No Child Left Behind

No Child Left Behind

No, I'm not talking about the legislative act passed in 2001 and now up for renewal in 2008-- at least not right away.

Instead, I want to describe a seemingly ordinary school that accomplishes extraordinary things. It's a school where children talk about peace-making with no trace of self-consciousness and come up with their own ideas about how to address the needs of their community.

The results show all over town: After Hurricane Katrina, students at the Cottonwood School raised six thousand dollars for Watermelon Ranch, a local shelter that had taken in over 500 animals rescued from the floods, and helped them build a new clinic. There are books in the children's wing at the local hospital because of read-a-thons, talent shows and other student-inspired fund-raisers.

The Cottonwood School is a set in a small group of buildings, one of which was once a greenhouse and now serves as the “multi-purpose” room for assemblies, plays, drama, and a set of steel drums. Other classrooms are in “cottages” - small converted houses that give children and teachers a sense of being at home, even when they are at school.

Environmental education plays as much of a role in what these children learn as reading, math, art, and music. They help tend the school's gardens, feed and care for the chickens, and take walks down to the Rio Grande, where they might find themselves trying to build a raft or participating in a census of the porcupine population.

Every Friday, the whole school gathers for an assembly and sing-a-long, in which parents are always invited to participate. Everyone salutes those with birthdays with the song - “I wish you a happy birthday, a joyous and celebrated birthday.” The spirit is infectious; it's impossible to leave one of these gatherings without a smile on your face.

But what struck me most this about the unique qualities of this school was the day I dropped in on a “reading” day to bring a bag of clementines for a snack and found a completely silent classroom. Soup was cooking in the kitchen, and a warm delicious small permeated the cottage.

And in every nook and cranny of the house, children were spread out on blankets, lying on pillows or with knees drawn up, reading a favorite book. Their teacher sat in a rocking chair engaged in the same activity. I have rarely felt such a sense of peace as I did entering the classroom that day, watching children so utterly absorbed in their own private imaginary worlds that they didn't even realize I was there.

So now to the proposed reauthorization of the “No Child Left Behind” Act. I have no quarrel with the Act's intention to hold schools accountable for what they are actually teaching the children entrusted to their care. But test scores are only one measure of how learning takes place, and not a very good one, especially if these scores are not placed in the context of other assessments.

The deficiencies of the NCLB Act are many, especially the failure of the federal government to provide sufficient funds to cover the cost of testing. But testing itself is a practice that should be discussed and debated in our communities. If we test a new group of second graders every year, we are losing the opportunity to measure the progress of a single cohort of students. Moreover, that cohort could be assessed every two to three years without any lose of important data. We could measure the same students in 3^rd grade, in 6^th grade, and in 9^th, and have a very good idea of how those children had progressed in acquiring basic math and reading skills. There is no justifiable reason to put children through a week of testing and months of test preparation on an annual basis when it gives no more useful data than less frequent testing of the same cohort of students.

There is also a price to be paid in the annual test ritual in terms of the toll it takes on students and teachers. Teachers who are forced to spend their days “teaching to the test” lose their autonomy and their sense of professionalism. Many schools have sacrificed the important subject areas of art, music, and the physical education of children in order to spend time increasing math and reading scores. In the meantime, children spend more and more hours in the classroom, and less and less time outside playing, exploring, reading for pleasure, and just being kids.

There is nothing wrong with the goal of leaving “no child behind,” of trying to ensure that every child makes through the public school system able to read, write, and communicate on a basic level. But there are better ways to achieve this goal than simply testing kids year after year, and there are better ways to assess the effectiveness of a school than evaluating it solely based on test scores.

It is time for voters and legislators to hold the NCLB Act itself accountable and to ask hard questions about where it has been effective and where it has fallen short. Surely the Department of Education can find ways to include the teaching of the arts and environmental science, physical education, and the participation of parents and community in its evaluation of individual schools, and give schools credit for providing a broader and more diverse curriculum than any standardized test can measure. We can also treat our teachers as professionals and give them the autonomy to teach their students in ways that they feel will best educate them as opposed to teaching simply to raise their test scores.

As the requirements of the NCLB become more stringent over time, they also confront parents and teachers with increasingly difficult choices. Parents who disagreed with the premise of the Act used to be able to write a letter requesting that their students be excused from testing. But now, a shortfall in the number of students taking the test in any grade or in any ethnic/racial category can put a school's share of federal funding at risk. Similarly, if a school fails to measure up even in one area, it can be labeled a “failing” school. This is pushing accountability into the realm of the punitive and is one reason that many parents are beginning to question the value of a public school education that is so narrowly constrained and measured.

For me, the Cottonwood School with its independent outlook on education and its deep respect for its teachers, students, and parents offers a little bit of utopia in the educational landscape. But think what it might be like if every teacher in America had the time and freedom to take their students for a walk in the woods or give them an afternoon to read a favorite book in silence and peace. It's a vision worth contemplating.