More from Perlstein

Coincidentally, the day after I posted about Linda Perlstein's new book, Tested, she has an op-ed in the Post. In many ways, it's Tested writ small: interesting, well-written, and less than meets the eye.

Perlstein is concerned about the impact of NCLB on students with disabilities. She recounts seeing "Whitney," a fourth grade girl with mild mental retardation, fruitlessly trying to learn fourth grade material, and blames this on NCLB's mandate of grade-level testing for all students. One obvious solution is a growth model, which Perlstein acknowledges...but not really:

While many elements of the landmark education law are up in the air, one provision almost certain to be included is the "growth model": assessing the "adequate yearly progress" of schools not by calculating how many fourth-graders passed a test compared with the previous year but by measuring the progress made by each child. This is a welcome change and if executed properly may yield far more useful information.

But a large problem remains: Under the versions of the law under discussion, Whitney will still be given the fifth-grade test in fifth grade, the sixth-grade test in sixth grade and so on. She will probably fail these tests -- no surprise to her teachers -- and whatever progress she makes, unless it is so miraculous as to wipe away her deficiencies altogether, will go uncredited.

Not true. A growth model "executed properly" would absolutely give Whitney's school credit for the progress she makes, even if she fails the test. That's the definition of a growth model.

Perlstein talks further about the more generalized problem of schools not giving individualized instruction to students who lag behind, before saying:

You can blame No Child Left Behind, the climate it's induced or the questionable choices people make in its name. Whichever way, as long as students are judged only on grade-level tests, no matter their needs, and as long as the education they get the rest of the year hews to that goal, they will lose out.

Wait, wait. "Whichever way"? That's a pretty important distinction, isn't it? If you're going to blame NCLB--as this op-ed, titled "A 'No Child' Law for All Children, clearly does--than that's one thing. That means the law should change. If, by contrast, you're going to blame "questionable choices" by educators, that's a very different thing.

And it seems clear that the latter problem is really what Perlstein observed. Teaching students material that's way above their heads is bad educational practice. And you can't say the incentives built into NCLB leave educators with no other option, because--as Perlstein makes clear--it's also futile. Even under the current, no-growth-model law, schools teaching students like Whitney have two choices: inappropriately teach at grade level, in which case Whitney fails the test this year and every year after that, or teach at the right level, in which case Whitney fails the test this year but catches up and passes tests in the future.

So the op-ed really should have been titled, "Local teachers mean well, nonetheless fail to teach children with disabilities appropriately." But that message doesn't get you onto the Post op-ed page--or sell books.

UPDATE: Aftie Michele says:

Wait--so Carey thinks it is educationally inappropriate to teach students above grade level but it's just dandy to test them every year knowing they will fail, because some day they will catch up to grade level and pass such tests?

I think schools should assess students in a way that will give them accurate information about what students know and can do. I also think schools should know how far students are from acquiring the knowledge and skills they'll need to stay on track to graduate from high school and be ready for work, further education, and leading a happy, productive life. The only way to know the second thing is to test against grade-level standards. But there's nothing preventing schools from using other formative assessments for students with disabilities like Whitney. And, more to the point, the fact that Whitney has to take a grade-level test on one day at the end of the year doesn't somehow obligate the school to teach her at that grade level for the other 179 days, if in fact that's a bad idea.