Education Officials Admit NCLB Goals Bogus

I am pleased to see that what every teacher in South Dakota has known since the inception of No Child Left Behind is now the official position of the state Department of Education: the testing goals of NCLB are unworkable.

South Dakota Secretary of Education Melody Schopp says because achievement is based on one yearly test, the goals are unrealistic.

"It's not a measure of where our students are, even if we should... you max out," Schopp said. "It's not even logical to believe 100 percent of students will be proficient or advanced by 2014" [Katie Janssen, "Education Officials 'Backloaded' NCLB Goals" KELOLand.com, 2011.05.23].

I heard a fellow teacher make this exact statement at an in-service program nine years ago. Back then, education officials just hemmed and hawed around such common sense.

Now the Department of Education admits it knew NCLB was impossible from the start:

Right now, 94 South Dakota schools in six districts are on "school improvement," meaning they're not hitting achievement goals set by the state. Schopp admits education officials "backloaded" those goals so districts didn't have to make such big gains from the start.

"We stayed at the same bar of the number of students advanced/proficient for three years at the outset. Then we made a jump after two years, another jump after two years, fully anticipating... we didn't know if NCLB would be around in 2014," Schopp said [Janssen, 2011.05.23].

So really we've just been engaged in farce for the last nine years. It was Governor Mike Rounds's prevaricative defense of this law several years ago ("I don't know how anyone could stand against wanting every child to succeed") that drove one of the first wedges between me and the Republican Party to which I once belonged. Pierre told teachers and administrators to put on their brave faces and spend lots of money on testing and test prep in an effort officials knew all along was futile.

Imagine how different things might have been if we had just been honest with ourselves from the start. Imagine if the South Dakota Secretary of Education had gone to the press the day after President George W. Bush signed NCLB into law and said, "The law's goals are impossible. We could rig some diluted early goals and spend a lot of time engaged in a paper chase hoping that the law will be overturned before the train wreck happens. Instead, we're admitting it's bogus and refusing to participate in this sham. Teachers, go about your business. We won't waste your time with any NCLB tests or report cards."

Ah, if only....