Since the establishment of the No Child Left Behind program (NCLB) there has been a considerable increase in the evaluation of schools based on standardized test scores. Adequate yearly progress (AYP) are used in order to see how far schools are from their initial goal of having all schools reach 100 percent passing rates on state tests by the end of the 2014 school year which will conclusively eliminate academic achievement gaps (pg 53). One of the main issues with this goal is that if schools or districts do not meet the required quota after two consecutive years schools will have a loss of federal funds, will be put on a “needs improvement” list and may possibly close. Apart from the fact that many schools are already underfunded, students are asked to meet the different score targets while being in overpopulated schools, having a lack of materials and proper training and professional development of teachers.
The widespread inequality has been allowed and accepted by many politicians because it gives them the opportunity to label schools as failures, giving them and their concept of privatization an upper hand. Those that support NCLB believe that these standardized tests and classes of punishment are going to, once and for all, resolve the score gaps and help bring accountability to schools. Forcing a significant amount of accountability onto teachers should be permitted only if schools didn’t already have many of the critical problems they have. If teachers are supposed to be responsive to the needs of students and provide high-quality instruction while teaching to a test, when are they supposed to take into consideration the variables that also contribute to a successful student performance. Students have different ways of learning which standardized tests do not bear in mind.
While these methods may work well in the business world, they don’t work well in the educational system. Children are not products that can be manipulated and tweaked to perform to the standards others want. There are no shortcuts to improving education so why do people try to simplify education and measure it based on tests that may not appropriately calculate a students academic standing? Teacher accountability is definitely important but shouldn’t it be an accountability that builds capacity on both the student and teacher and not fear?
This article looks at accountability on teachers after NCLB
http://www.nctm.org/resources/content.aspx?id=7814