(If
any of the links below are outdated, try the WayBackMachine web
site.)
hether you
like it or not, the No Child Left Behind Act is gradually
sinking. While some argue that the priority of the war
in Iraq and a lack of funding is causing its destruction,
others point to a lack of support from rank and file educators
as an undermining factor. The Congressional hearings involving
corruption at the highest levels of Reading
First, NCLB's
fair-haired reading child, haven't done anything but damage
NCLB. But the most fundamental argument is that it was
doomed from the very start. Just like Enron, the "numbers
game" it
played is finally catching up with NCLB.
NCLB was built on the bedrock
of "what's
good for business is good for schools," that schools'
productivity would improve significantly if business principles
were applied, and nothing proved it better than the "education
miracle" built in Texas by then-Governor
George W. Bush and in Houston by Superintendent Rod Paige. If such "miracles" could
happen in Texas, then they could happen everywhere in America.
As the statistics
on the following pages will show, nothing could be further
from the truth. And then one must ask: How much did Rod
Paige know and when did he know it?
'Business standards' and Schooling
First, let's address "business principles" applied
to schools: Which ones? The principles that ran Enron,
Arthur Anderson, WorldCom, Tyco, HealthSouth, Krispy Kreme,
or Martha Stewart? How about that citadel of corporate
principles, Walt Disney Company under Michael
Eisner? ("What
Michael likes to do is to put six pit bulls together and
see which five die first." Come to think of it, isn't
that the approach of major urban school boards as they
bleed superintendents?) Anyone for classroom ethics as
taught by the top pharmaceutical companies (start with Merck and Vioxx)?
Maybe one should apply the learning strategies
the airline industry has been using. After all, these are
graduates of our most expensive business schools, people
who know how to "think out of the box," the ones
who lost $33 billion in the five years leading up to 2005.
Imagine how many school bake sales it would take to make
up $33 billion!
Perhaps
schools had better take a pass on that strategy. Unfortunately,
the idea that children are like planes is built into the
new accountability strategies for education: All children
must take off on time and arrive on time, and annual
testing (at a cost of $1.8 billion nationally) will insure
that. Wrong again.
The fact that all children
cannot blossom on time does not signal the end of the world
as we know it. It's possible to bloom late and still be
successful, and America is daily willing to accept that — but
only in its sports world. He
was second-string quarterback on a high school freshman
team that not only didn't win a game, it never scored a
single touchdown. At college, he was seventh-string quarterback,
failing to secure first-team status until there were only
four games left in his senior year, yet he became the only
NFL quarterback to win three Super Bowls by age 28. The
business world cheers late-bloomers like the New England
Patriots' Tom
Brady, but can't abide
them in the classroom.
The fact is you also can
blossom late in the classroom and still achieve. Indeed,
one can be totally inept in one discipline yet shine in
another, something the new graduation standards fail to
take into account. Nothing proves it better than the high
school and college transcripts of George W. Bush,
Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell—each
of them a "late bloomer." (Not Dick Cheney? Two
failed tries at Yale and then an embarrassed retreat to
Casper Community College are clear indications he wasn't
blossoming "on time.") While wondering how these
three would have measured against today's proposed standards
of learning, there's no denying they did all right for
themselves once they finally "blossomed." Fifty
years ago David Boies didn't
learn to read until third grade (severe dyslexia) but today's
scoreboard lists him as the most "in-demand" lawyer
in America, and the man who brought Microsoft practically
to its knees with a four-hour summation to the jury without
a note in his hand. The "moral
compass" of the American theater, Arthur
Miller, was
a dreadful math student but did a better job tabulating
the social conscience of the nation than any playwright
of his time (and a lot better than some Fortune 500
CFO's).
But school "business
standards" today
allow for no such late starts. The present schedule began
with the Business Roundtable (see Nation
at Risk Report,
1985, Reagan administration) and the concept that all children
can learn, even poor children, if you bring the right kind
of administration to schools and incorporate "accountability" into
the picture: Reward achievement, punish failure. George
Bush the Harvard MBA won the hearts of the business class
by advocating that strategy state-wide in Texas and in
urban-poor Houston, Rod Paige "proved" it worked.
Paige eventually would be the front man for NCLB but the
behind-the-scenes impresario would be Sandy
Kress, former president of the
Dallas USD school board and lobbyist for some of the major
educational publishers and pro-testing business groups
in the U.S. (See "Having
your cake and eating it, too.")
THE 'MIRACLE' WAS A 'MIRAGE' IN TEXAS
One problem: It won't work
now because it didn't work then. That is, there
was no "education
miracle" in Texas or Houston. If it wasn't a hoax,
then it was a mirage. In any case, building a national
education agenda on the Texas model was like building a
skyscraper on quicksand.
No one knew the tenuous
nature of Texas' "miracle" better than the man who rose
to power as a result of it, Dr.
Rod Paige, secretary
of education during the first Bush term (whose doctoral
work was on the reaction-time of linebackers). As superintendent
in Houston, he endeared himself to the business community
by applying a business paradigm to school management.
The
New York Times' Michael Winerip described Paige's policies for school
administrators this way:
"As for those who fail to
make their numbers, it is termination time, one of many
innovations championed by Dr. Paige as superintendent
here from 1994 to 2001. He got rid of tenure for principals
and mandated that they sign one-year contracts that allowed
dismissal 'without cause' and without a hearing.
"On the other hand, for principals
who make their numbers, it is bonus time. Principals
can earn a $5,000 bonus, district administrators up to
$20,000."
t one high school that later earned the wrath of state
auditors for its faulty bookkeeping, $75,000 in bonus
money was issued the year before its bogus figures were
discovered. A long way from Enron numbers but they were
using the same BBQ sauce in the same town to cook the
books. (The scandals that will eventually arise from
these "easy money" bonuses would do nothing
to keep HISD officials from drinking from the public
trough; by 2006, they instituted an even larger—$14
million—bonus
system to tempt district teachers and administrators. ["Test-Tied
Bonuses to Take Effect in Houston: Teachers will get more
money if their students improve exam scores by Tess Keller, Education
Week,
Jan. 18, 2006.])
It was achieved in a fashion
that smacked of Enron math.
To all appearances, Paige's management
style with its goals and objectives for administrators,
playing hardball with those who failed to reach their goals,
blessing the achieving administrators with handsome bonuses — worked.
When he took over as Houston superintendent, only 26 percent
of the city's 10th graders were passing the state math
test; the year he departed for Washington, 99 percent were
passing it. In 2004, however, a Washington Post investigation
revealed this was achieved in a fashion that smacked of
Enron math: Take the at-risk 9th-graders and retain them
in that grade, allowing only the competent to matriculate
to 10th — the year when they would take the state
math test. After two or more years in 9th grade, move the
at-risk students up to 12th grade, sidestepping the 10th-grade
test. The result: in 2001, there were 1,160 students in
9th grade and 281 in 10th grade. And 99 percent of those
281 passed the state math test. Education miracle or mirage?
True
to Paige's all-business approach, his district was quick
to adopt Direct
Instruction, a highly
scripted program that focuses on students mimicking their
teacher's words and sounds, complete with heavy emphasis
on rote memorization and repetitive recitations. As business
models go, it looks a lot like Henry Ford's assembly line.
(When the Bush-Paige team moved to the White House, Direct
Instruction became one of the Department of Ed's "approved" programs
for reading and math, something that proved to be embarrassing
when Congressional hearings in April 2007 revealed the
wife of Reading First Director Chris
Doherty was employed
by Direct Instruction—something
he repeatedly failed to disclose on government financial
forms. ["Key Initiative Of
'No Child' Under Federal Investigation Officials Profited
From Reading First Program," by
Amit R. Paley, The Washington Post, April 21,
2007.])
Footnotes and
documentation on the above material, as well as an earlier
in-depth look
at the these issues, can be found here at Miracle
One and Miracle Two.
All
essays, articles on
No Child Left Behind, see More
NCLB.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE Trelease on Reading is copyright, 2011, 2014, 2019 by Jim Trelease.
All rights reserved. Any problems
or queries about this site should be directed
to:
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that not only didn't win a game, it never scored a
single touchdown. At college, he was seventh-string quarterback,
failing to secure first-team status until there were only
four games left in his senior year, yet he became the only
NFL quarterback to win three Super Bowls by age 28. The
business world cheers late-bloomers like the New England
Patriots' Tom
Brady, but can't abide
them in the classroom.
"As for those who fail to
make their numbers, it is termination time, one of many
innovations championed by Dr. Paige as superintendent
here from 1994 to 2001. He got rid of tenure for principals
and mandated that they sign one-year contracts that allowed
dismissal 'without cause' and without a hearing.
