The Need Foray Solution

“No Child Left Behind” was a Bush brainchild which was passed by a Republican congress in 2002. It created a new system for grading schools based on standardized tests, for rewarding good and improving schools, and for addressing the inadequacies of failing schools.

Steamboat has really great schools. We had passionate teachers, a supportive community, and with a half-cent sales tax and several bond issues supported by voters, top-notch facilities. In 10th grade we did a Leadership exchange with Manual High School in Denver, and I was 100% culture-shocked by the run-down urban brick school with its black and Spanish student body. It seemed so loud and chaotic, and it seemed like the students weren’t trying to learn, and the teachers no longer were trying to teach. The moment that impacted me most was in the showers after gym class, when my “buddy” handed me a bottle of Herbal Essences conditioner to wash with. “I can’t wash with this,” I said, “this is conditioner!” He looked a bit amused and said, “Maaan, soap is soap!”

A few months later, it was such a crazy sight to see the Manual leadership class walking like silent ghosts through SSHS. Perhaps the only group of black kids that have ever been in that building, they huddled together and gasped wide-eyed at our gym and weight room, which looked so bright and shiny around their cluster of baggy jeans, hoodies, and jerseys.

The first I heard of actual implementation of “No Child Left Behind” policies was the next year, when Manual was deemed failing for a third straight year, and federal consultants intervened, dividing the school into several separate schools, each operating independently on different floors. Based on my day there, I concurred that Manual had not been functioning well, so I welcomed the concept of experimenting with administrative changes. When things are going poorly, changing things up is a better option than continuing with the same failing policies.

Over the years, however, I have joined the ranks of N.C.L.B. critics, as I have thought more about the mechanics and practice of teaching. Standardized tests, with their hollow passages and banal questions, don’t teach anything. They aren’t fun or interesting. So they end up feeling like a broken record asking incessantly, “Are you awake? Are you awake? Are you awake? Are you awake?...” until you inevitably fall asleep.

At Steamboat, the CSAP tests wasted two days of our lives, and caused a fair amount of bitching, but that was the end of it. The school consistently scored well, and therefore didn’t have to worry too much about preparing the students. We were able to focus on Tension and Cleaving forces, the invasion of 1066, and what happens when limit goes to 0.

For schools that score poorly, however, the tests have become an obsession. The curriculum has become hollow passages and banal questions, so that the students can be “good” at getting these questions right. The school’s scores are tied to its funding and its administrative independence. And these kids, who so desperately need education to improve their lives and get out of the deadening rut of their socioeconomic conditions, are dropped into another deadening rut: a curriculum based on little circles with A, B, C, and D.

“Would you like fries with that?”