Via a EurekAlert release with the catchy headline “As graduation rates go down, school ratings go up”, a new study of the Texas school system, which provided the inspiration for “No Child Left Behind”. It’s not pretty:
A new study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Texas-Austin finds that Texas’ public school accountability system, the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), directly contributes to lower graduation rates. Each year Texas public high schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation — a disproportionate number of whom are African-American, Latino and English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students.
By analyzing data from more than 271,000 students, the study found that 60 percent of African-American students, 75 percent of Latino students and 80 percent of ESL students did not graduate within five years. The researchers found an overall graduation rate of only 33 percent.
“High-stakes, test-based accountability doesn’t lead to school improvement or equitable educational possibilities,” said Linda McSpadden McNeil, director of the Center for Education at Rice University. “It leads to avoidable losses of students. Inherently the system creates a dilemma for principals: comply or educate. Unfortunately we found that compliance means losing students.”
I’m sure this gives “Uncle Al” a warm, fuzzy feeling, but to those of us who care about education, it’s clearly a fiasco. There’s a lot to loathe, here, but my favorite little tidbit may be this explanation of the figures, toward the end of the release:
The discrepancy between the official dropout rates, in the 2 to 3 percent range, and the actual rates can be attributed to the state’s method of counting, which does not include students who drop out of school for reasons such as pregnancy or incarceration or declare intent to take the GED sometime in the future.
This is really just the grand unified theory of GOP social policy, isn’t it? If we create a Guild of Torturers and provide an exemption for little Severian when he drops out of regular school, we’d have the full set.
The students aren’t the only ones leaving the system. The teachers hate it too, and they aren’t staying around to be lambasted by the DOE when they can’t make every kid fit the mold.
So the official drop-out rate is 2-3% but the actual rate is 67% overall? Sounds like BS.
The paper says “More than 20 leaver codes remove students from the grade cohort for such reasons as pregnancy, incarceration, declaring an intent to take the General Educational Development (GED) exam sometime in the future, or declaring an intention to transfer to another district.”
So moving out of the school district counted against graduation rates. Too bad the press release neglected that important fact.
Herb, “declaring an intention to transfer to another district” is not the same thing as actually enrolling in another district. The paper focuses on one school district, Brazos City. We therefore have no way of knowing whether the students who declared an intention to transfer to another district actually did so. However, to lowest order the students who actually did transfer should be balanced by a like number transferring in. It’s not immediately clear whether this study included students transferring in.
We also don’t know how general the phenomenon is. Brazos City was chosen specifically because it had apparently done so well. What the paper does show is the extent to which the Brazos City School District gamed the system.
One striking thing about the paper is the result that the bulk of the cohort loss comes between grades 9 and 10, a promotion for which passing a high-stakes test is required.
I agree, and (as a a substitute public school teacher who has fought for the privilege of working with the most challenged students, on the edge of expulsion or dropping out because of gangs, drugs, alcohol, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, weapons, arrest, and/or flunking algebra) I am too angry to make a rational analysis here and now.
But I do like the Gene Wolfe reference. Emperor Bush II, who by furiously attacking science and “fuzzy math” and evolution and the Magna Carta, has thrust much of America back to the Medieval era, thus deserves to personally experience no less than a loathesome disease which COULD have been treated with stem cell research-based treatments, or perhaps a Sevarian who ignores the “quaint” Geneva convention (metaphorically speaking, Mr. No Liability against the Telecoms J. Random Wiretapper).
Truth IS stranger than science fiction, or (for that matter) than Pulp Fiction.
Imagine this monologue being directed at the Emperor (and please excuse the politically incorrect vocabulary, but, trust me, I heard this language every day in the inner city high schools which suffered under the inherently misguided NCLB unfunded masndate):
Marsellus: “What now? Let me tell you what now. I’ma call a couple of hard, pipe-hittin’ niggas to go to work on homes here with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch. You hear me talkin’ hillbilly boy? I ain’t through with you by damn sight. I’ma get medieval on your ass.”
Democrats love the NCLB policy too, maybe a bit less so than Republicans. And the model is not some GOP grand unified theory — it’s like Stalin’s Five Year Plans.
The bland interpretation is that Repubs and Dems and becoming increasingly similar in their outlook, which is probably true. The less likely but still possible interpretation is that some Republican wanted to make the Dems put up or shut up regarding the perfectability of human nature — “OK, you claim we can alter human nature by interventionist social policies? Let’s see you deal with this!”
# 5 | agnostic:
Yes, Teddy Kennedy was a strange bedfellow with George W. Bush in promulagting No Child Left behind.
However, with all due respect, the almost total destruction of the American public school system is not a partisan issue. I happen to be a registered Democrat (albeit my father and his father were very active Wall Street Fiscal and National Defense Conservative Republicans). My son, at USC Law School since the age of eighteen (18), registered Republican and supports Ron Paul.
This is, in my humble opinion, no time for bickering between the two major parties, nor between the candidates of those major parties. Except that Huckabee is simply wrong about amendeding the Constiution to better fit the Laws of the Living Christ, and:
“I know people say that the math doesn’t work out,” the Baptist pastor politician said over the weekend. “Folks, I didn’t major in math. I majored in miracles, and I still believe in those too.”
Other than the Hucksterbee, I strongly suspect that McCain or Hillary or Obama will likely do SOMETHING to undo NCLB. Or, if there are brokered conventions, Gingerich or Bloomberg.
One problem with espousing mindless compassion, Chad, is empirical reality pursuing a different agenda.
California AP exam results: Los Angeles Times, 14 Feb 2008, p. B2. Whites, Browns, and Yellows have equal performance (66.5-68.6%% scored at least one “3”) while Blacks met Bell Curve predictions with 32.5%. The Spanish AP exam was taken almost exclusively by Browns. Exclude that single pip and reality is… on the curve.
English AP was the worst performance across the board.
An ethical engineer’s first task in solving a problem is identifying its origin. Ignorance can be educated, stupidity is forever. The top 2% in student intelligence is the Severely and Profoundly Gifted. They are the only ones who truly matter. The merely talented are useful and worth investment in turn. The great central mediocrity is stable society. Train it.
The bottom 20% is ruinous meat.
BTW, “67% of Children Left Behind” is imposslble. 33% are elitists and require compassionate, equitable schackling.
“” wrote: “The top 2% in student intelligence is the Severely and Profoundly Gifted. They are the only ones who truly matter.”
So I take it that you, “Uncle Al” inflate your puny IQ to pretend to be in the company of:
(1) Nobel laureate James Watson;
(2) Now-deceased Stanford University professor William Shockley, who shared a Nobel for inventing the transistor, and was ostracized during his lifetime for calling certain races genetically inferior, and for suggesting that people with IQs under 100 be paid bonuses if they agreed to be sterilized;
(3) Former biotech scientist Kary Mullis, who won a Nobel for inventing a process to multiply DNA samples, who was marginalized after he lent his name to several dubious causes, including the discredited notion that HIV is not the cause of AIDS.
JVP:
You’ve been hanging around more than long enough to recognize Unca Ow for the troll he is.
Do Not Feed the Troll, or it will come out from under the bridge and eat you.
Uncle Al probably has trouble reading anyway, since he’s no doubt “rolling his eyes at the thought of diversity training”, god forbid.
Jamie Bowden:
You are, of course, completely right.
I admit that I find it hard to resist the urge to tell such allegedly male trolls that they have proven repeatedly to have tiny brains and tiny male organs of generation.
Because, most likely, “Uncle Al” and his ilk know that, and it is a basis for their over-compensation. Fortunately, they have low Darwinian fitness, unless they are also rapists (during which violent acts, they simultaneously attempt to justify their actions, and to deal with their inability to sustain an erection). As Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle put it: “Think of it as Evolution in Action!”
Let’s try to keep things civilized, people. I really don’t need rape analogies and impotence jokes in my comment threads.
I have little enough use for “Uncle Al,” but I’m not hosting a Hobbesian state of nature, here. Keep it civil, or you will suffer lossy compression.
Uncle Al’s only ally is empirical reality. What would have obtained from 45 years of Head Start instead nurturing the Gifted? Or, NSF budget could have been doubled each and every one of those 45 years. The stooopid are positive-feedback ruinous, as demonstrated this morning by the Ted-Kennedy-would-blush-Liberal LA Times.
Bush the Lesser will dump $145 billion into mediocre gasping gullets starting May to Save Our Economy! 40,000 APS research physicists, 60,000 ACS research chemists. Dump $1 million on each – no paperwork, no oversight, no management. Membership number goes in, Federal debit card comes back; double membership is one payoff. “Spend it on science within 12 months.” That would cost 2/3 as much. Every question worth asking would be answered (mostly by junior faculty and garage diddling). The US would impose its gluttonous will upon the planet forevermore.
Statistics – the managerial alternative to desired results.
Wow, the rant index is off the scale today. Even Chad, usually a paragon of civil discourse, goes semi-ballistic in the last paragraph of his post, demonizing the GOP (one of the three members of his Axis of Evil, Duke basketball and Dick Vitale being the other two)
And Vos Post is having a bad week, usually there’s some wit and rationality in his posts. Today, nothing but cartoon depictions of Bush admin policies with which he disagrees, plus a lot of hyperventilating over the usual provocative statements from Uncle Al.
This study that instigated all the mudslinging may have it’s own political agenda, seeking to undermine efforts at test based accountability by blaming it for tragically high dropout rates ESL/Latino/Afro American students. If this is even partially correct, the blame seems to fall squarely on the educators for gaming the system, not the accountability policy in particular. Some form of accountability is needed, obviously. How to modify the current system or replace it with a system that will monitor improvements and at the same time not undermine graduation rates should be the focus of the debate. Let’s stop wasting bandwidth on all of this partisan bullshit.
This study that instigated all the mudslinging may have it’s own political agenda, seeking to undermine efforts at test based accountability by blaming it for tragically high dropout rates ESL/Latino/Afro American students. If this is even partially correct, the blame seems to fall squarely on the educators for gaming the system, not the accountability policy in particular.
Ah, no.
The particular policy is exactly the problem, because it’s possibly to game it in such an obvious and pernicious way.
You can’t construct a system that can’t possibly be games, any more than you can dig a hole that nobody can possibly fall in and hurt themselves. You can make it difficult to game the system, though, in the same way that you can erect fences and warning signs around a hole in the ground to make it less likely for idiots to fall in it.
This policy, though, is roughly analogous to digging a deep hole, then carefully clearing away all potential obstacles from the area around the hole. And then putting up a neon sign saying “Free Beer at the Bottom of the Hole!”
And, to be clear, I’m referring to the Texas system described in the article. The actual “No Child Left Behind” bill is, astonishingly, somewhat less stupid, if only because it’s less specific and allows states that actually care about education to set up their own systems and standards that don’t have to be a total joke.
I mean, really, “declaring an intent to take the General Educational Development (GED) exam sometime in the future” gets students off the books? Are you kidding me? I can declare my intention to become God Emperor of the Known Universe at some time in the future, which will carry about as much weight.
I read Sherman Dorn (www.shermandorn.com) regularly, and that trick with fake graduation rates is something he has studied in detail. The title of his most recent book “Accountability Frankenstein” might give you a clue.
In short, high schools specifically direct students to drop out into the GED program (whether they really will finish up there or not) to raise their rating. Technically, if I understood one of his blogs correctly, since students who leave that way are removed from the denominator while any who graduate with a GED get added to the numerator, it might be possible to graduate more than 100% if some school system got it all just right. [Note to poster #2: remove from the cohort, like when saying you will move whether you do or not, means you are taken out of the denominator in the grad rate calculation. Ergo, if you get put in jail before you officially drop out, you are not considered a drop out.]
More importantly, the people gaming the system are not educators. They are administrators and politicians. Educators hate what the administrators are doing. They hate it when certain students are told to be sick on a certain day. They hate it when an advanced math class containing only students who have passed the exam is still required to spend a week on exam prep.
And they really hate that the private schools you can attend with a state voucher don’t have to prove they are good by taking the same tests used in public schools. At our CC, we see graduates from private schools who are as weak as kids from the worst public schools. After all, in our state you can get a diploma without passing the state exam by just transferring to a private school for your last semester of the senior year.
Eric, “declaring an intention to transfer” is not the same as dropping out either. Page 18 of the paper explains that “methods of attrition such as transfer” were not tracked in the cohort study.
As you noted, Figure 5 depicts a steep decline in student number between 9th and 10th grade. This decline is because many students were forced to repeat the 9th grade and were therefore excluded from the cohort. You should not interpret that decline as a drop out rate.
I apologize to everyone.
blinker is right. I am having a bad week. A month after my emergency major surgery and 9 days in hospital (of which my insurance pays only 80%, leaving me perhaps $25,000 to pay off) my wound is infected, and I am in genuine pain.
Further, I miss my classroom. There are 3 urban High Schools whose Math Chairpersons and faculty and students are competing for my services, but I am still too sick to teach a full day, which makes me very sad, and doesn’t help my cash-flow, either.
Further, it is not only Saint Valentine’s Day, but the 22nd wedding anniversary for me and my Physics professor wife, whom I’m so very lucky still tolerates me. But she is teaching in classroom and Physics Lab until about 9:30 p.m. tonight (and we were up well before 8:00 a.m.), so no romantic get-away for us, no dancing, no dinner (both of which are problematic anyway to me in my debilitated condition and strict zero fiber diet).
Still, this is no excuse for my rude behavior, and irrational rants. I thus apologize most of all to Prof. Orzel, whose hospitality and patience I have abused.
I even forgive the troll, and George W. Bush. That post-doc in Comparative Religion, Chairman of the Board of a Jewish cult which became a major religion, and scion of one of the 3 largest Independent Contractor firms in the greater Jerusalem area 2 millennia ago made an astonishing point, which is almost impossible to apply, but worth trying to, anyway:
“Love Thine Enemies and pray for your persecutors.”
[Matthew 5:44]
“Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may in indeed see the basic weakness of our own condition, and if we are mature, we many learn and grow and profit from the the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.”
–Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Riverside Church, New York City, 1967
For those within and without the ensemble of Abrahamic religions, but who prefer the Old Testament:
2 Samuel 19:6
King James Bible
“In that thou lovest thine enemies, and hatest thy friends. For thou hast declared this day, that thou regardest neither princes nor servants: for this day I perceive, that if Absalom had lived, and all we had died this day, then it had pleased thee well.”
I would also quote:
“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”
[Oliver Cromwell]
except that my bowels are 4 inches shorter than they used to be, and complaining about it.
Sorry.
**returns to lurking **
And nobody has made the “No Child’s Behind Left” joke yet?
(If only I could laugh about it.)
I don’t approve of any recent variation upon our school system to any serious degree, but we do need to make a distinction between having reasonable standards for graduation and permitting anyone to graduate.
NCLB is a terrible, terrible way of making sure that no student fails because the system withholds a necessary precondition of their success. But letting people graduate just because they’ve sat in class for a certain number of years isn’t any better. And it weakens the meaning of a diploma.