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Teachers, and a Law That Distrusts
Them
By Michael Winerip
July 12, 2006
THIS is my last education column after four years. What I will miss most is the
free ticket it gave me into classrooms all over the country, where I watched and
learned from teachers.
I got to be there at 7:15 a.m. on the first day of this school year with Irene
Ray, a terrific high school English teacher in Huntington, W. Va. Ms. Ray had
intended to leave small-town Appalachia long ago for the big city, but there she
was again, for her 23rd first day, sipping a Diet Coke, nibbling an Atkins
breakfast bar, more excited and jittery than her students, wanting to know how
their summer reading went, whether they’d enjoyed “The Scarlet Letter” or, like
Ms. Ray, preferred “The Poisonwood Bible.”
Ms. Ray spent a week readying her room for the first day, including adding to
the favorite quotations that line her walls. Bored students distracted by iPods
and the Internet? “She’s got new quotes,” whispered a girl, who was reading Ms.
Ray’s walls.
I also got to be there at 3:15 p.m. on the final day of school this year, in
Dahlonega, Ga., at Lumpkin County Middle School, when Pat New, a science
teacher, taught her last lesson, after 29 years. Ms. New, 62, had fought to the
end for her right to teach evolution, winning out against a group of parents and
students and an administration that preferred not to make waves.
The columns about teachers generated the most mail, but lots of others were fun
to write. Chronicling the mess-ups with New York State’s standardized exams — in
math, English, English as a second language, physics, reading — was always great
sport.
But the people who took me to the heart of education? Laurin MacLeish,
kindergarten teacher in Orlando, Fla.; Roger Cline, diesel engine teacher in
Canton, Ohio; Jeff Kaufman, G.E.D. teacher at the Rikers jail in New York City;
Liza Levine, English teacher in South Central Los Angeles.
Principals? A little bit. Superintendents? Chancellors? State education
commissioners? You can probably still name your kindergarten teacher (that would
be Miss Goddard, Beechwood Knoll School, 1957). But how about the secretary of
education during any of your 13 years in school?
The education press spends so much time writing about people far removed from
the classroom that it’s easy to lose sight of those individuals’ real purpose —
to help teachers do their jobs well, the best hope for student success.
As readers know, I’m not a fan of No Child Left Behind, the 2002 federal law
aimed at raising education quality. Instead of helping teachers, for me it’s a
law created by politicians who distrust teachers. Because teachers’ judgment and
standards are supposedly not reliable, the law substitutes a battery of state
tests that are supposed to tell the real truth about children’s academic
progress.
The question is: How successful can an education law be that makes teachers the
enemy?
Even No Child’s strongest supporters acknowledge that one of the law’s most
important provisions — to guarantee a highly qualified teacher in every
classroom — has been the most poorly carried out to date.
So, to improve classroom teaching and make teachers more enthusiastic about the
law, I have three departing suggestions for when the legislation is expected to
come up for reauthorization next year.
First, why not add a provision rewarding states and districts that mandate small
class size? It’s an idea that enjoys great support among parents and teachers
and is easily carried out on a national scale.
Why small class size? Deborah Meier, the teacher, principal, author and
MacArthur Award winner who has created successful public schools in New York and
Boston, says the best chance for educating poor children well is surrounding
them with as many talented adults as possible. The same premise drives one of
the most hopeful efforts in urban education today, the Gates Foundation’s small
schools movement.
Joe Gipson, a black public school parent in California, which has had a
mandatory cap of 20 in grades K to three for a decade, told me small class size
is the best thing that’s happened to his children’s education, giving them what
rich private school pupils have. While small class size is no guarantee that
teachers will be good, he said, with just 20, you can tell faster if teachers
are performing well, and get rid of them if they’re not.
Gov. Jeb Bush is very popular in Florida, and in 2002, he opposed a
constitutional amendment to cap class sizes, including a maximum of 18 for
grades K to three. He said it would be too costly. And yet voters in Florida,
hardly a tax-and-spend state, voted for it. Every year since, the Republican
governor has tried overturning the class size amendment, and every year he has
lost, most recently last spring, when the Republican-controlled State Senate
defeated his efforts.
“It’s a moral issue,” said Senator J. Alex Villalobos, a Republican whose wife
is a public school teacher. “Class size is the great equalizer. Anybody who has
children understands this. We have a moral responsibility to take care of our
children.”
In 2003, 115,000 New York City residents signed petitions aimed at setting class
size limits, and in 2005, 100,000 did. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has said the
city cannot afford to do more now, and has successfully stalled advocates’
efforts in court, but at a price to children. A recent state audit shows that 26
percent of New York City children in grades K to three are in classes of 25 or
more.
The intent of the No Child law could not be more important — to narrow the
achievement gap between white and minority children. But what angers public
educators is that under the law, schools get all the blame if students fail,
when they see many other variables at play, including the crippling effects of
poverty on families. Studies show that the economic status of a child’s family
has a major impact on a child’s performance on standardized tests. On the SAT,
for example, for every $10,000 increase in family income, a child’s SAT scores
rise about 10 points.
Which leads to my second proposal. We need a No Family Left Behind Law. This
would measure economic growth of families and punish politicians in charge of
states with poor economic growth for minority families.
FOR example, in Ohio, black families earn only 62 percent of white household
income, one of the biggest disparities nationally. So every year, under No
Family Left Behind, Ohio would be expected to close that income gap. If it
failed to make adequate yearly progress for black families’ wealth, the governor
and legislators would be judged failing, and after five years, could be removed
from office. This way public schools wouldn’t be the only institutions singled
out for failing poor children.
And if states succeeded in closing the economic gap, test scores would be
expected to rise, giving politicians and teachers a chance to celebrate
together.
A final concern with the federal law is that it is so driven by state testing
that there’s too much time devoted to test prep, too much time spent drilling
facts for survey courses, and not enough emphasis on finding something children
will fall in love with for a lifetime — the Civil War, repairing engines,
science research, playing the trumpet.
Fortunately, the remedy can be found on Ms. Ray’s walls in Huntington, W. Va., a
quotation from William Butler Yeats: “Education is not the filling of a pail,
but the lighting of a fire.” I recommend that as the official motto for a new,
revitalized No Child Left Behind law.
E-mail: edmike@nytimes.com
Note: Originally published in the New
York Times
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