The Faces of the Children Left Behind
NCTE/NCRLL 2003 Panel
The Politics of Literacy Research in a Political Time
JoBeth Allen
University of Georgia

I’m not sure if everyone is aware of it yet, but NCTE has had to change the way it operates its annual conference. There has been concern for some time that not all members meet the high standards of the organization. There are rumors that some people—often at tax-payers’ expense—have session attendance rates that are frankly unacceptable. Others attend sessions, but do we really know what they are gaining from them? Are there measurable learning outcomes? Up until this year, we haven’t had any way to know.

But this year there will be an assessment battery administered throughout the year. [Suggestion: you and your colleagues can spend your professional development time, such as it is, and money, limited though it be, practicing for these assessments.] If you do not meet criteria as fully-prepared language educators, NELB (no educator left behind) is here to help.

First, there will be no social promotion to next year’s conference. Y’all may have been just a little too social already. If you cannot show Adequate Yearly Progress, you will repeat this program next year. Our dedicated presenters, at no additional compensation, will have a remedial conference as well as a new-materials conference next year. Your time will be restructured for you. In some cases your university or school may be restructured because of your failure.

Don’t you just feel like crying? Kids are crying, all over the country, at all grade levels in all kinds of schools. These are the Faces of the Children Left Behind.

I worry that those who developed and promote No Child Left Behind are not looking at those faces, only at the regulations. There are four guiding principles of NCLB.

1. Stronger Accountability for Results
An ESOL teacher who asked not to be identified—because “I'm already on the "hit list" at the county for fighting to keep upper elementary students in ESOL until they have enough reading comprehension skill to be successful in the regular classroom”—wrote,  “I had to give the CogAT and the ITBS to a Japanese student who has been in the U.S. 2 months and had no previous English instruction. The first day, 30 minutes into the test, she broke into tears. Our school last year was the only school in our cluster that was not on the Failing List. We were also the only elementary school that served ESOL students a segment of Social Studies instruction to teach them how to read non-fiction, how to take notes, and stressed building vocabulary by paraphrasing in the vocabulary they understood.  We had 93% of our ESOL students meet AYP.  Yet we're being pushed to stop giving these students this second segment. We've had to limit services to 18 students when we have 50 who are eligible for support.”

Brad, a middle school teacher in a very high-performing school, reports that teachers in his school are told to “make sure those students you believe will fail the Gateway exam fail your class so that there is no discrepancy between grades and standardized test scores.” Brad told me,  “I would love to become vocal about this system. But as you know, our district doesn't tolerate teachers who voice their opinion.” So the children in Brad’s classroom and countless others can work as hard as possible, make as much progress as possible, and their teachers may be forced to fail them anyway. These are the Faces of the Children Left Behind.

In his 13th annual report on the state of public education. Gerald Bracey called The No Child Left Behind Act "a weapon of mass destruction targeted at the public schools,” pointing to the proliferation of high-stakes tests in schools. NCLB requires competency in all subject areas in the next 3 years. Georgia has already implemented high school exit exams. Gwen, an English teacher in a rural school reported, “This year 97% of our students passed the GHS Graduation Test. At a recent meeting we were told that the State feels that so many students are passing this test that it is probably too easy and they plan to "ratchet" up the test. Are the children not supposed to pass the test? Are we deliberately trying to fail students, and in the process teachers and schools?
 
Kristi, a Writing Project colleague of Gwen’s in an urban high school, gave the travesty of this policy a face: “One of my students, Cammi, an incredibly considerate, thoughtful, upbeat student who was pushing herself so that she could attend college, has not been able to pass the science test after several attempts - missing a couple of times by a mere point or two; [she has passed all the others.] …Although not a great writer, Cammi completed every writing activity we worked on, was willing to revise portions of her work that were lacking, stayed after school for extra help, and was the top reader in my class of 25. She took College Preparatory classes, attended a weekend program for high school seniors at Agnes Scott College, had survived her mother's alcoholism and her parents' divorce, and was determined to "make it."  Cammi received a certificate of attendance when she walked across the stage at graduation, instead of a diploma.  I saw her at school a couple of days ago.  She was going to try one more time. In the mean time, she’s working at Ryan’s Steakhouse.” Cammi is the Face of a Child Left Behind.

DIBELS is reading test, mandated in Georgia for schools receiving Reading Excellence Act and now Reading First money. An Associated Press article reported that principals in Gadsden Alabama decided to end naptime in kindergarten. The time will be used to prepare for the DIBELS. These are the Faces—the sleepy Faces—of the Children Left Behind. Next year my granddaughter will be in kindergarten. Will DIBELS drive their school experience?

2. More Freedom for States and Communities
A well-known educator has a child who attends a wonderful K-8 school with only 150 students in a small, rural community. This is a school that has worked hard to address the needs of all students, including those with special needs. They have an award-winning special education teacher. Through inclusion, children with special needs are an integral part of all aspects of school life, academic as well as social. There are 15 children in the 4th grade—the grade that takes the test. One of children has severe autism. Children in the class accept her, and seem to understand that she interacts differently; one child told her mother, “She doesn’t say words yet, but some day she might, and it will be so exciting!”

The 4th graders did well on the test. The “cut” score in that state is 23; they scored 91, the highest score in the state. But they are a failing school. They failed in the category of special education because the child with autism, who did come to school the day of the test, cannot hold a pencil. Because she could not write her name on the test, she was counted as absent. They asked if they could score her as a “zero” but that’s against the rules. No Child Left Behind!  Now as a failing school, they must take corrective action - the whole school. Do you know what the action is for the children with special needs? They must spend hours learning how to write their names.

More freedom for states? Many states that participated in writing Reading First grants got rejected until they wrote in the adoption of a “core reading program”—otherwise known as a basal reader. One choice. Many needs.

3. Encouraging Proven Education Methods (yes, the parallel structure would be Encouragement of Proven Educational methods, but trust me, this legislation wasn’t written by a bunch of English teachers)

In the name of compassion and high expectations for all children, politicians have created a bureaucratic game of dominoes that falls ultimately on those with the least power in our society. The provision that an acceptable percentage of children in each category take and pass the test—a just and equitable requirement on the surface—has resulted in some bizarre consequences, like the “failing school” with the highest scores in the state. One school that became a failing school because not enough children took the test is considering suing the parents for not getting their children to school. Good people, when pushed too far and punished unjustly, will do bad things.

Dick Allington has documented the monetary as well as “test-score gains” advantages of retaining students, in spite of the fact that such retention makes the child 50% less likely to finish high school (and 90% less likely after two failures). We are already seeing this kind of manipulation—witness the Houston fiasco. A state audit of 16 Houston schools found that of 5,500 teenagers surveyed who had left school, 3,000 should have been counted as dropouts but were not—thus the dramatic improvement in graduation rates. Last spring an estimated 33,000 Florida third-graders were denied promotion to the fourth grade because they failed the reading portion of the FCAT. What proven education method involves retaining 8 year olds?

4. More Choice for Parents
I am working with two elementary schools in Georgia in a Partnership involving the school district, the university, and the community—social service agencies, leisure services, businesses, and interested citizens. We are involved in comprehensive school re-visioning and reform. We have created new partnerships with parents through Family Resource Centers. We are redesigning literacy and math curriculum and assessments. All children are attending 195 rather than 180 days; there are additional weeks of enriched curriculum involving educational field trips and projects with university faculty and students focusing on art, science, and recreational opportunities that are also educational—you can imagine how much can be learned in preparation for a visit to an Atlanta Falcons practice (maybe they can help the Falcons, too)!

Both these schools were in “corrective action” when the partnership began. In spite of all the efforts that are focused on the schools, the principals had to send a letter home to each parent—you know, the one that says, “Your child is in a failing school. You can leave and attend a superior school, a passing school since we are in need of improvement.”

Who do you think left? Was it the children who struggled the most, the children who did not do well on the tests, the children No Child Left Behind is supposed to serve? No. The parents who moved their children to other schools were the ones whose children were doing well at the schools. These parents, usually the more well-educated and well-informed, were understandably concerned to read that their children’s school was failing. Perhaps they will get a better education elsewhere, I can’t say, but the result for the school is troubling.

First, the school becomes less diverse academically; there are now fewer students reading, writing, and problem solving on higher levels—fewer “more capable peers.” Second, guess what will happen to the test scores next year?

I have good news and bad news to report on the partnership schools. Of all students who took the state criterion reference test, including large numbers of students with special needs at one school, and 40% English Language Learners at the other, the gains ranged from an improvement of 14% to 34% of children who met or exceeded standards
School A: Reading:  42% to 59%; LA  47% to 61%; Math  42% to 61%
School B:  Reading: 39%-59%; LA:  38% to 63%; Math: 24% to 58%

I don’t put much stock in this kind of testing, but I’ll admit—this was good news.

Now for the bad news. Because one school didn’t make Adequate Yearly Progress for two years in a row, and didn’t make the 60% “cut” score in reading, they are now facing restructuring. One school is out of corrective action, which lessens funding. Now for worse news. The schools actually moved down in the Title 1 ”highest needs” rankings in the district so they will get considerably less money next year. The work of the partnership will not be able to continue, at least in it’s present comprehensive form. Parents who chose these two schools and who have participated in their design will NOT have more choice, but less.

Looking in the Faces of the Children Left Behind: What Can We Do?
Janet Lewis, an elementary teacher in an affluent district, wrote to me recently, “There are many obvious problems with the federal No Child Left Behind act. However, I have to agree with the basic premise of NCLB. For too long, teachers have been guilty of leaving certain children behind.  We have pointed to high test scores in privileged schools and patted ourselves on the back.  We accepted without question that certain children (i.e., free and reduced [lunch] and minority children) were not learning to read.

“I once saw an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond where the little girl’s hamster dies.  Raymond’s reaction was, ‘So what? Hamsters are disposable pets.’ In education, for too long, our reaction to certain children has been ‘So what?’ Is any child disposable? (Parenthetically, think about the language of those who establish ‘cut’ scores—they talk in terms of ‘acceptable failure rates.’ Keep those people away from my hamsters—and my grandchildren!)”

Janet went on to say, “I think the greatest disparity and inequality in our education system may be our tendency to look at averages. It’s not that teachers aren’t aware that certain children are not being successful in school.  …We ‘solved the problem’ of certain children by blaming them or their parents. We shuffled the children off for help in Special Ed (where their test scores didn’t bring down the average test score), quarantined them in remedial classes, or left them in schools that were unsafe, unchallenging, and unhappy. So, the next time you are tempted to disparage NCLB (the legalities, the lack of common sense, the punitive nature), think of those certain children who are no longer disposable.”

I admire Janet and all those who are working hard to make NCLB work—really work—for the many children who have been inadequately served by public education.

But is this really compassionate, equitable policy?

Through the 1940’s, 10.7% of the federal budget was for public education.  Today it is less than 3 percent.

Since its inception in 1965, Title One has never been fully funded and now serves less than 50% of the children who should be served. The same is true of programs like HeadStart—but we’ve decided these programs have “failed” too.

We have to become advocates for The Children Left Behind. We have to get to know the children and their stories and then we have to tell them in our research. As an educational community we have to embrace and support all kinds of research. We need accurate statistical analyses, more longitudinal studies, rigorous factor analyses, and in-depth case studies. We can start with the materials provided by NCTE. They are available at http://www.ncte.org/about/research/links/114258.htm.

The federal government has a brochure for teachers, available on their website, called "Using Research and Reason in Education." Here's an excerpt:
The insights gained from case studies or qualitative investigations may be quite useful in the early stages of an investigation [to] determine which variables deserve more intense study …However, … Case studies and qualitative description are not useful at the later stages of scientific investigation because they cannot be used to confirm or disconfirm a particular causal theory.

I suppose that’s right. Case studies, qualitative studies, teacher research—all they can show us are the stories and the Faces of the Children Left Behind.