NCLB: Are Test Scores A Good Measure Of Education's Worth?

Just spent some time browsing the Dept. of Education's website and was pretty impressed by the amount of useful content. No matter which of the site's categories you fall into -- parent, student, teacher or administrator, you are sure to find something of value. I know I plan to revisit the site to find information on the college admissions process next year when my daughter is a high school sophmore. Additionally, I found a lot of information on the "first year of teaching",including readings that may be helfpful for my inquiry project. Also of interest to us future teachers were articles and links about where to look for teaching opportunities in your local area. In short, I am confident that we will all be visiting this site again during our time at Montclair and probably afterwards as well.

Regarding NCLB, I learned about this in some depth in my Educational Psychology class last year, but it was good to refresh my memory. I read through President Bush's speech (Sept 2007) about "reauthorizing" this act. I also looked at a brochure written in plain language, explaining NCLB to parents. One question that kept coming up is why the word "reauthorize?" In other words why do we have to reinstate something that is already instated? Perhaps they mean reAUTHORize as in "rewrite". I looked at some of the points from the President's speech and they do not seem to be new ones though, just rehasing of what has already been included.

Anyway, I realize that while data is easily manipulated, it appears that by the government's statistics, the program is really working. (Can something that Bush initiated really be working?!) To hear educators complain about it, NCLB may not be the jewel it appears to be, but I think it is a policy with good, but perhaps not realistic intentions.

Two points here that I would like to raise -- the first one is that we need to remember that the statistics only measure what the policy administrators want to measure in this case, grade level competency in language arts and math. However they don't ask, if kids or teachers feel they are missing out in other areas such as art and music. They also can't measure how much all the testing is stressing out teachers and kids or what they are learning about becoming global citizens. The point here is, there is more to a quality education than good scores in math and English, yet I think that some standards of "accountability" are a step in the right direction.

The second point is that I feel that society-at-large sometimes holds our educational system responsbile for curing all the ills in our society. (Sometimes I think what we really need is a policy to hold parents "accountable" for making sure that their children are going to school, doing their homework, etc.This doesn't just apply to the low income population, I have seen many parents of means who are too self-involved to pay attention to what is going on with their kids).
While raising standards can result in an improved quality of education, it doesn't necessarily follow that more kids from low income schools will be motivated to stay in school or to go on to college. They may have better test scores, but they are still subject to all the forces outside of school - gangs, pregnancy, having to help support the family, drugs,etc. I would like to see some type of legislation put into place that would motivate/reward those students who graduate and give them incentive to go further with their schooling.