No Child Left Behind means no Civics courses?

[jackofallgeeks]

OK, so... I've heard a lot that "No Child Left Behind" is dumb and has
probably hurt schools a whole lot more than helped them. I've always
figured that it pretty much revolved around the SOLs and school "teaching to
the test" because they'd lose government funds otherwise. But I just read a
comment on teh webs here that Civics courses have been removed from school
curriculums because of "No Child Left Behind." That seems not just dumb but
actively counter-productive.

Does anyone other there know what NCLB is, what it does and how in
the world we ended up with it? (That last is probably answered by this
post, reprisentative of our general lack of information on a national policy
that's several years old now.)

Comments

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

You've actually got it, more or less, and in a nutshell. NCLB imposes standards on schools, that mostly have to do with performance on standardized tests and teacher certifications. At the moment, AFAIK, the tests only cover reading and math skills, though I've heard they plan to add science as well.

The penalties for schools that don't make adequate yearly progress on the tests is withdrawal of some federal funds, and federal support for parents to take their kids out of failing schools (and bring the money attached to the students with them).

I'm not sure what the situation is with Civics courses, but the overall complaint is because of the importance placed on the tests, and the fact that the tests cover only reading and math, there's pressure to put everything else by the wayside - if your school underperforms in math, the fact that it has a great civics course isn't going to preserve its funding.

There's a lot of other stuff in there, too, not all of which I know off the top of my head - more support for charter schools, etc.

I think the way we ended up with NCLB is that the problem it identifies is real - holding schools accountable and encouraging improved school performance. But quantifying school performance is legitimately difficult, and NCLB has taken a pretty unsophisticated approach to measuring it. So you end up measuring *something*, but not what you wanted to - and schools end up having perverse incentives to be really good at what you're measuring.