Only our highest achieving children being left behind.
August 28, 2009
In a recent post by Tom Loveless and Michael Petrilli on the NY Times editorial page they go into a detailed analysis of a recently touted study that showed that our highest achieving children were also benefitting from NCLB (the No Child Left Behind Act). In a rather thorough debunking they showed that, in fact, the rate of growth in achievement of these highest performing children had decreased over time (not the growth - the rate of growth) and that it fell far behind the improvement curve of the bottom section of the bell curve. While our lowest performing children improved by as much as 25% under the new system - higher performing children improved by no more than 5%, a slower rate of growth than in times previous to the enactment of NCLB.
Furthermore the studies had some significant statistical WTFs. Improvements in states such as North Dakota were weighted the same as states such as California - despite the fact that California has 60x the students of North Dakota.
As a parent of a high-performing child I can tell you from personal experience that the NCLB program and “experiential learning” experiments like “fuzzy math” are failing our high performing children. The saving grace is that private enterprise and colleges are stepping in to assist where schools are leaving off with programs like FIRST Robotics and John Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth. The fact of the matter is though that these programs - which generally require either substantial financial resources or corporate sponsorship - are having trouble helping bright children in the most economically challenged sections of our country. Think what could happen if the government got behind not just lifing up the lower 1/3 of our performers, but in enhancing the education of the top 1/2 of our performers. How much more productive could we be if our best and brightest were even better and brighter and were encouraged to succeed rather than beaten down into the general average population? Programs like FIRST and CTY show that it can be done - we just need to produce the will to do it.
If you don’t believe this is true look at your local school’s budget. How much of that budget is dedicated to assisting children with disabilities of one kind or another vs enhancing the education of our top performers. Now I’m not suggesting we reduce help for children with IEPs - they need that help to make them productive members of society. Is it so hard to envision though a scenario where we not only help our disabled children but we truly challenge our smart and creative ones? These are our next CEO’s, entrepreneurs, engineers, software developers, and visionaries. Our current educational system fails these kids in a fundamental way - by forcing them into an environment where they must “conform to the norm” instead of “exceed to succeed”. My son’s public school for instance (a well funded suburban school) fails to offer advanced software development classes, entrepreneurial programs or other challenges for high end performance. Getting teachers involved and reimbursed for helping with these programs is always last on the agenda, because the state and federal government mandate that they must spend so much on servicing the bottom 50% of performers.
So how do we change this? We need to take action at the grass roots level - every entrepreneur in America - to encourage our leadership to look at how we can best enhance programs like FIRST and CTY to push them into every school, even the disadvantaged ones. My son’s FIRST (Penfield Robotics team 1511) team adopted an inner-city team (team 2999) and helped them through their rookie year with money, mentors and facilities - if our children can step up to help why can’t we? Take some of your entrepreneurial dollars and dedicate them to your future by sponsoring a FIRST team, creating a CTY scholarship, or just volunteer to help and assist a program like Science Olympiad or Mathletes. It’s a great way to give back to the community and help create the next generation of employees, entrepreneurial partners, and industry visionaries.
