Our Opinion: Anyone interested in Luzerne County interim manager job? Good luck

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Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins unveil special Star Wars jersey to be worn against Bridgeport Sound Tigers April 2

<p>During his first presidential campaign, George W. Bush claimed he would be the &#8220;education president.&#8221; He promised to nationally implement the program that was so successful in Texas that it was dubbed a &#8220;miracle.&#8221;</p><p>In Texas, after implementing a punitive standardized, test-driven system, scores supposedly soared and dropout rates plunged. The program was especially successful in Houston. Its superintendent became President Bush&#8217;s first secretary of education, and the state&#8217;s system became the model for the president&#8217;s 2001 &#8220;No Child Left Behind&#8221; education reform act.</p><p>Back in the late 1990s, Houston&#8217;s scores on a statewide, tenth-grade achievement test supposedly were great. The scores were high, but occurred because administrators kept low-performing kids from making it to tenth grade. They kept them in ninth grade until they dropped out, according to Linda McNeil, a professor of education at Rice University. Meanwhile, other measures, such as SATs, dropped. Julian V. Heilig, an education researcher at the University of Texas, found that the already underachieving Texas schools lost ground to the rest of the country.</p><p>There was no miracle, after all.</p><p>Organizations such as the Intercultural Development Research Association poked holes in the district&#8217;s claim that its dropout rate decreased to only 1.5 percent. The association and investigative reports by KHOU-TV and CBS&#8217;s &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; found the rate was closer to 40 percent.</p><p>School administrator Robert Kimball was aghast when he heard his school had no dropouts during the 2001-02 school year. He knew the rate was close to 70 percent. After he spoke out, he was removed from his duties, had his pay reduced and spent four months in a windowless room with no duties. Later, he was assigned to a tiny primary school where his &#8220;office&#8221; was a closet with no phone, according to media reports about his lawsuit. He received a $90,000 settlement from the school district, and moved to an area university to help prepare teachers.</p><p>Mr. Kimball and others demonstrated that Mr. Bush&#8217;s education program did not produce educational gains.</p><p>Though they were largely ignored, before President Bush&#8217;s NCLB was implemented and surely afterward, teachers across the nation said the law would do far more harm than good. As it turns out, teachers were right even though they are regularly blamed for its lack of success.</p><p>Forced to play by NCLB&#8217;s rules, teachers had to teach to their state&#8217;s tests. Education became test preparation, as a quality education was measured by test scores. To make time for the ever-increasing test preparation and practice-test regiments, districts reduced time available for social studies and science. Across the country, music, art, library and physical education were cut. By 2007, according to the Center on Education Policy, 44 percent of elementary schools had decreased instructional time spent on non-tested subjects.</p><p>The Center for American Progress determined students now annually take an average of 10 standardized tests in grades three to eight. The Council of the Great City Schools found that students take a total of 113 standardized tests between pre-K and 12th grade. The emphasis on test preparation and taking tests gobbles up about 25 percent of the school year, according to the council.</p><p>Before President Bush left office, overwhelming evidence suggested NCLB&#8217;s approach to school reform was a failure. It was never fully funded, but even with full funding it could not have worked because it was based on ideology and not science. Over the last decade, dozens of education, civil rights, religious and other organizational leaders have begged for an overhaul of the law in order to reduce the focus on testing and to provide real help for schools, especially those serving hard-to-educate students.</p><p>Sadly, rather than learning from its predecessor&#8217;s mistakes, the Obama administration doubled down. The Race to the Top (RttT) program provided funding to develop higher standards. Though it did not specifically require what is now the Common Core, most states adopted the standards developed by the National Governors&#8217; Association. They are probably an improvement in some states, but their one-size-fits-all focus marginalized students affected by poverty (many districts in Northeastern Pennsylvania, for example exceed a 50 percent poverty rate), students for whom English is a second language and students with disabilities.</p><p>One of the main intents of NCLB and RttT was to help our students do better in international comparisons. Because of the political agita produced by the Common Core debates, states have different standards, different curriculum and use different tests. Thus, after more than a decade of NCLB and RttT, the U.S. has no globally competitive national curriculum. Even after spending billions of dollars, we cannot even compare outcomes in states.</p><p>The federal laws required states to use students&#8217; test scores to rate individual teachers, even though research overwhelmingly does not support the use of Value Added Measures. Now things have come full circle. After years of bickering, House and Senate negotiators recently agreed to revise NCLB. </p><p>The agreement continues the requirement that districts administer annual standardized tests in reading and math from third through eighth grade and once in high school, and requires that they make their scores public. They will not count for much, though. There will be no federally required sanctions for underperforming schools. The revised law will not mandate specific standards, dictate how states rate their schools or force districts to rate teachers based on their students&#8217; test scores.</p><p>What has our nation accomplished after a decade and a half of educational reform? Though they continue their work and their schools are doing well, morale is at an all-time low among teachers, in part because of the incessant attacks on their schools and because they hated the need to focus on standardized testing. Because of the political battle over standards, teachers are now not even sure what they are supposed to teach.</p><p>Unions, tenure and pensions remain under attack, but over the last 10 years teachers&#8217; salaries have dropped in 34 states and decreased by more than 3 percent nationally. Because of all the hassles, the number of college students preparing to become teachers has dropped dramatically and the nation is about to experience a shortage of teachers. Meanwhile, the makers of standardized tests and producers of standards-aligned textbooks have made tons of money.</p><p>Economists have suggested that President George W. Bush&#8217;s fiscal policies tanked the nation&#8217;s economy. His invasion of Iraq unsettled the Middle East and is continuing to rattle the world. His education policies were equally destructive.</p><p>It is too early to guess who will be the nation&#8217;s next president. Whoever it is, though, should promise to not become another &#8220;education president&#8221; and create any new programs until and unless he or she promises to listen to the nation&#8217;s teachers. Teachers know what works and what needs to be done.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Joseph Rogan</p><p>Contributing Columnist</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Joseph Rogan is a professor of teacher education at Misericordia University in Dallas Township.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Joseph Rogan: Nation’s next president urged to stop meddling in schools, listen to teachers