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It sometimes seems that there is no aspect of public education that is
without disagreement and controversy, that everything we do at the
federal, state, district, school, and classroom level has its proponents
and opponents. CPIE’s attitude is that all need to hear both sides of
these arguments, those who see the virtues of what we are doing and those
who point out what’s missing and have ideas as to how to improve what we
are doing.
This section of the CPIE webpages attempts to bring those various points
of view into play around a number of the critical issues currently being
discussed. It is not our role to argue one side or another, but to provide
the information parents can use to make up their own minds about what
public education should be doing. We hope these selected articles help.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB)
NCLB is the broadest and deepest federal intervention in public education
that has ever been attempted—so quite naturally it has brought forth a
flood of arguments for and against each of its many aspects. Checker Finn,
one of the best minds in American education, has brought the various
arguments together in condensed form in
The Education Gadfly, a publication of the Thomas B. Fordham
Foundation. Those articles are “Debating
NCLB: Part I” and “Debating
NCLB: Part II”
PSSA Scores on Student Transcripts
No concept is more central to NCLB than that of accountability, the demand
that schools be held accountable for the academic achievement of their
students as revealed by performance on state tests. In Pennsylvania, this
demand has been carried further, to the argument that students as well
should be held accountable for their performance on the tests, in this
case by having these test scores placed on their school transcripts
[review this story]. Others see the practice as unwise and
discriminatory [review
this story].
Accountability Standards
The problem of holding schools accountable is that they may not have been
given the resources needed to meet appropriate standards, leaving them
unable to comply. One of the safety features in the federal law allows
states to individually set the standards that their schools must meet.
Thus, if a state knows that its schools are underfunded, it can demand
less of them.
But others see this feature as undercutting the goals of NCLB.
School Choice/Charter Schools/Vouchers
There are few voices raised up in opposition to giving parents the right
to pick the best school for their children, but there is considerable
discussion about the mechanisms for supporting those choices. Some see the
need for alternatives to district-based public schools and therefore
support chartered public schools; others see this tactic as weakening a
district-based system that needs further resources, not a loss of students
to charter schools. A third group believes that private schools should
also be included in a parent’s range of choices, and that the state should
provide vouchers that parents could use to purchase educational services
anywhere. Their opponents see this approach as deliberately ruinous to
district-based public education. Clearly, this is a many-sided argument
rather than a matter that calls for a decision between “right” and
“wrong.”
“Nine
Lies About School Choice: Answering the Critics” is a strong criticism of those who
oppose school choice.
“What
Do We Know About Vouchers and Charter Schools? Separating the Rhetoric
from the Reality”
is a 2001 article by RAND, one of the most highly respected sources of
educational research and policy studies.
“Do
Charter Schools Measure Up? The Charter School Experiment After 10 Years,”
from the American Federation of Teachers, is a polemical condemnation of
charter schooling from an organization that is deeply opposed to it.
“Choice:
Implementation Issues – A National Perspective”
excerpted from Policy Briefs (Report 3, 1989), by the North Central
Regional Educational Laboratory, offers a brief and intelligent review of
the issues.
“Trends
and Issues: School Choice”
is a clear and thorough examination of the school choice discussion.
“School
Vouchers: Settled Questions, Continuing Disputes,” by the Pew
Forum on Religion and Public Life, is a trustworthy examination of the
effects of school vouchers, particularly as those effects have been shown
and discussed in Cleveland.
Testing and its Implications
Testing is a fundamental component of managing any change process, whether
it be the education of children or, say, the manufacturing of potato
chips. The people responsible for a change set specific goals and then
implement a process to achieve them—but things, we know, do not always go
as planned, so there is a need to check up on how well the process is
achieving its intended goals. Are the chips salty enough? Too salty? Are
students using the new reading program actually learning more than those
using the old? Does this student know what he needs to know in order to
move to ninth grade? Such questions must be asked, and they will be
answered through testing.
The problem is that there is a lot of disagreement about how to test human
knowledge, skills, and understanding. Ways that work very well on the
classroom level might not work at all well on a statewide basis. The most
thorough and trustworthy results may come from a process that is
considered simply too expensive, while the most efficient approach may
lead to misleading results.
Another layer of controversy was added in the last few years when many
states not only embraced testing but what has come to be called
“high-stakes testing,” in which specific negative consequences fall on a
district and/or a student that fails to achieve at a certain level. Now
the discussions are not simply about how accurate and trustworthy a test
may be, but about whether a school should be closed or a student prevented
from graduating.
The case for testing is made strongly on the
NCLB
website in an article titled, “The
Facts About…Measuring Progress.”
The
National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) is
dedicated to ensuring that the tests we use are scientifically based and
trustworthy.
The
National Center for Fair & Open Testing
is a well-established voice arguing against our easy acceptance of
everything we are told about the tests generally in use.
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