NCLB: Taylor-Made for De-Skilling Teachers
Marilyn Wilson
Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures and Department of English
Michigan State University

When Reid Lyon, an advisor to President Bush, said in November 2002, "You, know, if there was any piece of legislation that I could pass, it would be to blow up colleges of education" (McCracken, 104), many educators blanched, some were appalled, and others downright angry—but none were surprised by the sentiment. Colleges of education as a whole have been under attack for years—for not preparing teachers adequately, for less than stringent requirements for teacher certification, for methods that have swung with the shifts of paradigms in educational philosophies. The surprise was in the violence of the metaphor Lyon used so soon after 9/11.

And then, in early 2004, when Rod Paige, Education Secretary, referred to the National Education Association as a "terrorist organization" (King), the bashing went beyond generalizations about colleges of education to teachers themselves.

Nothing new here either, of course: teachers have been under fire for decades. They are easy targets because accountability in educating children is more complicated than in measuring the quality of nuts and bolts, the results aren't often predictable, and the variables outside of their control enormous. And the public assumes expertise in teaching because they are products of the school system.

One can dismiss these comments as off-the-cuff remarks and accept the lame apologies that followed, or one can look at them as symptomatic of the general agenda of the Bush administration. Reg Weaver, NEA President, sees this as policy:  "This is the kind of rhetoric we have come to expect from this administration whenever one challenges its world view" (King, 2). What is most troublesome is that teacher bashing now has official government sanction--from the public remarks made by the administration denigrating teachers on one hand and from the policies being enacted by the administration on the other.

NCLB and Teacher-Bashing

NCLB is at the heart of policies designed to accomplish precisely what Lyon and Paige are calling for. NCLB has been critiqued on a number of fronts: the problems inherent in a single assessment measure of student performance, issues of equity, insufficient funding, false expectations about alternatives…and the list goes on. These arguments address the nature of the law itself and its problematic application. But what is less apparent in these arguments is the potential effect it will have on teaching and learning. One of the most insidious consequences of NCLB is the erosion of teacher agency and control over instructional decisions.

Ironically, numerous studies indicate a strong correlation between teacher preparation and certification and student achievement, suggesting that strong pedagogical preparation is often what makes the difference between a weak and a strong teacher (Darling-Hammond). And yet the Bush administration has developed policies designed to "de-skill" teachers and to strip them of control.

The "de-skilling" of teachers has been happening for some time, but it's on an accelerated trajectory under the current administration. Even as teachers and educators claim that children cannot be taught like robots and lessons cannot be mass-produced and delivered, educational philosophies that fit the model of efficiency, first proposed by Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford for the mass production of the automobile, have strengthened their tenacious hold on the educational establishment. Standardization of assessment leads naturally to the standardization of teaching. Politicians and publishing companies are eager to promote measures that proclaim efficiency and expediency--and as a result ensure corporate profits. All this comes with a price for teachers and learners. As Nelson suggests:

One of the problems associated with the standardization of the teaching profession, is that by its very nature, teaching cannot be standardized. Good teaching is a highly complex intellectual activity requiring keen insight into the world in which students live, understanding of the multiple ways of thinking about curriculum problems, having a strong grasp of developmentally responsive strategies, negotiating the myriad of perspectives associated with the relationship between content and context, all with a command of pedagogical content knowledge aimed at connecting students with the world of ideas in and across subject matter disciplines." (Nelson, 4-5)

NCLB is Taylor-made for the push for efficiency and mass-production of instructional materials and assessments. And it's Taylor-made for the de-skilling of teachers. It mandates that school systems select reading programs reflecting NCLB's narrow definition of "scientifically-based research," empirical in nature and focused on the aspects of reading most amenable to quantitative assessment, while ignoring hundreds of valid studies that look at literacy and reading acquisition in more richly complex ways.  The content of curriculum in early reading programs is reduced to narrowly defined skills that can be taught from a script and assessed "objectively."  It pays lip service to comprehension and ignores the teaching of critical thinking skills. Teachers no longer need to plan their reading curriculum or consider the variability of their learners; the script must be followed. "Scripted curriculum" says Linda Rice, "has the effect of deskilling teachers who become simple deliverers of content and skill processes rather than those who intricately synthesize content, skills, and concepts to create sophisticated curriculum designed to meet the needs of their particular students." (1)

Consider the comments reported by the Delaware Education Research and Development Center. Says one teacher, "Years ago we used to be able to pilot programs and curriculums and decide [what was best] for all students…now it is district mandated curriculum saying that we must teach on grade level, this specific curriculum, because we want everybody teaching the same thing" (Banicky and Noble, 17). Says another,  "We are not being trusted to teach these children"  (17).

It's a feeling of being overwhelmed by forces out of your control and about which you are powerless to change, creating as the Delaware report says, "a culture of compliance" and a resignation that teachers are powerless to change things (18). One teacher says,  "Well, this is what the state has mandated. This what you have, do it."  And another reflects on the teaching profession at large, "Teachers will do anything you tell them to do. Isn't that sad?" (18). With the opinions and judgments of teachers across the nation systematically ignored, teachers no longer feel in control of their own instruction.

Taking Back the Right to Teach

Standardization of the curriculum can result in the standardization of the teaching profession, but does it have to? Must the goals of critical thinking and imaginative thinking always be jettisoned in favor of a curriculum designed to mass produce cogs in the system?  Must we allow the efficiency experts, the cog-producers, the test-makers, the scriptwriters, and the federal watchdogs that monitor the Annual Yearly Progress of schools to wrest control away from teachers, or can teachers assume their rightful place as decision-makers?

Accountability systems do not have to be impediments to good teaching. But inadequate accountability systems do need to be addressed and dealt with in sophisticated ways. Good teaching, we must be able to demonstrate, will produce students who hold up well under any accountability system.

One suggestion, advocated by Rice, is that teachers tie the activities they want to use with their students to the state or district standards that will demonstrate the educational value of the activities: "As teachers, we often inherently 'know' that what we have our students do is 'valuable,' but we fail to clearly articulate this value . . .Our failure to clearly articulate their educational value . . . is often the very thing that causes us to appear as though we are working on hunches and feelings rather than deliberately established rationales" (4) We know that when students are engaged in their own learning, and when that learning is grounded in solid methodologies, the learning pays off in higher student achievement. Students who build knowledge and expertise in a subject rather than accumulate bits of information for passing tests are going to perform better regardless of the assessment measure used.

McCracken promotes the use of classroom research as a way of reflecting on teaching and its impact on student learning. Particularly important in this era where informal classroom research tends to be dismissed, as McCracken suggests, is the need for teachers to understand they can provide their own evidence of student success--and failure, perhaps--as they begin their own "kid-watching" classroom research projects: what works (or doesn't) about particular activities, how writing changes as students revise drafts, how self-selection of reading materials influences student responses to their reading, for example. Local research projects that result in the demonstration of student success--student projects that reflect strong writing, writing projects that involve community issues, student-produced web pages reflecting strong literacy skills--can go a long way to convincing parents, administrators and the public that good teaching goes well beyond the narrowness of state-mandated assessment measures. It's a way of recruiting the public and building grass roots support for what English language arts teachers know to be high-quality teaching.

Teacher educators can also make sure that their teacher education students are more aware of the power they rightfully have as teachers. That means bringing the issues of politics and education right into education classrooms. It means providing the kinds of arguments necessary to counteract negative publicity about teachers who question the NCLB initiative. It means working on committees, talking with colleagues, and questioning the rationale of the NCLB and other initiatives based on a faulty understanding of children and learning.

In a sense we are, as Kampol argues, re-skilling teachers by helping them become "both aware of and critical of the multiple forms of de-skilling"--finding ways to subvert narrowly conceived methodologies, challenging reductive assumptions about teaching and learning, and taking back their right to teach their subject matter effectively.

And finally, we need to fight fire with fire. If NCLB advocates keep insisting on the use of "research-based evidence" about what works in classrooms, teachers need to use existing quantitative research data to develop their own arguments (McCracken). All teachers should be aware of the massive review of research conducted by Linda Darling-Hammond as she looked at and critiqued a wide range of quantitative research studies focusing on the relationship between teacher quality and student achievement. Her conclusion is that quantitative studies indicate that "measures of teacher preparation and certification are by far the strongest correlates of student achievement in reading and mathematics, both before and after controlling for student poverty and language status" (2). Teacher preparation in research, teaching methodologies, and classroom practice is essential to good teaching. Excellent teacher preparation matters in the achievement of students.

Teachers also need to publicize the research of Richard Ingersoll, reported by Crabtree that discusses two competing views of contemporary schools and the role that teachers play in them. The factory model on one hand centralizes decision-making with teachers playing a minor role; the professional model, on the other hand, considers teachers as professionals who need and deserve considerable autonomy to teach effectively. Ingersoll's nation-wide panel of 13-17 year-olds clearly underscores students' willingness to work hard and to learn from teachers who are passionate and creative. The prerequisite for passion and creativity in teaching is teacher agency.

Good teachers will understand how the politics of education affects them as teachers and their students as learners. It should help them see that it is their moral responsibility to take stands against institutional practices that see them and their students as mere cogs in a system promoting simplicity over complexity, information over understanding, and numbers over individual human beings.

I had hoped that Reid Lyon and Rod Paige would have been forced to consider the research like Darling-Hammond's and Richard Ingersoll's on the importance of strong teacher preparation and teacher agency, to consider its implications for the teaching profession and for educational policy makers, and to retract--not just apologize for--their silly, but damaging words. Unfortunately, just a few weeks ago, Paige made a comment at the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce's annual Mackinac Policy Conference that NCLB critics are "whiners" (Flesher).

Name-calling, however, is often the last bastion of defense. I think our "whining" is paying off. As teachers, we're taking strong stands against the Taylor-mentality of education policies and practices. I believe we're taking back our right to teach.

Works Cited

Banicky, Lisa, and Audrey Noble. "Detours on the Road to Reform: When Standards Take a Back Seat to Testing." Delaware Education Research and Development Center, July 2001.

Crabtree, Steve. "Teachers Who Care Get Most from Kids." Detroit News. June 4, 2004.

Darling-Hammond, Linda. "Teacher Quality and Student Achievement: A Review of state Policy Evidence." Educational Policy Analysis Archives. 8:1: January 1, 2000. http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n1

Flesher, John. "Education Secretary Says 'No Child Left Behind' Critics are 'Whiners.'" Associated Press, June 3, 2004.

Ingersoll, Richard. Who Controls Teachers' Work?: Power and Accountability in America's Schools. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Kampol, Barry. "Critical Pedagogy for Beginning Teachers: the Movement from Despair to Hope."
http://www.paulofreireinstitute.org/Documents/the_movement_of_hope_by_kanpol.html

King, John. "Paige Calls NEA 'terrorist organization.'" February 23, 2004
http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/02/23/paige.terrorist.nea/   .

McCracken, Nancy. "Surviving Shock and Awe: NCLB vs. Colleges of Education." English Education, January 2004, 104-118.

Nelson, Thomas, ed. "Editor's Introduction: In Response to Increasing State and National Control over the Teacher Education Profession." Teacher Education Quarterly, Winter 2003, 3-8.

Rice, Linda. SLATE Newsletter, National Council of Teachers of English. http://www.ncte.org/about/issues/slate/115817.htm