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Dr. David Hopson |
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November 5, 2007 I attended a lecture by Jonathan Kozol this past week at Mount Holyoke College. Mr. Kozol is a well-known writer of books on public education, particularly related to the inequities that seem to be inherent across the country between poorer districts and more affluent ones. Although Mr. Kozol often uses comparisons between inner-city and suburban school districts, the points he made in his lecture have much bearing on rural districts like Gateway. Mr. Kozol spoke passionately about changes taking place throughout inner-city schools based on the fear and punishment that he sees resulting from the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). He sees the rote learning, mandated student drills, and lack of teacher imagination and creativity in the classroom as the direct result of attempting to raise student scores on tests like MCAS, so that schools are not labeled “In Need of Improvement” or worse. While I don’t believe Gateway has reached this level of rote learning, nor do we wish to, we have made many changes to increase student performance. These include increasing core graduation requirements for English, Science, and Mathematics in the High School, incorporating district-wide ‘core’ reading and mathematics programs, and diagnostic tests to let teachers know where students need specific help to master core subjects. These changes are not made to deliberately decrease student elective choices in High School or to force teachers into teaching identically throughout the district. In part they can be seen as a reaction to low MCAS scores. But they are also a means to ensure that each student is treated as an individual with unique needs to be met in order to maximize their abilities. As I’ve said many times, I don’t believe MCAS and NCLB are the panaceas that the state and federal government believe will solve the issue of low student performance. In many ways, I agree with Jonathan Kozol in his theory that NCLB was put into place to show public education in a poor light and thus increase support for vouchers so that more students can attend private and charter schools. As I argued when Gateway was undergoing its Educational Quality Assurance Audit (see their report at www.grsd.org), we’re not spending all of our time trying to parse the meanings that the state believes are buried in MCAS data. Yes, MCAS does give us some broad indications of student achievement as measured against other schools and districts, but it doesn’t provide us with timely or particularly useful information in terms of diagnosing why students aren’t learning. For example, we receive test scores months after they are given—students are already in a new school year with new teachers. And does comparing different 3rd grade students each year actually tell us something about our students, teachers, or schools? However, the results do provide information on particular areas of study that we need to reassess, as well as a separate measure to check our more formulative assessments against (i.e., quick and effective diagnostic assessments such as DIBELS). The end result shouldn’t be a measuring device to rank schools but rather a means to give teachers current information to base their instructional strategies on for the children in their classroom. NCLB also shouldn’t be allowed to dictate how teachers teach or limit their creativity in bringing the world to their classrooms. I hope that as we move forward in envisioning what Gateway can be we can balance the need to meet state and federal requirements with the need to build on student inquisitiveness, love of learning, and need to acquire skills and knowledge in areas other than Mathematics, Science and English. ### |
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