OMG! Why Can’t He Sing After the Answers?

After the screeching singing is over, the Merry Answerman dives into the virtual mailbag to talk about NCLB impacts, insanity, involvement and even a key idea for improvement. For more Joel and a lot more on the National Education Association’s work on education policy, click into http://www.nea.org/esea/index.html.

Listen to the podcast, and send your questions to Joel@nea.org.

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Hi. This is Joel Packer. Welcome to another podcast.

This episode is a little different. Instead of just hearing me, we’ll be listening to some of you. I’ll summarize and quote from some of the emails and comments that you’ve sent me and answer your questions.

Everyone loves getting mail. Well, maybe not junk mail or spam – but letters and now emails from real live people. When I was growing up in NYC, I remember a kids’ show called the Merry Mailman. It had a cute theme song (uh oh – I’m going to sing again!):

"I am The Merry Mailman
Ring Ding Your Bell Will Ring.
That's My Very Special Ring
And This Is What I'll Bring”

Well, let’s see what your email has brought.

Jo-Ann from Pembroke, New Hampshire asks, “What effects has NCLB had on the Native American / Amerindian community? Every piece of information on minorities that I find focuses on the African-American or Hispanic communities, but nothing on our country's first people. Any ideas?”

Yes, Jo-Ann, I do have an idea! The National Indian Education Association (http://www.niea.org/) has held several hearings on the impact of NCLB on education of American Indian children. Their study entitled No Child Left Behind in Indian Country, found reports of “unintended consequences of the statute” resulting in “major disruptions to the education systems” that “narrow(ed) the broad public purposes of schools.”

The report also looked at the impact on teachers and noted, “Witnesses either speaking on behalf of teachers and educators or on their own behalf felt that the effect of NCLB was driving teachers and educators out of the field increasing the teacher turnover rates. This was particularly harmful for schools with high percentages of Native students as they already have significantly high teacher turnover rates.

Turning to another email, Brenda, a high school math teachers says, “I also believe that the NCLB is tantamount to insanity for the most part, but I do applaud the goal of improving our students' performance… Punishing teachers and schools is ludicrous. I would like to see any politician teach a child who will not even pick up a pencil. I would like to see how they can engage them or motivate them to want to learn. I would really like to see them get kids who are virtually unsupervised at home to do homework…As a teacher I cannot do it alone. We need the student, parent, administration and even government all in the game with us. What do you think about the role of parents in the mix?”

Brenda, I think you are right on target. The research is clear, consistent, and convincing. Parent, family, and community involvement in education correlates with higher academic performance and school improvement. When schools, parents, families, and communities work together to support learning, students tend to earn higher grades, attend school more regularly, stay in school longer, and enroll in higher level programs. Researchers cite parent-family-community involvement as a key to addressing the school dropout crisis and note that strong school-family-community partnerships foster higher educational aspirations and more motivated students.

If you want more on NEA’s view on parent-family-community involvement check out our policy brief at www.nea.org/achievement. And listen to the last podcast with Wendy Puriefoy of the Public Education Network.

Unfortunately, despite this evidence, President Bush every year in his budget has proposed to eliminate funding for NCLB’s Parent Information Resource Centers or PIRCs program. That seems a little odd, since the Department of Education on its own website says that PIRCs “help implement successful and effective parental involvement policies, programs, and activities that lead to improvements in student academic achievement and that strengthen partnerships among parents, teachers, principals, administrators, and other school personnel in meeting the education needs of children.”

Turning to another email, Margaret from Pendleton, OR says,

Joel, I have to tell you that NCLB is so unfair to Sp Ed teachers - it will eventually rid the school systems of SP ED teachers. there will be none left whatsoever.

We are being required to be certified in all areas - reading, math, social studies and by that I mean separate certifications -- because a sp ed certification does not satisfy NCLB. We even have a teacher who has the national certification for Special Ed - is she highly qualified? NO!

So teachers in our district who have taught for 30 years with sp ed certificates are being told we are not highly qualified - that we cant teach English, Math or Social Studies to kids with mental retardation, learning disabilities, etc, etc....

Margaret, we have heard that same issue over and over from many special education teachers. NEA has long fought to change the law to say that a teacher who is fully certified and licensed as a special education teacher should be considered highly qualified for NCLB and IDEA. While the Congress has not agreed with that change, the last reauthorization of IDEA did provide a little
flexibility by provding that newly hired special education teachers teaching multiple subjects had to be highly qualified in only one core subject area subject area at their rime of hiring and then had two years to become highly qualified in any other subject they teach. It also allows those teaching children with significant cognitive disabilities who are being taught at the elementary school level to only have to meet the elementary level HQT requirements (which are not subject matter specific). Lastly it exempts from the HQT requirements special education teachers who are only providing consultative services to a highly qualified core content area teacher.

Turing to one more email, Erin writes,

While I concur that NCLB was a poorly structured law, it really is not clear from your blog how any of your alternative proposals will affect/better our students’ learning.

Could you better connect the dots for me how money, class size etc… will do anything to improve student learning?

I sure can, Erin. Let’s focus on class size. Twenty years have passed since the first large-scale experiment on small class size was conducted—the Tennessee Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) program. Several follow-up studies on the STAR program and other similar class reduction programs confirm substantial academic gains for K–3 students in smaller classes compared to students in larger classes. The impact of smaller classes was particularly important for Black children,. Black students in the smaller classes outperformed Black students in larger classes at a rate two to three times higher than the white students did over their white counterparts.

Class size reduction projects in other states further document the positive effects of smaller classes. In Wisconsin, the Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program evaluations confirm that smaller classes have significant positive effects on Black students across all income levels.

A great resource on the benefits of smaller class sizes is a group called Health and Education Research Operative Services (HEROS), Inc., http://www.heros-inc.org/.

Well, that’s all the mail we have time for today. So, keep the cards and letters, emails and blog comments coming! In future podcasts I’ll read and answer some more.

I’m Joel Packer, Thanks for listening.