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Obama's Education Policy Hurts Urban Schools

As Diane Ravitch observed, Obama's education policy gives Bush a third term. More like a third term on steroids.

By Hans Despain

President Barack Obama's education policy, as a continuation of the Bush
administration's failed education policy, will not help New Bedford
public schools.

Former President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind requires every
state to set standards in reading and math, and by 2014 every student
must be "proficient" in these subjects. Third- and eighth-grade students
are tested annually. Schools must show "adequate yearly progress" on
these tests or endure financial penalties, state takeovers, or closure
of individual schools.

Importantly, NCLB aimed to "ensure that all children have a fair, equal
and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education." This
means schools have to be "improved," all children must have access to
"highly qualified" teachers, and the achievement gap between minority
and white students "closed."

NCLB has not improved our nation's public schools; the most horrendous
damage has been within urban districts. The teaching-to-test mania has
failed to close the achievement gap between black and white students,
and between Hispanic and white students. Worse, we have witnessed a
resurgence of school segregation. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) has
been effectively overturned with NCLB.

New Bedford public schools exemplify these national trends. Jonathan
Kozol has documented there has been a 75 percent increase in high
schools failing to graduate more than half of their ninth graders in
four years within districts comprising the largest concentration of
blacks and Hispanics. New Bedford public schools are hardly alone as a
district struggling to navigate, and survive, NCLB.

In addition to the resegregation, the teaching-to-test mania is dumbing
down our students and turning schools into test-prep factories. Many
students are frustrated and alienated from their schooling, which offers
them little in education and real learning.

Obama and his secretary of education, Arne Duncan, support the failed
policy of NCLB and the continued attack on urban districts such as New
Bedford. Recently Duncan has threatened to close as many as 5,000
low-performing schools.

As Diane Ravitch has lamented, the Obama administration has engendered a
third term for Bush's education policy: more testing, more school
"choice," more charter schools, more military academies, and punitive
measures for public schools not showing "adequate yearly progress."

The goals of NCLB are correct; the means to achieve them are
wrongheaded. School choice, charter schools, military academies, and
above all else, punitive measures are not the way to achieve the worthy
goals of NCLB.

If as a nation, and as a city, we are to be serious about "no child left
behind" and a high quality education for all students, then we must
begin to understand and accept that educational reform requires
community development.

To provide a high-quality education for low-income students is not to
test them more, or to require teachers to get more education, or to
impose punitive measures to districts serving these children. Rather we
must reform the public assistance programs that the families of these
children are receiving. We need, as a nation, to extend the funds for
economic and community development in districts serving low-income
demographics.

Education reform in New Bedford is not more testing, more education for
teachers, more charter schools, or greater school choice. All these
measures will continue to damage New Bedford public schools. Instead,
school reform is workforce development, low-income housing reform,
extended health and wellness for low-income families, and community
empowerment over the education and curriculum of its children.

Since NCLB has been legislated, income and health gaps have widened,
workforce development curtailed, and parent/teacher empowerment over
curriculum diminished. Compared to other OECD (Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development) countries we have the highest incidence of
childhood poverty and we rank nearly last in measures of child care;
such social neglect manifests lower educational achievement for children
enduring it. We should be highly suspicious of "educational reform" that
fails to address child-care needs of low-income families and our high
incidence of childhood poverty.

We can applaud many of the policies of Obama. However, Obama and
Duncan's education policy is socially erroneous, economically wasteful,
and educationally harmful. It is doing damage to districts serving
low-income students and their families.

New Bedford citizens and politicians must demand that mere crisis
management of New Bedford public schools come to an end. New Bedford
public schools, teachers, and staff are serving our children well.
Inadequate socioeconomic policy, income inequality, and neglect of
community development are the main culprits undermining our educational
system.

Punitive measures for district serving transitory populations,
low-income children, and English-as-a-second-language children is wrong,
and leaves these children and their families "behind."

Hans Despain is a professor of economics at Nichols College in Dudley.



— Hans Despain
South Coast Today
2009-09-13
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090913/OPINION/909130319/-1/NEWS#STS=fzlmsq60.h1e

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