Local elementary teachers talk about ‘No Child Left Behind’

In January 2002 President Bush signed into law an education reform bill that has profoundly affected the daily work of classroom teachers all over the country. The law is a sweeping mandate regarding student achievement in reading and math, grades K-12, across the country. It provides for the annual testing of every student – second to 12th grade, in every public school in the U.S. that receives federal funds. “Report cards” lie at the heart of it. There is one for evaluating the qualifications of every teacher – based solely on preparation, not performance. Every student receives an annual evaluation, based solely on test results, that identifies the child’s performance as “highly proficient,” “proficient” or below that magic number. And there is the annual classification, the “Academic Performance Index” or API, based exclusively on those student test results, of every school. “Accountability” was the mantra of the law’s proponents. But does all this lead to inspiration or to finger pointing?
The engaging title of the bill – which had large bi-partisan support – evokes the promise of the American dream and confirms the best in us and in American public education. Or does it? Another perception is that it is a fear tactic, playing on the greatest fear that a child has, that of being left or lost. So how do our Sonoma Valley teachers feel about it, six years later and on the eve of the publication by the state of the APIs for this year?
“The positive of it is the accountability,” said Flowery teacher Hannah Aclufi, “because there certainly were kids, most of them English learners, who were slipping through the cracks.” All the teachers interviewed for this article affirmed this. But all also agreed that the NCLB system, which uses the state standards as its sole measure, is fraught with flaws. “It makes everybody walk in lock-step,” continued Aclufi, “which is completely adverse to what we know about how people learn.”
Dottie Abbott, who has taught at El Verano, Flowery and Prestwood, pointed out that it “becomes punitive because the expectations are unreasonable. Everyone can’t score in the top percentiles.” Abbott’s next observation was a stunning indictment of objective assessment at very young ages: “Obviously they were created by someone who hasn’t sat in the classroom and seen the look of fear and failure on the face of a seven-year-old.”
El Verano fifth-grade teacher Dave Neubacher says that unquestionably the NCLB has governed teaching. He also laments the loss of time for “the fun stuff.” Several teachers observed that the schools that are not subject to sanctions are, however, freer. Still, Abbott sighed as she described the “cloud, a heaviness that hangs in the air from March to May” at her site, taking away some of the “fun and joy of teaching.” Aclufi eloquently elaborated this point, asserting that by embracing the single standard of academic intelligence we have “left out the things that will make children actually do better – art, music, thematic studies.” She concluded that what has been lost is the tradition of teaching those things which “actually make people intelligent.”
Neubacher noted that another flaw is that the test itself is not fair to all ethnicities. The language of the test “seems all white,” he said. Anyone who follows the local education scene will know that the El Verano teacher’s classes, which always include a high percentage of English learners, have repeatedly won national awards for their environmental projects. Yet, Neubacher talked about the pain of seeing students, especially English learners, do very well in their class work but just miss a score of 350 or “proficient.”
Neubacher says it feels like an uphill battle every day. He laments that there is so much emphasis on the goal, and not on progress made. His spirits rose, however, as he began to talk about the staff at his school. “It is great to work in this environment. Our teachers have really risen to the challenge.” He added that the new motto at El Verano is, “Whatever it takes.”