
Education Reformers Butt Heads over No Child Left Behind
by
findingDulcinea Staff
In the summer of 2007, Jonathan Kozol, author and former teacher, went on a hunger strike to protest No Child Left Behind. However, in the eyes of one pundit, Kozol is more of a problem than the legislation he attacks.
30-Second Summary
According to Jonathan Kozol, who lost at least 29lbs on his "partial" hunger strike, nearly half of new teachers in urban schools leave teaching in their first five years.
He argues that they depart because they are forced to “teach to the test” in line with the strictures of No Child Left Behind.
Indeed, a 2003 report estimated that fifty percent of new teachers leave the profession within their first five years.
The report also found that “high-poverty public schools have far higher turnover rates than do more affluent public schools.” And urban public schools find it slightly harder to retain teachers, too.
There seems little argument that the attrition rates are too high. But Kozol does not represent a universal consensus as to why.
Author and fellow at the Manhattan Institute Sol Stern contends that the real culprit is inadequate training; that and the fact that many teachers are only in those tough city schools temporarily as part of an alternative certification program.
Stern writes, “Contrary to Kozol’s impression, testing hardly registers as a reason for leaving. One factor that does turn up, however, is the lack of adequate training that teachers get from education schools.”
Sol argues that Kozol, whose books are a mainstay of teacher training syllabuses, is only compounding that problem. His titles are, writes Sol, “brimming with misinformation about the causes of school failure.”
The No Child Left Behind Act came into law in 2002 as the flagship education policy of the Bush administration. It provides extra funding for schools that demonstrate “adequate yearly progress,” as measured in standardized tests. The intention was to bridge the achievement gap between socio-economically disadvantaged students and those from more affluent backgrounds.
He argues that they depart because they are forced to “teach to the test” in line with the strictures of No Child Left Behind.
Indeed, a 2003 report estimated that fifty percent of new teachers leave the profession within their first five years.
The report also found that “high-poverty public schools have far higher turnover rates than do more affluent public schools.” And urban public schools find it slightly harder to retain teachers, too.
There seems little argument that the attrition rates are too high. But Kozol does not represent a universal consensus as to why.
Author and fellow at the Manhattan Institute Sol Stern contends that the real culprit is inadequate training; that and the fact that many teachers are only in those tough city schools temporarily as part of an alternative certification program.
Stern writes, “Contrary to Kozol’s impression, testing hardly registers as a reason for leaving. One factor that does turn up, however, is the lack of adequate training that teachers get from education schools.”
Sol argues that Kozol, whose books are a mainstay of teacher training syllabuses, is only compounding that problem. His titles are, writes Sol, “brimming with misinformation about the causes of school failure.”
The No Child Left Behind Act came into law in 2002 as the flagship education policy of the Bush administration. It provides extra funding for schools that demonstrate “adequate yearly progress,” as measured in standardized tests. The intention was to bridge the achievement gap between socio-economically disadvantaged students and those from more affluent backgrounds.
Headline link: Kozol’s campaign
The Epoch Times explains that by his 67th day of fasting, Kozol had lost 29 pounds. Kozol’s demands include limiting the “reliance on standardized exams to 25 percent of the full array of factors used in the determination of success or failure for a child, school or teacher.”
Source: Epoch Times
In a November interview with WGTD’s “The Morning Show,” Kozol explained to host Greg Berg that NCLB requires that teachers keep to a tight time schedule (for testing, teaching, etc) that leaves little room for exploring topics of genuine interest to their students. Kozol suggests that the most effective teaching methods include finding a “chemistry” with the students and not drilling them for tests. Kozol also wants congress to “reduce the testing madness” and asks “are we giving these poor kids the same wonderful small class sizes of 17 or 18 that you’d see in the rich neighborhoods.”
Source: WGTD’s “The Morning Show”
Background: ‘Why I Am Fasting’
In a blog post titled “Why I Am Fasting: An Explanation to My Friends,” Kozol writes that “the poisonous essence of this law lies in the mania of obsessive testing it has forced upon our nation's schools and, in the case of underfunded, overcrowded inner-city schools, the miserable drill-and-kill curriculum of robotic ‘teaching to the test’ it has imposed on teachers, the best of whom are fleeing from these schools because they know that this debased curriculum would never have been tolerated in the good suburban schools that they, themselves, attended.”
Source: Huffington Post
Opinions & Analysis : Why are teachers leaving?
Sol Stern states, contrary to Kozol’s assertions, that the high attrition rates actually arise from inadequate training. According to Stern, Kozol’s own literature, which is prominent in teaching programs across the country, is one of the factors preventing teachers from being properly prepared for a long-term career in inner-city education.
Source: City Journal
Ella Powers addresses what may be another factor in attrition rates: alternative certification programs. In this article about Teach for America, the director of literacy at the Newark Public school district says that half of the TFA members stay in the district after their two-year commitment and that the other half create a “cycle of attrition at our schools that becomes in and of itself a problem.”
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Reference Material: Attrition rates and NCLB
Richard M. Ingersoll’s report “Is there Really a Teacher Shortage?” may be the source of Kozol’s 50 percent attrition rate assertion. Ingersoll’s 2003 report analyzes data from the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and the Teaching Followup Survey (TFS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). A graph compiled by Ingersoll from the NCES data indicates that during the first five years of teaching, 40–50 percent of new teachers leave the profession (with no mention of this being exclusively urban teachers). Ingersoll mentions in the footnotes that this 40–50 percent range is just a rough approximation of recent figures put together by the author himself (refer to footnote 7 on pages 22–23) based on trends in 2000–2001 data. The report is available online as a PDF.
Source: University of Pennsylvania (PDF document)
The NCLB Act was introduced during the first session of the 107th Congress in 2001. The act amended the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, authorizing numerous federal mandates requiring states to administer annual standardized tests. Those states that fail to show progress on the tests are penalized in a number of ways, most commonly through reduced federal funding. One of the major goals of the act is to have every student in the nation reach "proficiency" levels for their grade by the year 2014.
Source: Congresspedia
Related links: Dissatisfaction with NCLB
Democratic presidential candidates speaking to the nation's largest teachers’ union called for an overhaul of the No Child Left Behind Act in July 2007, bringing renewed attention to the law.
Source: findingDulcinea
Kozol details his Dec. 5, 2007, meeting with Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and explains that Kennedy extended their initial 20-minute meeting to more than an hour to discuss NCLB changes. Kozol also provides a link to the letter he gave Sen. Kennedy, which suggests that students be allowed to bus across district lines and that reliance on testing should be lessened.
Source: Education Action!

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