Teacher Advocacy In NCLB 1

Teacher Advocacy in NCLB

Teacher Advocacy
For the
State Office of Education
In the
No Child Left Behind Program

Chelsea Woodruff

Grand Canyon University: EDU 576

January 4, 2011
 Teacher Advocacy In NCLB 2

Teacher Advocacy for the State Office of Education

in the No Child Left Behind Program

Attributes and skills of an excellent teacher

A teacher is a means to foster a love of learning and to guide the imagination of the

student to produce greater works than the student supposed to be possible. To achieve this, a

teacher must possess many skills and attributes that help him or her transcend the many, varied

difficulties that teachers face in today’s classroom. Hopefully every graduate of the public

school system can remember having at least one terrific teacher. With the public education

system under constant attack in the media, from elected officials, by the economy, and from

parents, it is becoming increasingly necessary to define more specifically what creates a truly

valuable, successful teacher. By accurately defining the attributes and skills that a professional

teacher must possess, leaders and future teachers are empowered to meet and exceed the

expectations of the students, parents, government, and funding sources to which they are

accountable. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) sought to increase teacher

accountability through standardized test score requirements and had a single performance goal

for all students in all schools. (USDE NCLB 2001) This system created some unintended

consequences that make it more difficult for teachers to use the skills and attributes that do

create an outstanding teacher. By discussing some of these issues and suggesting some tools that

the State Office of Education can use to correct the problems within NCLB, I hope to enable

teachers to use the skills and attributes they have developed and provide the State Office of

Education with means of evaluating teacher performance and professionalism more fully than

permitted by the current structure of NCLB.

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Great teachers in the public school system are an enigma to the rest of the professional world.

These professionals chose to limit income potential for themselves with the goal of fostering a

better world in the future. A master teacher must posses many special attributes to achieve this

goal.

Attributes

An excellent teacher has a passion for the subject being taught. The teacher feels that

better understanding of the subject by a future generation will create a better human experience,

a better workforce, a more stable and successful society, and allow students to build a more

cohesive society than the one he or she currently enjoys. This passion permeates everything the

teacher does, both inside the school system and in personal and public realms. A friend or family

member of the teacher will have no doubt that the teacher loves the subject being taught because

the teacher talks about his or her subject and pursues activities that create greater public

awareness.

Successful teachers believe in the innate goodness of each student. Regardless of family

history, prejudices, race, religion, cultural background, first language, social problems, medical

challenges, or poor behavior choices, a truly good teacher will believe that the student is a good

person at heart and will strive to reveal that better person by helping the student see that good

person within himself or herself. The teacher will speak and behave in a respectful manner

towards each student to demonstrate that the student deserves respect.

In a similar way, the most influential teachers believe that every student has untapped

potential that only needs to be released. Condescending teachers limit the learning potential of

their students because the student will feel that he or she can never achieve the level of success

that he or she desires. Conversely, if a teacher believes that every student has the potential to
 Teacher Advocacy In NCLB 4

become truly great; the student will perceive that confidence and will more readily respond to

efforts to elicit greater performance.

To this end, the excellent teacher must have a greater competency at the subject than the

students being taught. This demonstration of excellence is necessary to encourage goal setting,

intellectual stretching, and improvement of performance. The student must feel that the teacher

is a qualified authority that deserves proper respect.

Because many students do experience difficult social development situations during these

formative years, a distinguished teacher must be an exemplar of intellectual and social values

such as honesty, integrity, determination, hard work, optimism, forgiveness, and hope. The

teacher must seek to instill these values in each student and help each student apply these values

to every aspect of his or her life. Application of these values is increasingly missing in today’s

business leadership and, therefore, is increasingly more valuable in the upcoming workforce.

These are the values that create great entrepreneurs and leaders. These values also allow for the

building of true, stable self-esteem based on innate self-worth.

The best teachers have clear, age-appropriate expectations for student behavior. These

teachers develop effective, clear rules that each have reasonable, implementable consequences

for misbehavior and consult with school leadership for support. The consequences should be

severe enough to discourage misbehavior, but should also fit the infraction to which it is

attached. The rules and their consequences are visibly posted and consistently enforced,

regardless of which student or students break the rules. A teacher that effectively implements

discipline in the classroom is skilled at retaining a calm, professional demeanor and recognizes

students that bait teachers into difficult situations and prevent those situations from arising.
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Many students remember those teachers that make themselves a source of emotional

stability, but also allow students to create professionally acceptable personal relationships with

the teacher. When a student feels that he or she can trust the teacher enough to discuss the

challenges that student is facing, a door is opened to influence student performance both inside

and outside the classroom.

Another attribute of an excellent teacher is consistency. The teacher that is always

available when and where he or she is expected to be available makes it easier to be consulted

when difficulties arise. The teacher that has posted office hours, multiple forms of acceptable

contact information posted, and an open-door policy will be much more effective in raising the

performance of the students that are willing to consult the teacher for greater understanding.

Excellent teachers exhibit an extremely high level of patience and tolerance. It is

common knowledge that the best teachers are often the recipients of unfounded complaints

placed by students that choose to underperform or disrespect authority in general. Many of these

students learn this behavior at home, so interactions with the parents of these students often

result in similar abuse. The most effective means of battling these problems are to exude

patience and tolerance. These students often find that they can underperform and still receive

passing grades by abusing the teacher. Consistently offering assistance without sinking to the

level of going defensive will often have a more profound affect on these students than simply

passing them to be done with them.

Skills

In addition to these attributes that every wonderful teacher must possess as part of his or

her innate being, there are skills that can be professionally developed to demonstrate excellence
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in every lesson. Every lesson must be creative, relevant, active and interactive, flexible, be

traceable, and incorporate collaborative lesson material from the students’ other subjects.

Creativity is essential in good lesson development. Students do not respond as well to

reading a chapter of a book during class time as they do to word searches, knowledge

competitions, and activities that use the book as its source material. Teachers that use their

imagination to vary the class structure on a regular basis will have much more success in

memory retention than teachers that rely solely on source materials for their lessons.

Being relevant is an excellent skill to capture student attention and interest. Teachers that

take the time to incorporate current trends and terminology into their lessons will find that

students more readily participate, more creatively respond, more passionately debate, and more

effectively remember the lessons.

A fabulous teacher is flexible. Teachers prepare lessons and expect to be able to cover a

certain amount of material in a certain amount of time. This does not always occur. Sometimes

students will have more success if the teacher is willing to spend more time on certain materials

and less time on others. Sometimes being flexible means changing the method of teaching a

certain concept after a single class period because the method was less effective than expected.

The best teachers are active, interactive, and responsive. The teacher is constantly

moving around the classroom, actively observing the learning process of each student. The

teacher budgets time to be interactive with each student during every teaching session. The

teacher is responsive to requests, complaints, misunderstandings, and innovative ideas in ways

that will benefit the whole class, not just the student with which the teacher is currently

interacting.
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Finally, an awesome teacher must be able and willing to collaborate with colleagues for

student success. Students, especially those at high-risk, feel that lessons are more applicable and

useful if lessons from multiple classes support and include information in each other. For

example, as a Spanish teacher, I could base my choice of literary support materials on a Spanish

translation of a book being used in the student’s English class. Reading the book in English

would help the student with the process of translating the Spanish. Reading the book in Spanish

would reinforce comprehension of key points in the English book. The process works the same

for all core subjects covered by NCLB.

Each of these attributes and skills, when combined, create the best of the best teachers

and elicit the best responses from students. These skills and attributes create an environment that

fosters learning, innovation, creativity, self-worth, confidence, cooperation, and practical

development. This kind of learning environment invariably leads to better overall student

performance. This is the kind of learning environment that NCLB sought to create.

The Unintended Consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001

The No Child Left Behind Act sought to improve the quality of the education available

to minority groups by mandating certain student performance standards be required of all

students in all schools. (USDE NCLB 2001) There are some complicated issues raised by the

diversity of students to which the Public Education System caters. The NCLB seeks to account

for these issues by having each at-risk subgroup individually meet the requirements. Each

school’s net performance depends on all groups meeting all requirements for the State’s chosen

standardized tests. (USDE NCLB 2001) However, student performance on standardized tests

does not necessarily reflect Teacher Quality and the system for scoring the schools are wrought

with problems. The standardized tests are to be administered to all students at the same time,
 Teacher Advocacy In NCLB 8

with a required 95% of students from each subgroup of more than 40 members participating in

the testing. (USDE NCLB 2001) These requirements put the sole responsibility for student

participation on the teachers, not the students. No amount of teacher preparation, good teaching,

or government regulation can remove obstacles placed by the student.

The first problem that is not accounted for is the individual agency of the students to fail.

Some students do not want to submit to standardized testing. Others have an intense phobia of

structured testing situations. Even if a school can keep the percentage of these students to

consistently below five percent of the total student population, these same students are likely

also parts of other high-risk subgroups where one person can make more than a five percent

difference in the participation rate.

The next problem is direct parental interference in the progress of the student. One does

not need to be a teacher for very long to encounter parents whose disrespect for the authority of

the teacher creates problems in the classroom and in testing scenarios for the student. Some

parents deliberately excuse their students from school on certain testing days simply to protest

the process. Students whose parents interfere usually do fall within one of the high-risk

categories, and most significantly impact the reviews of the teacher and the school under NCLB.

The next serious problem with NCLB is the lack of consideration for each student’s

starting understanding to calibrate progress that resulted in the achieved test scores. The only

group that receives consideration in this regard are those that qualify as, “the most significant

cognitive disabilities.” (USDE NCLB 2001) While the entire act is meant to raise the level of

performance of the disadvantaged, it seems quite counterproductive to create an environment of

pass or fail that ensures that it is the very disadvantaged that are labeled as failures. The punitive

measures taken against such schools with high concentrations of the disadvantaged strip away
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greatly needed funding, encourage students to transfer from the school, and leaves the district

with one underfunded and under populated school and many more schools that could have

performed better, but now support overpopulation and higher concentrations of disadvantaged

students.

The inequality of classroom sizes and the lack of consideration for the effect that has on

the effectiveness of the teaching environment are serious problems with NCLB. Overcrowded

classrooms deter the necessary one-on-one interaction time to ensure student comprehension of

difficult concepts. Overcrowding prevents or minimizes the effectiveness of the implementation

of nearly all of the skills that create a truly great teacher. It is more difficult to include, interact

with, or document the progress of each student with classroom sizes of more than 30 students.

The teacher reverts to only interacting with the neediest students, neglecting the slightly needy

students and those that normally perform well.

Another failure of the NCLB is that it ignores the current student culture of “Homework

Sharing.” Students often form groups in which each student completes a small section of the

assigned homework, and then copies the remaining answers from the other students’ work. The

result is that all students have seemed to complete the assignments satisfactorily, while only

learning a small part of the material. This insidious cultural norm undermines teacher efforts to

assess each student’s progress, to identify those students that are struggling, and to intervene in

poor student performance prior to the occurrence of standardized tests.

Another insidious cultural problem is the ever-growing culture of teenage sexual

promiscuity. Sexual promiscuity leads to student distractions and misplaced priorities when the

relations are amongst peers and puts teachers at risk for invalid accusations if one-on-one time is

spent with a student after class time. The American Pregnancy Association states that each year,
 Teacher Advocacy In NCLB 10

three million teens acquire sexually transmitted diseases and 468, 988 babies are born to teenage

mothers. (APA 2011) The U.S. Department of Education accounted for approximately 15,

080,000 students enrolled in public schools in 2007. If 3,468,988 of those students are more

focused on the consequences of their sexual promiscuity than passing standardized tests, then

22.9% of students in the United States will be directly influencing the failure rate of schools in

the NCLB program. Even at lower percentage rates, attaching such importance to student

performance on a standardized test is extremely fraught with problems.

The result of these problems in NCLB classroom grading rubrics is that it actually

dissuades teachers from using the creativity and skills they developed that allow them to be an

extraordinary teacher and causes them to lean toward “Teaching for the Test.”

Tools to Correct Problem in the Implementation of NCLB

The State Board of Education has a significant amount of leniency in the methods by

which it implements the NCLB. The NCLB requires that all students at all public schools be

assessed. It requires that 95% of students in each minority group of larger than 40 students

complete the assessments at acceptable levels. (USDE NCLB 2001) Implementation of more

balanced evaluation techniques can account for each of the challenges previously discussed.

The first tool is an annual or semi-annual student personality and priority evaluation.

This is a tool used in many workplace application processes. It is a multiple-choice test that can

usually effectively categorize students based on responses. If implemented at the beginning of a

school year, students that clearly display depression, apathy, animosity toward authority, and

other socially difficult issues could be more evenly distributed amongst teachers and have their
 Teacher Advocacy In NCLB 11

progress tracked as a separate group with a lower percentage of influence in a teacher’s overall

performance evaluation.

Next, encourage consistent parental education and evaluation of the student’s progress. If

there are parents that refuse to participate or directly interfere with their student’s participation

in progress reports, document that interference clearly and account for it in performance

evaluation.

Third, have policies that clearly define terms such as “Cheating” “Sharing” “Homework

Groups” and that enable teachers to track occurrences of student-to-student plagiarism. Have

training that educates teachers with methods to deal with repeat offenders appropriately.

Account for repeat offenders separately in performance evaluations.

Fourth, have students complete multiple teacher evaluations during the course of a

semester. Ask specific questions that require written structured responses, not a numerical grade.

Questions like, “describe the most memorable lesson you have attended in this class so far?

What was the purpose of the lesson? How did the teacher present the material? Would you

choose this teacher for this subject again? Why, or Why not?” This type of questioning would

allow for the evaluation of intangible qualities or problems in the classroom that are not

demonstrated simply by test scores.

Fifth, include a required study period immediately after school for all students that

perform below-level or demonstrate high risk in the suggested beginning-of-year assessments.

Create a navigable system for students to make appointments with teachers from whom they

need additional help. Provide a public area, such as the library, where at least one additional

employee is always present to ensure that teachers are protected from invalid student accusations

and students are protected from predatory teachers.

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Sixth, create a flexible grading rubric that balances all of the above-suggested methods of

teacher evaluation with the required standardized test results (RAW Score) to create a more

comprehensive score (Adjusted Score). (ETS 2008)

In March, 2010, The U.S. Department of Education, in conjunction with President

Barack Obama, released a proposed framework to address concerns with the current NCLB

framework. (USDE ESEA 2010) While more conservative approaches may be necessary to the

budgetary aspects of the framework, many of the concerns raised by teachers across the United

States with the NCLB may be addressed by implementing these ideas.

The creation and maintenance of truly great teachers depends on a wider evaluation

framework than what is currently contained in the NCLB. The culture of creating more

regulations and micromanaging teachers by using standardized testing as the sole measure of

student performance and growth is destructive and counterproductive. The implementation of

flexible grading rubrics, extended study periods, student completed teacher evaluations,

relevantly defined and enforced plagiarism policies, parental education and accountability, and

student mental health assessment tools will help to counteract the student-controlled variables in

classroom effectiveness along with standardized testing. The balance of these methods will allow

teachers to more effectively implement the skills and attributes that lead to truly great teachers

and truly great classrooms.

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Resources

American Pregnancy Association. (2000-2011) Statistics. Retrieved from

http://www.americanpregnancy.org/main/statistics.html

Davis, D. (2007). A Quality Education? Journal of Philosophy & History of Education, 57, 18-
24. http://library.gcu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=ehh&AN=33964222&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Educational Testing Service. (2008) Interpreting Your Praxis™ Examinee Score Report.
Retrieved from http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/PRAXIS/pdf/SampleReport.pdf

U.S. Department of Education. (2010) No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Retrieved from
http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/index.html

Education Indicators: An International Perspective / Indicator 23. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://nces.ed.gov/Pubs/eiip/eiipid23.asp

A Blueprint for Reform: The Reauthorization of the Elementary ... (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/blueprint/publication.html