Imagine you are the parent of a struggling first grader. Perhaps there is a learning disability, or a psychological condition that blocks the learning process. Now imagine you design a plan for your child’s school years, “guaranteeing” success by requiring incremental increases in GPA, culminating in a 100% average for senior year.
Any year your child’s GPA doesn’t increase by at least 5 percentage points would result in heavy sanctions: loss of specific privileges your child covets. If your child starts with a D average in 1sst grade, moving to a D+ and later a low C and C+ might seem like a cinch. But as your child approaches the higher grades and courses that might be harder in content, an increased GPA might be problematic.
Would you hold the line on the program you put into effect in first grade? Or lower the yearly standards of success once your child reaches a B or B+ average so that there are no sanctions if that average is maintained? Might you add incentives if your child improves that already good average? Or would you perhaps look at other things in your child’s life besides academics as measures of success?
The goal is clearly to require improvement so that your child is not left behind during the learning process. Maybe the “perfection” of a 100% GPA is different from a schools’ goal of a 100% passing rate on all benchmarks by 2014 (a requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act), but both goals are unrealistic.
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has stated that parts of the NCLB Act will be changed or refined during the coming years, but her admission comes as an anti-climax. No one is happy with the absolute goals of NCLB as they stand, because no one wants to be held to a 100% standard.
But how will we change NCLB? The first change should be one of philosophy: absolutes guarantee failure. Sometimes schools are good even if one subgoal has not been met. Sometimes students improve in reading or writing even though their scores don’t reflect that improvement–it depends on what’s being tested. And sometimes punishment is not the best way to effect change if a school does not meet the goals for a particular year.
I have seen the effect school labeling has on teachers who work there: in Florida, where schools are graded A through F, those who work in “F” schools express their bitterness freely. And to add to the insult, funds for books and other materials are curtailed at low performing schools.
Teachers have to sell any federal program designed to help students learn, and that program has to sell itself to those teachers. Threats don’t work with teachers any more than they work with students.
Imagine our struggling first grader given the resources to cope with a learning disability or psychological block, and also given a set of realistic expectations with incentives for success rather than punishment for failure. That’s a workable plan for our parents, teachers, for one child, or for our nation’s children. Let’s make our educational goals achievable, not impossible.
What Kids Are Reading
This weekly column will look at lists of books kids are reading in various categories, including grade level, book genre, data from libraries, and data from booksellers. The information below is based on a teacher survey taken by the National Education Association in 2007. This space printed their top ten books for children on October 8. The following includes more from the NEA list of the 100 best books for children.
From the NEA’s Top Books for Children
1. Skipppyjon Jones by Judy Schachner
2. Thank You Mr. Falker by Patricia Pollacco
3. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
4. The Mitten by Jan Brett
5. Crunching Carrots, Not Candy by Judy Slack
6. Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems
7. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
8. Corduroy by Don Freeman
9. Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes
10. Stellaluna by Janell Cannon
