On July 15th 2002 the Cutting Edge-a talk show covered the Town Hall Meeting of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans held at the Huntington Park (LA) High School. Authorized as Executive Order 13230.
This Town Hall meeting was part of a Series rolling out the No Child Left Behind Act, HR 1. The main speakers at this event were former US Treasurer Rosario Marin and Grammy winner, recording artist Jon Secada.
“Three days after taking office in January 2001 as the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush announced No Child Left Behind, his framework for bipartisan education reform that he described as “the cornerstone of my administration.” Source. US Dept. of Education.
Fast forward to recent status.
“Simply as a function of its size, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has the highest number of dropouts in the state, with 10,588 dropouts (15 percent of the state total). However, LAUSD’s overall dropout rate is five percent, ranking them 75th among the 531 school districts enrolling ninth through twelfth graders. A list of all California school districts is available at this link.
Juice readers: From the materials which I have it reads in part that it “may be revised from time to time.”
Based on the statewide drop out rates should the unfunded mandate of the No Child Left Behind Act be revised or dropped by President Obama?
Note: Our Cutting Edge-a talk show coverage can be viewed at no charge, 24/7 at this link.
From the home page simply click on the Archives and scroll down by date until you find the link.
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No Child Left Behind, though good in intentions, is a monster mess in execution. How can California or any state with a high immigration rate be expected to have all students fluent in English at ANY time? The testing is KILLING the students- with benchmarks, District Writing Assessments, CELDT, CAHSEE, and the state exams in May, the average HS student is testing at LEAST 15 school days of the year. The move towards strict pacing guides to stay on time for the test severely limits the ability to be creative in the classroom and sets a pace that is WAY too fast to ensure that mastery in any standard is achieved. Many new teach programs like BTSA, which have the possibility of being helpful, instead layer more work on new teachers in an effort to meet the teaching standards which have ALREADY been met through credential work. Funding was promised to help us achieve the impossible goals set by NCLB, and none was given… if I directed a housepainter to paint my house, would he be able to finish the work if I didn’t pay him for the supplies he needs to get the job done?
To continue the housepainter analogy, say you have a crew of painters that can paint the average house in three days and do an excellent job on all aspects (that is CA public education under former governor Pat Brown) then we simply cut payments to the paint crew so that several have to be laid off, the people complain that the fault is that of the remaining painters who cant get the work done so we cut their pay even more but pass laws that the work must get done in the same amount of time. The painters scramble trying to find new ways of painting and houses during this period. The houses don’t get a proper preparation so their paint starts peeling and the houses deteriorate and lose value. So we don’t have the money to pay the painters at all and give them IOU’s. Should we expect that the houses will be painted in three days?
anonymous.
A well thought out reply. A quick response as I have a meeting to attend.
Let’s begin by asking some questions.
Was the program adequately funded?
Did anyone perform an annual review of NCLB to seek out flaws and initiate any corrective action to drive success?
Were students transferred out of poorly performing schools?
Note: If you watch the video at the break you will see me asking former Colo governor Roy Romer about the number of schools that were failing in the LAUSD.
In my humble opinion, the Federal government should have no role in education. Not only should NCLB be repealed, we should abolish the department of education. For now, that money should be transferred back the the states to provide vouchers for parents and students.
SAUSD teacher.
Sorry that I missed seeing your comment as I approved others this morning. Well articulated. Thanks!
Andy. Good to see you. We agree.
It makes me a bit unconfortable attacking NCLB; it’s finally a real attempt to expose ineptitude and weed out incompetent teachers and school administration. But, the methods used for evaluating performance have major flaws. Measuring school performance on a single standardized test score is equivalent to measuring the performance of a manufacturing company soley with a quality control, without tracking sales and profits. If the product is passing quality control, but no one is buying, or costs exceed income, the business is failing. We need to be tracking the performance of our graduates as part of school evaluation.
Maybe these can be corrected, without dumping the whole program. But I agree that the Fed’s don’t need to be involved in this. Business, jobs, and money naturally flow to states with the best schools, and away from states with poor ones. We don’t need federal govt. here.
Running a Teacher’s Union requires iron fisted
Nazi Storm Troopers. The problem was that No Child Left Behind was bi-partisan. Additionally,
it left open holes for local schools to use their
own methods to get the end results. This then allowed local Teacher’s Unions to use the “Let’s herd cats…..rather than using the cattle prod and a hot yawl normally used every election cycle!” Accountability, Student Tested Results and Options for Poorly Performing Teachers are all very good ideas. It is how you get there…that is the big problem!
email response:
For years, I’ve heard nothing but frustration from teachers about this program – another Bush failure.
The No Child Left Behind Act may sound like it is goal-oriented but it is not well thought out. When Bush enacted this mandate, he failed to take into consideration the fact that most latino students come from households with two or three generations of latin american citizens who do not speak English and have no desire to learn it all considering that they are set in their ways. Teachers do a damn good job at following a script from a Language Arts program such as Open Court or Scholars from Readers but cannot reinforce the language due to the fact that not all latino born family members are willing to go through the same regimen. In any type of schooling, one needs to practice his or her skill outside the institution in order to gain mastery. How is a son or daughter expected to retain the language when he or she goes home for dinner after school and his or her abuelos or abuelas asks “Quieres frjoles y arroz con tu tortilla” instead of readdressing the same question in English.
Claro!
No one ever makes parents accountable. Look at affluent areas and see parents who are involved with their kids. Poorer areas have little if any involvement. Try getting them to meetings. Try getting their kids to bring in homework. How about the excuses that books are at grandma’s because Mom had a date? My favorite,” Daddy had to watch the game and mom is with her friends.”
genevieve
There are multiple scapegoats for the poor performance of some school children. One might argue that both parents have to work in order to put food on the table. At the other end of the spectrum some parents choose to work two jobs to pay their Hummer leases.
As such we have latchkey kids home alone after school. Others are enrolled in after school programs for children such as in Mission Viejo where taxpayers fork over around $500,000 per year. Therefore the argument that poorer areas have less parental involvement is inaccurate. Many have single parents due to divorce. That parent may feel overburdened to keep up and sadly skips the parent teacher meetings. When we interviewed former US Treasurer Rosario Marin during the kick off of No Child Lefy Behind in Huntingtom Park she said that in the Latino community parents lacked the skills to help their children with their homework. That is not a racist statement. I commend every parent who puts out that extra effort, regardless of how tired we may be, to encourage their children to reach high and not be discouraged from chasing their dreams.
That said I can agree with your assessment of today’s school children. I have heard of back to school nights that were poorly supported by the parents. It’s called priorities. We need to lead by example. If we are too busy to check their homework or visit their schools we send a message that we do not care about their education.
i hate cows