© 2007 by Michael Swickard, Ph.D.
Years ago nothing was more fun than outhouse tipping, unless you happened to be in the outhouse when it tipped over. Well, it didn’t tip over, adolescent boys pushed it over when the moon was right and they caught Uncle Fester sitting down. He exclaimed, “How’d this happen?”
Some readers may not know about outhouses. Before indoor plumbing, the “bathroom” was downwind from the house in a small structure also called a privy. Using it tested the need to go versus smell aversion, with spider and snake phobias thrown in.
Tipping was about control. Boys pushed outhouses over on the door side so the person inside was trapped until his or her shouts were answered.
Speaking of trapped, the Adequate Yearly Progress numbers for schools were just released, and more schools in
The federal NCLB law should be ignored by state and local education authorities, given the constitutional separation of federal and state laws. But the feds applied so much pressure to these authorities that they caved. Local schools now focus their entire curricular and instructional efforts on federal accountability measures, so the feds got control of local schools without changing the constitution, all while the watchdogs slept.
Most people do not realize the NCLB law states that, by a certain date, every child in
American schools do well when students want to learn and poorly when students are determined to not learn. That is a fact. I was a high-school teacher with students determined to not learn. I thought I would out-hustle them and change their attitudes about learning. By the end of the year, I found they had succeeded in not learning.
Schools aren’t the only factor in success
NCLB assumes schools are the only factor in student success. The law states that if all children are not on grade level, everyone at the school will be fired. If you are a principal and a child does not wish to learn, what can you do? NCLB is about control in an area where not even parents have control. Schools cannot make students learn, even if their jobs are at stake. Teachers know this; politicians do not.
Some students are limited not by willpower, but by brain development. Ask a small boy, do you have a brother? He says yes. Then ask, does your brother have a brother? He doesn’t know because he cannot do formal logic until his frontal lobe develops. Federal mandates do not change the individual rate of frontal lobe development.
Further, last year I was in a classroom where only one student in the entire class had two parents at home. The effect of single-parent homes is profound. Parents are the most important factor in student learning, followed in order of importance by siblings, extended family, peers, and finally, the school. Despite researchers knowing this, the NCLB political solution is to treat the schools as if they are the only influence.
Why are we using political solutions for education? Years ago, I took a look at what politicians said about education every five years back to 1895. In each period, politicians said education was broken that year and was not bad a generation earlier. The 1895 politicians moaned that the McGuffey Readers they used as youngsters were not being used, so 1895 students were going to be illiterate. In the 1940s, Latin and Greek were no longer emphasized, so politicians said schools were broken. On and on it went.
No Child Left Behind hampers learning
These attacks on schools have gone on for over a century. We now have NCLB. The question is this: If students come to school wanting to learn today, can they? Some students might not be able because schools are forced by NCLB to do things that kill the learning spirit of students.
Three things are essential for student learning: First, natural curiosity is the entrance into the mind. Second, students must have some passion for what they are doing. Third, students must somewhat enjoy the passage of time; they do not learn well if they are miserable.
Nothing about NCLB testing inspires curiosity, passion or enjoyment of the passage of time. Many schools even cancel recess so students spend more time preparing for the tests.
I was talking with a fellow coffee drinker the other day. He had not been to a school in decades and thought the problem was students were having too much fun. If school is so much fun, why are 30 percent of the students dropping out? NCLB is making schools worse, not better. Schools are trapped in this overturned NCLB Outhouse.
Are there any politicians who will use real education solutions and toss out the NCLB law, thereby returning the control of schools back to locals?
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.
A prior version of this posting had the wrong name for the Adequate Yearly Progress standard.