Courier, The (Lincoln, IL)
April 21, 2011
HEADLINE: Legislative Impact on Education

Each year in March our elementary students, grades 3-8, take the Illinois Standards Achievement Test. Our high school students experience the 11th grade counterpart, entitled the Prairie State Achievement Exam, in April.

These assessments are driven by the state in response to the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, signed into law by President bush on Jan. 98, 2002. They are an annual assessment of skills students are to have learned, driven by the Illinois State Standards. At the core of the No Child Left Behind Act are a number of measures designed to drive broad gains in student achievement and to hold states and schools accountable for student progress. They represented significant changes to the education landscape (U.S. Department of Education, 2001).

This legislation included the assurance that every teacher in core content areas working in a public school must be "highly qualified;" that is, the teacher must be certified and demonstrably proficient in his or her subject matter.

In addition, all school paraprofessionals (teacher aides) hired with Title I money must have completed at least two years of college, obtained an associate's degree or higher or passed an evaluation to demonstrate knowledge and teaching ability. The law also focused funding on reading in economically disadvantaged areas and targeted resources for school districts with high concentrations of poor children.

Theoretically, these measures appear to be a positive influence on education. So why the considerable controversy and debate in the education community? Though the intricacies of the law are too numerous to explore here, a piece that has been most damaging to educational practices is the accountability attached to this law. It encompasses the expectation that all students in all public schools by the year 2014 will reach a "meets" or "exceeds" level on the ISAT and Prairie State tests.

Of course all teachers and parents want their students to achieve; it is axiomatic that we want our children to have the tools to be successful throughout their lives. However, success on this assessment one time each year assumes several things that the teacher cannot control: it assumes that children will be reared in a home that is safe, secure and comfortable; it assumes that students will be mentally alert, focused, and motivated to do their best on these tests; it assumes that the test itself is closely aligned to the state standards and that the standards are driving instruction in all schools; it assumes that all children have the ability to meet state standards, even though they may have special education services to support a disability; and it assumes that all children will meet a particular standard at the same time during the year.

Each year, since 2002 the threshold of the "meets" level has been raised; for the 2010 school year, 77.5% of students had to meet or exceed on the assessment for the school to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Schools failing to meet AYP during consecutive years experience a range of sanctions from being placed on academic warning to restructuring, depending on improvement.

Teachers would not intentionally "leave behind" any student; they want students to achieve, and most go to great lengths to maximize student strengths in the classroom. They also fail to leave them behind when they are ensuring that students get an adequate breakfast and lunch and that they have warm coats in the winter. They are not leaving them behind when they continuously reflect on how to reach diverse learning styles and when they meet before and after school to support learning. But they are labeled as being unsuccessful, under NCLB, on the basis of one assessment in the spring of each year.

Criticism of NCLB includes the belief that it has the potential to reduce effective instruction and student learning, because it motivates teachers to "teach to the test"; that it tries to legislate that all children will be above average regardless of the variability of their economic status, their home support, their diverse learning styles, or the curricula they are taught. It ignores the idea that teachers pushed to teach a narrow subset of skills cannot spend the necessary time on thinking and problem solving so critical to student achievement. And of course, the emphasis is on the core subjects, specifically reading and math, thus often minimizing the importance of music and the arts.

Favorable claims include that progress has been reported in early reading scores; there has been a focus on examining instructional strategies with an increase in awareness of learning styles and subgroups; students are being taught by teachers whose expertise and certification is in the areas they are teaching; and that deplorable educational conditions have been made public.

However, the political landscape is changing; the Illinois State Standards have been revised in reading and math and are now called the Illinois State Standards Based on the Common Core; additional work is being done on standards in social studies and science. The testing is supposed to move to computer based, four times a year; and student achievement measures are supposed to be aligned to student growth. These appear to be positive changes. The standards are more clear and manageable, and the increase in testing may offer teachers greater opportunity for intervention where students are struggling. The proof will be in the execution of these reforms, which will be challenging with the state's deficit budget.

Dr. Mary Ahillen, District 27