As an avid reader of cookbooks, I can tell a lot about the potential success of a recipe just by reading it. Of course, the truth is in the tasting, but some recipes are destined for success, and some doomed from the beginning.
The No Child Left Behind Act is like a recipe in several respects. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings often repeats her mantra, “what gets measured, gets done,” and NCLB quantifies students and schools into a mathematical formula with a single result of 100% proficiency.
NCLB has allowed some variation in that each state’s yearly progress is measured differently, according to where they began. But having made the error of treating education like a recipe that performs according to chemical principles (such as the proportion of sugar to butter), states have been forced to argue for additional flexibility in meeting the strict increases in “annual yearly progress (AYP).”
In every state there are instances of good schools labeled “underperforming” because one small subgroup failed to attain the AYP, creating calls for more leeway in how the formula is applied. “Differentiated Accountability” is the most recent example of the Department of Education’s efforts to answer those calls. “Commonsense changes are needed,” is the truism in the press release announcing that the nine states involved in this pilot will be able to “target resources and interventions” in innovative ways to lowest-performing schools.
NCLB now grants that there’s more than one way to make a cookie, yet some of their stipulations, released last week in the form of letters to all state governors, have the mysterious sound of a recipe calling for 5/9 of a teaspoon of vanilla or 3/10 of a cup of sugar.
For example, in the letter to the governors of Virginia and Maryland, the minimum size for a subgroup (the label for the groups most likely to perform at lower levels) was 50 in Virginia and 5 in Maryland, even though the subgroup average for both states was identical at 30. (A typo?)
There were less mysterious differences in expectations. In Maryland, the 2009 goals will be 74% proficiency in reading and 67% in math, whereas the goals in Virginia, which began with higher pass rates, will be 81% and 79% respectively. In a couple of years when Virginia needs a 90% pass rate in reading, schools that only reach 89% will, quite rightly, resist being labeled “underperforming.”
The elephant in the classroom, and the factor that dooms NCLB as a recipe for failure, is the universal requirement of 100% proficiency in reading and math by 2014. No country has ever achieved this, and even though Secretary Spellings has allowed some variation in the path a state takes to this goal, it’s as though every batch of cookies is being put in a 500-degree oven. No amount of finagling oven time is going to change the fact that cookies baked at a high temperature always burn.
Someone has to look at the end of the recipe and stop fiddling with the ingredients. Make NCLB truly “commonsense” and don’t pour any more resources in a recipe doomed to failure.
What Kids Are Reading
This weekly column will look at lists of books kids are reading in various categories, including grade level, book genre, and data from booksellers. Information on the books below came from the New York Times and Amazon.com.
Cookbooks for Children: Recipes for Success
1. Jewish Holidays Cookbook by Jill Bloomfield and Janet Ozur Bass.
2. Paula Deen’s My First Cookbook by Paula Deen.
3. The Second International Cookbook for Kids by Matthew Locricchio
4. Grow It, Cook It by DK Publishing
5. Yum-o! The Family Cookbook by Rachael Ray
6. Cook It in a Cup! By Julia Myall and Greg Lowe
7. New Junior Cookbook by Better Homes and Gardens
8. Princess Cookbook by Barbara Beery and Marty Snortum
9. Mom and Me Cookbook by Annabel Karmel
10. The Teen’s Vegetarian Cookbook by Judy Krizmanic and Matthew Wawiorka
