More gated communities coming?

[nine_one_4]

Or the "second-worldification" of America.

"This nation is increasingly becoming more colored," she said. "If we don't treat our children in a manner that will help them grow, if we continue to offer them diminished destinies, then all America will go down. The quality of life for all America will decline."

-------

http://abcnews.go.com/US/print?id=1857732

AP: 'No Child' Law Raises Segregation Fear

By FRANK BASS

The Associated Press

HARTFORD, Conn. - Wedged in a poor, gritty immigrant neighborhood, Henry C. Dwight Elementary School harks back to an earlier era of learning. Its ceilings are high, there is a fireplace in the library and students wear uniforms as they dart between classrooms.

The oldest public school in one of the nation's oldest cities, Dwight finds itself at the center of a growing national debate over whether the nation's newest education experiment is unexpectedly encouraging school segregation.


That's because the No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to demonstrate that students in specific racial, social and economic groups are making annual progress. A school fails if even one group fails. The more groups in a school, the greater chance for failure.


Dwight's population is racially and economically diverse, making its future under the law uncertain even though it is currently meeting its goals. The law stresses getting students proficient in math and reading by 2014, the principal says.


"They're (federal officials) not validating the incremental successes, but we are making great gains," said Stacey McCann, who supports the law. "I believe schools ... are making gains, but they might not make the mark that has been set."


Many of Connecticut's mostly white, rich suburban schools, which already are succeeding under the law, don't want the same uncertainty. They are resisting efforts to diversify, fearing that taking minority or poor students will hurt their chances to meet the law's requirements.


"We've had a reluctance on the part of school districts to accept youngsters who come in with deficiencies because they're concerned that if they get enough of them ... they'll become labeled as failing schools," Connecticut Education Commissioner Betty Sternberg said.


And that complicates Sternberg's efforts to resolve the nation's longest-running desegregation lawsuit, which accuses Connecticut of failing to provide minority students with as good an education as whites.


The state also is leading a multistate lawsuit challenging the No Child legislation, arguing it is too costly for Connecticut to administer writing tests as frequently as the government requires.


Henry Johnson, the U.S. Department of Education's assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, said he understands the concerns but believes the accountability the new law imposes on schools will ultimately benefit all children.


The creation of groups "might generate concern. I don't want to dismiss that. But the reality is, that whoever shows up has to be taught. And the expectation is that they'll be taught well. ... Good instruction is good instruction," Johnson said.


The Associated Press reported Monday that states across the country are helping their public schools skirt the law's requirements by deliberately undercounting nearly 2 million mostly minority students' annual test scores in the required racial categories.


By reducing the number of scores, the schools are improving their chances of avoiding failure and the penalties that go with it. Another unintended solution, experts say, is for schools to become less diverse.


"The really rich and ritzy suburbs that don't participate in any form of integration, that turn their backs on all efforts to admit minority kids or low-income kids into their first-rate public schools, those districts aren't going to suffer at all," said Jonathan Kozol, an educator and author of several acclaimed books on race and education.


"They're going to be rewarded for their selfishness. They're going to be rewarded for their racial insularity because they're not admitting any kids who are at any academic risk. They're not admitting any kids who had been previously studying, for perhaps the first six years of school, in a rotten, overcrowded school."


Barbara Radner, director of DePaul University's Center for Urban Education, works with Chicago public schools and has heard some parents complain about the treatment of inner city children when they move to suburban schools.


"I have heard that there is a resentment toward those kids because they are dragging those schools down in the lists," Radner said.


When Congress passed the landmark law in 2001, Dwight was one of Hartford's worst-rated schools and exactly the type of multiracial, underperforming school the government intended to pressure to improve.


So far, Dwight has. It has met its annual goals under the law even though it has eight special groups it must report to the government and a student population that hails from 21 countries.


Elizabeth Horton Sheff, a Hartford city council member who as a parent in 1989 filed the desegregation case against Connecticut, said there aren't enough inner city schools like Dwight that are succeeding with diverse populations.


"The big picture?" Horton Sheff asked. "Very little has changed. The progress has been far too slow.


"This nation is increasingly becoming more colored," she said. "If we don't treat our children in a manner that will help them grow, if we continue to offer them diminished destinies, then all America will go down. The quality of life for all America will decline."


April Winterson, Dwight's literacy director, hopes the No Child Left Behind Act won't put so much pressure on schools that they can't celebrate the small daily victories that fill the wide halls and small desks at her school.


"There needs to be the idea that no child can be left behind," she said. "I think sometimes people become lethargic and don't really fight those battles to make sure that every child succeeds.


"But that would be the only thing I'm nervous about, really, is moving to that direction of focusing on one group of children because they're the ones who are going to count the most. And you want to celebrate all successes. You want to celebrate all the children's successes."


Associated Press writer Nicole Ziegler Dizon in Chicago contributed to this report.

[wludavid]

"They're going to be rewarded for their selfishness. They're going to be rewarded for their racial insularity because they're not admitting any kids who are at any academic risk. They're not admitting any kids who had been previously studying, for perhaps the first six years of school, in a rotten, overcrowded school."

I'm not sure I understand. I thought public schools had to admit students who live within the school district's geographic boundaries?

[RallyJon]

Have any of the people who criticize the no child left behind tests actually seen one?

If you can't pass those ridiculously easy tests, you don't even belong in school, in society, in this country! Can't we even have some basic, bottom of the barrel, lowest common denominator standards anymore?

No, no, every child is special, can't hurt their self-esteem by holding them back and teaching them the basics, now can we?

I fear for the future.

Amazing that schools and teachers are so unified against learning and achievement.

If I was a teacher, I'd be embarrassed that any student could get through my classroom while remaining so uneducated.

[nostatic]

Originally posted by RallyJon


If I was a teacher, I'd be embarrassed that any student could get through my classroom while remaining so uneducated.

maybe you should become a teacher

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Originally posted by RallyJon
Have any of the people who criticize the no child left behind tests actually seen one?

If you can't pass those ridiculously easy tests, you don't even belong in school, in society, in this country! Can't we even have some basic, bottom of the barrel, lowest common denominator standards anymore?

No, no, every child is special, can't hurt their self-esteem by holding them back and teaching them the basics, now can we?

I fear for the future.

Amazing that schools and teachers are so unified against learning and achievement.

If I was a teacher, I'd be embarrassed that any student could get through my classroom while remaining so uneducated.

While I agree with you, I'd submit that if you had to spend eight hours a day babysitting someone else's misbehaved brats for $20k a year, you probably wouldn't give much of a damn either.

[Rick Lee]

Well, the world needs ditch diggers too.

[cashflyer]

Originally posted by RallyJon .....Can't we even have some basic, bottom of the barrel, lowest common denominator standards anymore?

Don't you remember the thread regarding a court that ruled math tests unfairly discriminate against police applicants? I think the answer to your question is NO.

Originally posted by RallyJon
Have any of the people who criticize the no child left behind tests actually seen one?

I have not seen one, and I do not mean this as commentary on the tests. but I do have a question to pose... In a school with several racial, economic, and social groups - like most public schools - would the failures of any one group tend to drag down the other groups in the same school? I mean, these groups are interacting with one another in classes - so, looking at it from an individual view, if student X is a real dumbass, then does student Y suffer for it while the instructor devotes more time to student X?


Just wondering other peoples thoughts on that.

Edited tags and clarified a statement...

[wludavid]

Originally posted by RallyJon
Have any of the people who criticize the no child left behind tests actually seen one?

If you can't pass those ridiculously easy tests, you don't even belong in school, in society, in this country! Can't we even have some basic, bottom of the barrel, lowest common denominator standards anymore?

No, no, every child is special, can't hurt their self-esteem by holding them back and teaching them the basics, now can we?

I fear for the future.

Amazing that schools and teachers are so unified against learning and achievement.

If I was a teacher, I'd be embarrassed that any student could get through my classroom while remaining so uneducated.

I don't think many people complain about the NCLB are saying the tests are too hard. Certainly the above article made no claims. The various complaints range that it's too expensive to administer, testing takes up time that could be used for instruction, it teaches to the lowest common denominator, it puts more onus on the instructors to navigate red tape.

I don't think anyone thinks that the knowledge that needs to be learned is too much. The NCLB is just too inflexible, and goes about trying to enforce the standards the wrong way.

[Rick Lee]

I've some of those test questions. The Wash. Post did a piece on NCLB about a year ago. I thought the questions weren't ridiculously easy, but pretty much fair. Though I was scratching my head, trying to remember what I was doing in each grade, from which they had test questions.

[RallyJon]

Here are some samples from New York: http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/3-8/samplers.htm

[RallyJon]

I have not seen one, and I do not mean this as commentary on the tests. but I do have a question to pose... In a school with several racial, economic, and social groups - like most public schools - would the failures of any one group tend to drag down the other groups in the same school? I mean, these groups are interacting with one another in classes - so, looking at it from an individual view, if student X is a real dumbass, then does student Y suffer for it while the instructor devotes more time to student X?

I think the answer is that NO student should EVER be allowed to fall so far behind that he cannot pass the test for his grade level. When I was in school, there were a couple of different classes/groups. The lowest achievers should still be able to pass these tests.

We're not talking about getting a high enough SAT score to get into M.I.T. Take a look at the sample tests. These tests are about making sure that you have a bare minimum of knowledge. You don't have to be thoughtful or clever--these aren't MENSA tests. No trick questions, just the absolute basics.

I think a lot of people make the mistake that these tests are like the SATs, where you're under lots of pressure and only the smartest kids do very well.

I think if people realized that these tests were just a basic check to see if a school was teaching kids ANYTHING AT ALL, there would be a lot less controversy and criticism.

[gaijindabe]

We moved across town when I was nine months old. By the time I was five I was being bused back across town. It sucked. I wonder where this Frank Bass sent his kids to school and those in his newsroom send their kids??

[yellowline]

Originally posted by nine_one_4
Many of Connecticut's mostly white, rich suburban schools, which already are succeeding under the law, don't want the same uncertainty. They are resisting efforts to diversify, fearing that taking minority or poor students will hurt their chances to meet the law's requirements.

I thought libs didn't stereotype?

Fairfield County, Avon, Simsbury, etc. are not the rest of Connecticut. That reporter's ass probably never left NYC to write that article.

[RallyJon]

Originally posted by nostatic
maybe you should become a teacher

Can't. Still spending all my spare time at McDonald's teaching best practices to the french fry guy.

[cashflyer]

Originally posted by RallyJon
I think the answer is that NO student should EVER be allowed to fall so far behind that he cannot pass the test for his grade level. When I was in school, there were a couple of different classes/groups. The lowest achievers should still be able to pass these tests.

....Take a look at the sample tests....

...I think if people realized that these tests were just a basic...

Maybe it wasn't clear when I said that I didn't mean for my question to be commentary on the tests themselves. Let's try using the "bold" tag: my question has nothing to do with the tests.

First, I will say that I agree with your above statement: "NO student should EVER be allowed to fall so far behind that he cannot pass the test for his grade level"

Now back to my question: In a school with several racial, economic, and social groups - like most public schools - would the failures of any one group tend to drag down the other groups in the same school?

Maybe this will help also:
[ ] YES [ ] NO

[RallyJon]

[X] YES. I think the wording of the law is very specific. If it's not OK to let one group in a school not get educated (and it's pretty clearly not, both morally and now legally), then the school must start educating the least achieving group.

I've seen that argument lead to a zero-sum type of conclusion, "well if you want us to teach everyone, even the dumb kids we currently keep locked in the janitor's closet, then you rich white kids are going to lose out..." As if you couldn't guess, I'm really offended by that sort of bureaucratic--if you want me to lift a finger, you'd better increase my budget--do nothing attitude.

These kids have always been there. The schools just can't pretend they're not any more.

[bigchillcar]

Can't. Still spending all my spare time at McDonald's teaching best practices to the french fry guy.

that talent is sorely needed in arkansas, jon..
ryan

[RallyJon]

Let's also remember that we're in a period of transition. You've got schools scrambling in a panic to clean up their just-exposed dirty little secret. If you've got a kid in 8th grade who never should have gotten out of 2nd grade, you're in BIG trouble until you give him the schooling that he so badly needs and deserves. Of course a school that has been doing a pretty good job all along won't be too keen on accepting someone else's problem.

[bigchillcar]

my ex-gf hates the 'no kid left behind' law, but she has the added burden of being a 'reading recovery' teacher..her job is to bring deficient kids up to speed before entering 1st grade and working with currently deficient kids in grades 1-4. she's a great teacher, but for her it's an awful lot of stress..principal watches her scores like a hawk..
ryan

[cashflyer]

Originally posted by RallyJon
[X] YES.

Good. You get a silver star.
The fact is that when you have groups of children from diverse ethnic, economic, and social backgrounds, you will have children who learn at vastly different paces. It's true even in groups that are not mixed, but is usually more evident when you have diversity in the classroom.

My next question is on how to deal with it...
[ ] Administer tests and then cull the slow learners from the group and place them into special classes...
Or
[ ] Slow the class down to the level of the slowest learner, so that nobody is left behind?