Mobile Register (Alabama) May 3, 2009

HEADLINE: NCLB leads to cramming Insight No Child Left Behind: a student's perspective

By Tray Smith

ATMORE - In August 2007, I began my U.S. History II class at Escambia County High School in Atmore. I was excited at the prospect of studying all of the significant events that occurred after the Civil War. Topics such as Reconstruction, the Great Depression and both World Wars have always interested me.

Instead, my teacher began with a lesson on the Crusades, which had been covered in our previous history classes.

She was doing this, she explained, because school administrators had encouraged the review in light of the fact that several of my classmates had not yet passed the social studies portion of the Alabama High School Graduation Exam.

This was an honors history class.

Three weeks later, I moved to Washington, where I received a challenging education in history while serving as a page for U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner. Having returned to ECHS at the conclusion of my page appointment, I have again been dismayed as teachers have been forced to spend their time, resources and even class periods focusing on "cram sessions" to prepare students for the graduation exam, which I passed two years ago.

Such policies are not the fault of the school. They are consequences mandated as a result of ECHS' "school of improvement" status.

These events represent the worst effects of the testing regime spawned by the federal "No Child Left Behind Act." It is those tests that determine whether a school is considered a "school of improvement."

And it is that label which forces schools to dispense a disproportionate share of attention on students who repeatedly fail to pass standardized exams.

Yet the problem is not simply with the tests.

By requiring schools to periodically assess student aptitude, NCLB has provided valuable metrics for measuring teacher quality and holding schools accountable.

In Escambia County, some students have responded to the higher standards demanded of them by testing out of special education, avoiding lives of dependency and achieving normalcy.

While faculty members in many low-performing schools, including my own, are often tempted to blame their struggles on NCLB, in reality the law's metrics only expose deficiencies that already exist.

If those deficiencies remained unknown, how could they be corrected?

The problem, rather, is that No Child Left Behind holds schools accountable only for student performance on basic tests, giving educators an incentive to focus their efforts on preparing students to pass exams without worrying much about those who have already passed.

As a result, many believe that No Child Left Behind often means no child gets ahead. The question for policymakers, then, is how to preserve the best parts of NCLB without prompting educators to become consumed with one standard.

President Obama, to his credit, recently proposed a more aggressive effort to open charter schools, prompt states to pay teachers according to their performance and expand early childhood education, while leaving most of the current program largely intact.

All of those are worthy ideas, but they do nothing to expand the depth of the curriculum available in public education.

To adequately judge school quality, the president needs to go further. He should advocate adding the number of college preparatory Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses a school offers, the number of those classes taken by students, and student performance on AP and IB exams to the mix of measures currently used to determine whether a school makes "Adequate Yearly Progress" and is designated a "school of improvement."

These are the same indicators already used by Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report magazines to determine "America's Best High Schools."

Under this system, schools would still be forced to ensure that no student is excluded from the learning process, but they would no longer be able to do so while neglecting the needs of their most ambitious pupils.

Over time, the tests that currently demand so much attention will become an afterthought.

Students challenged to a rigorous course of study will easily pass standardized exams, and resources can then be devoted to making the most challenging courses the national standard.