Arne Duncan: 80% of America’s Schools Are Failing

[Modern School]

For once it appears that Ed Deformer in Chief, Arne Duncan, is saying something honest about Ed Deform: NCLB is an utter failure. On Wednesday, Duncan told Congress that over 80,000 of the nation’s 100,000 public schools could be labeled as failing under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Duncan said that this statistic, based on an analysis of testing trends and the law’s pass-fail school rating system, was the latest evidence of the law’s shortcomings, and called for an overhaul of the law.

According to Duncan, 82% of schools could fail to meet their Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals, compared with 37% last year. This would seem like an astonishing jump, except for the fact that not only do schools as a whole need to improve, but each sub-group within the school (e.g., special education, English language learners, low-income, Asian, African-American, Latino, etc.) must also make significant gains.

Even if failure rates remained flat at 37%, the law would still be a failure since its goal was to achieve 100% proficiency by 2014. In actuality, increasing numbers of schools have seen declining proficiency. Take California, for example, where 39% of elementary schools failed to meet their AYP in 2009, while 60% failed in 2010. Nationwide, the number of schools failing to meet their AYP has increased from 28% in the 2006-7 school year, to 37% last year.

Schools face sanctions if they are deemed failures for two or more years. After four consecutive years of failure, they can be forced to convert to charter schools or forced to fire their entire teaching staffs. After three years, they can be forced to hire private outside consulting firms or tutoring services for their students. After only two years, parents have the option of transferring their children to better schools in the area, a process that tends to be utilized mostly by the more economically privileged families, resulting in a worsening of stratification within school districts and exacerbating the downward spiral of test scores at the increasingly poor low income schools.

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/

[midnight]

1. Schools that are failing are probably working with a large population of students who's families are

living in poverty... Let's return the food stamp money you took from these families and gave to the schools, and fund these schools better. We know that the women who has caused so much disruption in the dept. of education, lied on her resume, and now I wonder if these stories are more lies too... I'm living in Wisconsin and the Gov. who has been in office less than three months has lied about our budget crisis to manipulate the state union workers rights..... I'm really getting tired of this crap... Stop lying to us.

[FBaggins]

3. There's no need to explain why 80% are failing...

...because 80% are not failing.

Don't get me wrong... we have far too many schools with massive dropout rates and very little learning going on. And it's entirely appropriate to talk about the impact of poverty and broken families and the inability to attract the best teachers to these schools. I don't know if it's 5% or 10% or 20%... but they really exist.

But the real takeaway here is that the artificial standard that has been created is ridiculous. You can now have a school with very respectable graduation rates and test scores... middle class families and kids on their way to good colleges... and still have the school rated as "failing".

[Hannah Bell]

4. in this case, nothing to do with kids in poverty. bush's no child left behind is designed

to eventually make every school a failing school.

no joke, that's why the % "failing" rises every year.

[FBaggins]

6. You went and said that so much more efficiently than I did.

Always takes me more space. :)

[pscot]

2. NCLB is a scam put together be educational think tanks

It's designed to break the public school system and loot the public treasury.

[Starry Messenger]

5. + a billion

[texshelters]

7. Liar--how much is he invested in McGraw-Hill

the suppliers of tests.

For the objective analysis, read this:
http://texshelters.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/accepted-assumptions-that-are-wrong-our-public-schools-are-failing/

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[texshelters]

8. This whole high stakes testing regimine is bankrupting us with no

benefits to the students.

The schools are only failing in the eyes of testing companies and their lackeys.

http://texshelters.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/accepted-assumptions-that-are-wrong-our-public-schools-are-failing/

Peace,
Tex Shelters