs the classroom of the creativity, innovation and joy that used to be the staple of good teaching. I am probably more liberal than Newt but more conservative than the new Republican senator from Massachusetts. I am decidedly not against accountability. I am, however, against enforced stupidity, of which NCLB is riddled, with contributions coming from both sides of the aisle. It has been a multi-billion dollar boondoggle and has not produced any demonstrable positive results. It has effectively demoralized America’s best and brightest teachers. After eight years and untold megabucks of spending, NCLB has done little but provide test manufacturers with a lucrative jobs program.

So did your school make AYP? It really doesn’t matter. The Gallup Poll still shows that most Americans think their neighborhood school is just fine, but all those others out there aren’t. The American public, for the most part, understands that not making AYP does not mean a school is a failing school. Allow me to propose something. Let’s have a “No Congressperson Left Behind” law. One misstep and there are ascending degrees of punishment until you are thrown out on your kiester. This would mean consequences, real consequences, for insider information given to family members, wide stances at urinals in the men’s room, accepting illegal gifts to lobbyists, lying, cheating, or embarrassing the entire nation and your family by being an idiot. How about some real accountability in Congress like it is applied to teachers? No Congressperson Left Behind. I would support that.

Del Hanson - No Congressman Left Behind