It is very encouraging to see the emergence of a dialogue on this most important topic. I am sure there will be divergent points of view, but I am confident that we can have a conversation respectful of differences of opinion, and ultimately, in some cases, simply agree to disagree. Keep reading →

The vast majority of educators and increasing percentages of the public have serious misgivings about the federal law and the focus of their discomfort is usually around testing and the judgments the law imposes based on a single test. There is another broader and perhaps even more important issue that worries me even more. Two comments from two very different educators captured it for me and if I were issuing “profiles in courage” they would each be contenders. Keep reading →

Check out this satirical video written and performed by Tom Chapin You can read about Tom at his website www.notonthetest.com Thanks to Public Education Network’s NewsBlast for bringing this site to my attention.

After six years of of an ever widening circle of chaos caused primarily by the flawed premise in No Child Left Behind that “one size fits all”, last week Secretary Spellings announced that the department was ready to acknowledge that a more “nuanced” approach to accountability might be beneficial particularly to those schools most in need. I don’t mean to sound cynical - well actually I do - they deserve our cynicism. Here is an example of their heightened sense of the obvious: “After six years of NCLB implementation, we have data illustrating that the extent of the academic achievement problems leading to a school’s identification differ widely within states.” (see Fact Sheet issued last week) They go on to acknowledge that some states and districts have “a large percentage of their schools identified, impacting capacity to provide meaningful, intensive reforms.” Keep reading →

Reading through the comments on this earlier post it is clear that many teachers and parents are troubled by distortions that are caused by a disproportionate focus on standardized testing. Several comments point out rightfully that I failed to mention the CAPT testing as well. I should have. Issues related to the amount of time taken away by the testing program were raised in a number of comments. In the high school, Ellen pointed out, even the students who are not tested in her school are losing two hours a day for two weeks because the length of classes are truncated. And then the issue of students with special needs and those students in alternative programs - students who simply are not able to perform well on tests - was raised in a number of thoughtful comments. Several teachers indicated that morale has never been lower and that it is increasingly difficult to derive joy from their work. This is something that I have heard increasingly from teachers and does not bode well for the future. The good news is that we have the beginnings of a much-needed dialogue. Keep the comments coming.

A central theme of education reform in the NCLB era has been incentives, and particularly with No Child Left Behind the incentives have been negative - improve or else suffer the consequences. Most educators know, if not through instinct then through experience, that negative incentives do not improve learning in anything but the shortest of terms. Given this it should not be surprising that the the vast majority of educators see this as a major shortcoming in the federal law. Keep reading →

This is CMT (Connecticut Mastery Test) time in Connecticut. Every K-8 teacher, every parent of a K-8 student knows that this is a very intense period. The testing, traditionally conducted in the fall, has been shifted to the spring to meet the requirements of NCLB. I wonder what effect this has had on the run-up to the test—the period of intense test preparation that precedes the test. Keep reading →

My name is Bob Murphy. I recently retired from full time employment near the close of my fourth decade in public education as a teacher and an advocate. For the last eleven years, I have been employed by the Connecticut Education Association most recently as Director of Policy and Professional Practice. CEA has asked me to assist in starting up this blog, which I am happy to do. The time is right for this conversation. Keep reading →

Connecticut has been struggling to understand the stagnation and actual decline in its 4th grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The problems began in 2002. I believe that it is not simply coincidence that the implementation of No Child Left Behind also began in 2002. Now more than five years later education critics from both ends of the political spectrum are questioning the paradoxical consequences of the law - principally that even more children are left behind. Keep reading →