Talk:No Child Left Behind Act

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[edit] Pronunciation

Is there really a significant number of people who pronounce "NCLB" as "Nickelby"? Because that's what the pronuncisation note in the first line of this article says. 69.7.203.153 (talk) 20:52, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

As a member of the education industry, I can tell you from personal experience that I have heard it pronounced that way. Of course this is only anecdotal evidence, but, you asked. :) Macduffman (talk) 19:33, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

-- Boracay Bill (talk) 23:53, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 100% compliance

I was under the impression that "100% compliance" had been officially redefined so that it wasn't 100%. Specifically, this regulation appears to exempt the bottom 1% of students (which pretty much means anyone with significant intellectual disabilities, but none of the kids with mild dyslexia). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:57, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ESL programms

Somebody knows if a child from private school can attend ESL program in the public, since we pay same taxes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.38.88.123 (talk) 18:21, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Officially, it depends on the state, because every state has its own rules. Your local school district should be able to tell you the rules for your state. (In Iowa, the answer is yes; I suspect that this is true for most states.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Gaming the system

The citation to the following quote -- "schools have been shown to exclude minorities or other groups (to enhance apparent school performance; as many as 2 million students)" -- has expired and needs to be updated or should be deleted. I searched Internet Archive and google and only found wiki-related citations to it, not the full text. Jd147703 (talk) 14:32, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

There might be information under pushout that would support this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:20, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
I checked up on that - I think the second point in the sentence about reclassification can remain as is, as cited in the NYT referenced from pushout, but I have found no mention of minority exclusion or specific figures like the 2 million quoted now. Can someone use lexis-nexus maybe to audit and update the original citation with author and date? Else, the first point will be deleted.Jd147703 (talk) 21:20, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Archive

I have created an archive of the old discussions. I have copied back to this page all recent conversations. In case anyone needs to know in the future, I used the Move Page method. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:22, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dubious

The recently added information about kids with ADHD and testing is so misleading as to be wrong. Kids with these issues are always entitled to an appropriate testing arrangement. It's routinely specified in IEPs. The results may not be as accurate (in either situation: the ADD kid in the standard setting or in an accomodated setting) for these kids, but the writers of the standardized tests don't (and, in practice, can't) ban variations on the setting any more than they can ban a reader for a blind child. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

References added. From the NEA: "In many cases states have not received final approval due to their lack of valid and reliable accommodations and alternate assessments for students with disabilities. [...] the U.S. Department of Education limits use of proficient scores on assessments based on modified standards to two percent of the school population and the proficient scores on assessments based on alternate standards to one percent of the school population. [...] Alternative formats for grade level assessments and assessments based on modified standards are available in very few states. [...] As a result, students with disabilities are tested in formats that do not allow them to demonstrate their capabilities."
You're right: IDEA says students who need them get IEPs. NCLB says that only 2% of your scores can be from students who took modified assessments. Unless the percentage of students in the school that need modification to the standardized assessments is below 2%, either IDEA or NCLB must take a backseat. NCLB usually wins.
On a personal note, I know for a fact that The New York State 11th-grade Regents English/Language Arts exam (among others) ignores IEPs.
You've (understandably) confused the two kinds of "standard" being used here. Modified curriculum is not the same as a modified testing environment. The 2% rule says that you can change the content that these students need to know: if the typical student is tested on a wide variety of long-division questions, then the 2% rule says you can test this struggling student on the simplest division questions. The 2% rule is about what the student needs to know and be able to do -- it's "standard" as in "measuring stick."
Testing accomodations, on the other hand, mean taking the same test as everyone else, but doing it in a quieter room so you're not distracted (or distracting other kids), or getting an extra ten minutes because your CP makes it harder for you to write at the same speed as the average student, or having your test read aloud to you because you can't see. This is about "standard" as in "normal."
Here are the five permitted types of assessment your source lists. I've added the limits for your convenience:
  1. Regular grade level test based on state content standards [no limit];
  2. Grade level test with accommodations [no limit];
  3. Alternate assessment based on grade level content standards [no limit];
  4. Alternate assessment based on modified standards [limited to 2%]; and
  5. Alternate assessment based on alternate standards [limited to 1%].
You've written that students with ADHD can't take a normal test in a quiet room, which is an example of #2: a grade-level test with accommodations -- a category for which is there no limit at all. Your assertion is wrong, it is not supported by your source, and it needs to be removed.
Finally, the Regents' exams do not ignore all IEPs: Even with the Regents, "testing accommodations are provided for students with disabilities"[1] This is not a new policy: "all reasonable accommodations"[2] goes back more than ten years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
This is a wonderfully constructive discussion. Thank you for your contributions. I have no doubt that we can work out something that satisfies both of us.
First, let's make sure we agree on some basic terminology. There are indeed two different ideas of "standard": The curriculum (which would include the content and level of the assessment) and the assessment protocols. Changing the curriculum is a "modification," while changing the assessment protocols (in such a way that does not alter the level or content of the assessment) is an "accommodation." I hope we can agree on that distinction.
Second, IEPs can specify both accommodations and modifications. Therefore, whether we are talking about accommodations or modifications is moot because the claim in question is that the standardized testing policies laid out in NCLB conflict with IDEA. Do you agree?
Third, I never said that an ADHD student "can't" take a standardized test in an alternative environment. I said, "Standardized assessment protocols often do not allow this" (emph. added). However, I can see how what I wrote could be taken as a more absolute than what I intended, so I will soften the language.
This assertion - that many standardized tests do not allow for many accommodations - is directly from the National Education Association document to which I linked:
"Major test makers across the country have been particularly slow to write into test administration protocols the various types of accommodations that can and should be used with many students with disabilities."
I concede that the NEA document does not cite ADHD as an example. I simply thought it a logical extension of the NEA's observations. It's also borrowed from personal experience (despite what the Regents administration manual claims). So, I will replace the ADHD example with one directly from the NEA document:
"For example, scores were invalidated for a group of blind students who scored proficient on an NCLB-mandated test because the test was read aloud to them. This accommodation is allowable and widely used in all other testing scenarios but was not part of the test protocol in this instance. As a result, the students' scores were reported as zeroes in the school's AYP calculation. This illogical consequence could have been avoided with the inclusion of appropriate protocols."
Is that more acceptable to you? I truly enjoy this discussion.

That example is an improvement, although I note that the NEA press release (and every other reference) carefully omits a date, a place, or any other identifying information, so that no one can find out whether this was a simple error that was immediately corrected, or whether "did not specifically allow for test readers" actually meant "Reading the test aloud was specifically disallowed because the whole point of the test was to find out whether the student could actually read words printed (or Brailled) on a piece of paper." Turning a reading test into a listening test, but still trying to pretend that the students were reading for the purpose of statewide reports, is at least illogical and possibly unethical. (If your child could not read, would you want the school to get credit for having supposedly taught him how to read?)

Despite the NEA's assertions, it's not really the job of the test writers to create specific protocols for accommodating disabilities. In general, the rule is that even "If a specific accommodation is not on the list of accommodations in the Examiner’s Manual, the accommodation can still be used."[3] States issue lists of accommodations that are always accepted as valid, accommodations which may be valid with limits (like reading aloud: fine for math, but not usually for reading comprehension), and a method of getting approval for any accommodation that isn't on the list.

Also in Missouri's Division of Special Education manual (since its relevant to the new example) is the unusual permission to convert of the reading test into a listening test. Their list of pre-approved accomodations (table 2) includes reading the test aloud; it is valid for all students except on the reading test, and for the small subset of "children identified as Blind/Visually Impaired who use oral reading as their primary instructional method" it is considered valid even for reading, even though common sense will indicate that no reading is being done that way. Most states, however, including Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, South Dakota and Arkansas (just to name a few), allow reading aloud on everything except the reading comprehension sections, since that is a modification (making the test easier, or at least significantly different) rather than an accommodation (leveling the playing field). Also -- there just aren't that many blind students (especially if you exclude deaf-blind students, who obviously wouldn't benefit from reading out loud either). Even if none of them were learning Braille, that's still only one student in every seven hundred, which is well within the exemption rate. Dealing with these kinds of issues is why that exemption rate exists, after all.

Overall, I'm inclined to make this into a separate section, since this isn't so much a "problem with standardized testing" as a disability-specific concern. After all, a blind student isn't going to be able to read printed text even if it's a non-standardized non-test assessment. There are also NCLB-related issues that have nothing to do with testing: disabled students are learning more academic skills than they did in the past, which takes time away from life skills and job training. What do you think about that idea?

I also think that the first sentence about conflicting with IDEA is entirely inaccurate and should be removed. The student can be accommodated under IDEA, even if that invalidates the test. Validity here only matters to the extent that the school wants to get credit for the student's achievements; students can refuse to participate in the test if they are dissatisfied with the accommodations (just like they can refuse to use accommodations that they don't want). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:36, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I like where this is heading. The NEA comments are quite applicable, and in ethnographic research, such as the NEA's case studies, revealing specific date and place information would violate the data-gathering protocols on anonymity. However, I am inclined to give NEA the benefit of the doubt. If not, I'm wondering what authoritative source you could not dispute using your method.
I respectfully disagree with the assertion that it's not the test-developers responsibility to write accommodations into their test protocols. Besides NEA, AERA, APA, and NCME note that test-makers share the responsibility of how their tests are used (see Chapter 2 of the Standards for Psychological and Educational Testing, 1999). Given that the test-makers are the ones most versed in the assessment's target construct, they are best-situated to stipulate which/how accommodations affect the validity of the test's use and interpretations of the test's scores.
I think you are correct that this deserves its own section. I felt that the testing section was where the special education/inclusive issues fit best because that is where NEA felt the need to comment, but you are correct that there are a host of NCLB-special education problems that could be addressed in a new section. Would you like to start the new section or shall I?
Again, thank you for this constructive conversation.
Your first question is what couldn't be attacked like the NEA's statement. My answer is: anything that doesn't have the same primary flaw, which is the assertion of an injustice without enough information to let the reader decide whether the decision was actually unjust. Additionally, anything that provided even partial details. Right now, we have a paragraph that meets all the standard requirements for being declared an urban legend: a morally outrageous but plausible situation, a sympathetic group of people portrayed as the innocent victims [although you and I note that the students didn't get penalized at all for this: it was the school that got its score dinged], and absolutely no way to check the facts, despite this being exactly the sort of thing that would have been run on page one of every local and regional newspaper, complete with strongly worded quotes attributed to the outraged superintendent.
The reason that the test-writers shouldn't have to create specific protocols for accommodating disabilities is this: every child with special needs is entitled to individualized accommodation. It's really not possible for CTB (or other test-writing companies) to figure out the specific protocol for testing each student. We're talking about one out of nine students across every state. Through state agencies, they already provide significant information, but it's the local IEP team's job to create the specific arrangements. Given that information, any normally trained teacher can figure out what's being tested (the construct or "content") and make a pretty good guess at whether the accommodation for this student is "leveling the playing field" or just "making the test easier." Most states provide additional training on this specific issue to the special ed teachers. Blaming the test company is a good political move, but the test company has never seen this child.
If you don't mind, I'd be happy to have you create the new section. You might look through the rest of the article and see if there's anything else that needs to be moved to the new section as well. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:31, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] External links

There were twenty (20) external links here this morning. Several of them appear to be duplicates (how many links do we need to the text of the law itself?) or links to groups that are kind of about education reform, but not about NCLB in particular. How about we clean them out? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:41, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Support, considering WP:ELNO and WP:LINKSPAM. Relevant links can appear in the References section as cited supporting sources. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 00:21, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
I've broken them down into a couple of sections. Honestly, I think all but the second link (a .gov page with links to all the text in various formats) could be profitably chucked overboard. Do you have a feel for what might be a reasonable number of links to have left at the end? Or should we first go through each link and determine whether (for example) any of the news articles/press releases/etc contain anything that isn't already in the article (to check for compliance with WP:ELNO #1)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:57, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
The external link labelled "Anti-NCLB" goes to a site which opposes NCLB because it allows military recruiters access to student records. I recognize the validity of the site's point of view, but it is an inferior resource to learn about NCLB because much of the content is not widely accessible (video content with a proprietary format), and is not organized in a fashion to facilitate improved knowledge of the Act. I recommend removing the link. 75.14.216.49 (talk) 01:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Seemingly stale info

"Up for possible reauthorization in 2007, ..." -- Boracay Bill (talk) 23:59, 24 May 2008 (UTC)