John Thompson: How Should Educators React to ESSA?
John Thompson, teacher and historian in Oklahoma, appraises the new law called “Every Student Succeeds Act” (ESSA).
He writes:
Diane,
He writes:
Diane,
Here’s another submittal if you like it.
John
As educators rush to understand the actual wording of the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), we must ask the far more important question of what the new law really means. In education (as in most of life?) it is the music, not just the lyrics, that really communicates. The first question is how systems will interpret not just the letter of the law but also the thrust of the ESSA. Equally important is how educators respond to managements’ interpretations of its accountability provisions. In doing so, we should keep the history of the NCLB Act of 2002 in mind, and not repeat the devastating mistakes caused by a decade and a half of test, sort, reward, and punish education malpractice.
As educators rush to understand the actual wording of the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), we must ask the far more important question of what the new law really means. In education (as in most of life?) it is the music, not just the lyrics, that really communicates. The first question is how systems will interpret not just the letter of the law but also the thrust of the ESSA. Equally important is how educators respond to managements’ interpretations of its accountability provisions. In doing so, we should keep the history of the NCLB Act of 2002 in mind, and not repeat the devastating mistakes caused by a decade and a half of test, sort, reward, and punish education malpractice.
On the eve of NCLB, Oklahoma City had adopted its opposite – a humane, science-based school reform policy that emphasized collaboration, early education, engaging instruction, and the use of test scores as a diagnostic tool, not an end in itself. This was the result of a bipartisan coalition, MAPS for Kids. As explained in my A Teacher’s Tale,http://www.amazon.com/Teachers-Tale-Learning-Loving-Listening/dp/1681646420/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450883757&sr=1-1&keywords=a+teacher%27s+tale we agreed that education was too important to be left to the bureaucracy; it must be a transparent, cooperative, community effort. NCLB empowered top-down micromanaging and playing games with data by persons who were distant from both the community and classroom realities.
I had been a team player in MAPS for Kids and I searched for common ground with NCLB. I was frustrated that education scholars seemed to be implacably opposed to the law, even though the American Federation of Teachers and most teachers initially gave it cautious support. My brain told me that NCLB was inherently wrongheaded, but I cherry-picked reasons to be optimistic. Before long, I could not avoid the same conclusion as virtually every classroom teacher who I have ever known. I can’t think of another issue which created as much unanimity among diverse practitioners as the law’s testing provisions did. As crazy as it sounds, NCLB was so ill-conceived that I don’t recall a single teacher who did not eventually reject it.
I first assumed that the education sector would make the same half-hearted effort to implement NCLB as it had typically done with previous quick fixes that were disconnected from reality. The best case scenario, which I knew was unlikely, would be to pretend to comply with NCLB; take the law=s money and spend it according to our own consciences; and then claim to have raised student performance. It seemed inconceivable, however, that school systems would do the complete opposite and actually try to meet its mandate for bringing 100% of students to proficiency in twelve years.
The best thing about NCLB, potentially, was that it was riddled with loopholes. Even its bizarre AYP (Annual Yearly Progress) goals were a charade, and schools could utilize the loophole of Safe Harbor, or John Thompson: How Should Educators React to ESSA? | Diane Ravitch's blog: