An op-ed in the holiday Baltimore Sun describes a former city teacher who died recently as being “totally free of the bigotry of low expectations. Her expectations were high, and her students turned out all the better because of her high expectations.”
The piece, written by Paul Marx, condemns the way the No Child Left Behind law, passed by an overwhelming majority of elected officials from both political parties under President George W Bush, has created a situation where we have lowered the bar and sent a signal to our students that we don’t expect them to achieve at a higher level. Therefore, they don’t.
In Maryland, we have high school exit exams, required for graduation, known as the High School Assessments, or HSAs, in biology, algebra, English, and government. Students used to get an unlimited number of tries to pass the tests, but that rule is changing statewide. Now they can only try twice, and if they still haven’t passed it, they will now be required to complete a bridge project or two (or more) to make up the points to achieve a passing score.
I used to help out with the development of the bridge projects in biology, but now that part of the Maryland State Department of Education is far away from me. The key to the projects, though, is still the same. It didn’t seem right to withhold a high school diploma just because a kid couldn’t pass a biology test, for instance. What if he just didn’t test well or had a headache on test day?
So, the bridge projects were enacted, but the bridge projects are scored locally, not at the state level. Local school officials have a tremendous motivation under NCLB to raise the proportion of students who graduate. Unless they care about the success of the student long-term, they have absolutely no motivation whatsoever to hold the student to a high standard when it comes to the bridge projects.
I’m sure each kid’s individual teachers care about his or her success very much, so I think it is wrong to imply that teachers aren’t interested in holding kids to higher expectations, as Mr Marx suggests. Rather, the school and the state seem to care less and less about holding kids to high expectations under NCLB. All they seem to care about is the number.
We created this situation all on our own. Once NCLB went into effect, the writing was on the wall: Curricula would be narrowed in every low-performing, under-resourced school in the country. Those that couldn’t overcome the additional obstacles we put in their way—kids are completely unmotivated when it comes to school in biology, algebra, government, and English, and they want at least a few interesting or fun classes, which means the focus on HSA subjects could precede an increase in absenteeism—were closed and replaced with charters.
It all goes back to low expectations being set by the state, which are set in order to comply as fully as possible with federal law.
I agree with Mr Marx in saying that if kids are held to higher expectations, they will be more likely to achieve them. The bridge plan is a reduction of those expectations. It’s a remnant or a natural conclusion of a law that should have been changed long ago. We can’t keep setting kids up for failure later in life simply to get them to graduate from high school.
Besides, a diploma like that doesn’t mean anything if kids haven’t learned anything because of these low expectations. Some kids don’t test well, it’s true. But if they want to compete with the same kids who are passing the tests, they’re going to need to develop skills that don’t resemble the bridge projects in the slightest or be left on the side of the road as all their peers follow that road to a successful career and, likely, more happiness in life.