No Child Left Behind Morphs into Common Core Standards

As a high school math teacher who infiltrated the profession without the benefit of the liberal indoctrination that accompanies the credentialing process, I read the hype regarding Federal Education programs with both skepticism and cynicism.

As stated in “The Obama Setback for Minority Education,” most states are jumping ship from No Child Left Behind (NCLB or No Child Gets Ahead) to Common Core Standards.

Just in time too: the deadline for meeting NCLB goals is 2014.

In the absence of real progress in public education, we are eager to mistake change for progress.

The trajectory for a new program is easy to augur: as we approach a deadline, we waiver the goals and gallop off in a new direction to a seemingly brighter future.

It works; most of the population is either not paying attention, does not know what the milestones are or is not aware of how a wide a margin their district missed the target.

“High stakes” and “accountability” are two hollow phrases bandied about.

“High stakes” for whom?

Not to present anecdotal evidence, but I had a student, who broke the code; he refused to take any statewide exams; after graduating from my school, he graduated from Cornell.

Report card and transcript grades are usually independent of standardized test results; how else could we mask grade inflation?

“Accountability?”

On an average, one out of five of our students scored proficient or above in the Geometry standards test; no teacher I know has ever been confronted with his or her abysmal track record.

When our school briefly showed improvement, ascending to a similar schools ranking of 10 out of 10, the highest possible, the principal was incongruously relieved because “he was not an instructional leader.”

As we said in the Navy, “No amount of competence will go unpunished.”

I achieved a one out of two pass rate for Geometry students and was placed in a probationary status, yet my pass rate was the highest of any high school teacher in the district.

As the said of Colonel Kurtz, he showed some success but “his methods became unsound.”

Achievement gaps are invariably measured as the difference between African Americans and Whites or Latinos and Whites.

Strange, that an underachieving academic culture would serve as the baseline.

Were Asian students used as a baseline instead of Whites, there would be a third achievement gap that nobody wants to acknowledge.

When I held up the Asian model as described in “Confessions of an Asian Tiger Mom,” I was warned by other faculty members that such extreme pressure on students would only serve to raise suicide rates.

Designing and implementing novel programs requires battalions of educrats i.e. teachers who managed to clamber out of the trenches, upgrade their fashion line—“an ounce of image is worth a pound of performance”—and in doing so, they became experts in public education making only a few token keyhole visits to classrooms.

As pointed out by George Schultz, “more than 30 percent of funds appropriated for schools never make it within sight of the classroom;” edu-crats siphon it off at every redundant echelon from the Secretary of Education in DC, down to the Principal’s coterie.

To retain a captive audience, administrators and teachers collaborate if only to close off escape routes; i.e. crimp charter schools and veto vouchers.

Were it not for the demands a high-tech economy places on public education, it might be more cost effective to return to the one-room school house.

Jeffrey R Smith

Naval Aviator US Navy Retired