Governing Expectations: Current and Past Laws and Reforms to Improve Expectations

“Now some say it is unfair to hold disadvantaged children to rigorous standards. I say it is discrimination to require anything less -- the soft bigotry of low expectations.” -George W. Bush (1999 Speech on Improving Education)


As the research on the importance of high expectations has grown, national attention has focused on ways to raise them in all schools. This has led to many national reforms and laws aimed to promote high standards and high expectations in all schools, especially poor, urban schools. This blog will discuss some of the largest reforms and laws targeting expectations, Common Core Standard Initiative, No Child Left Behind law, and Every Student Succeeds act, and consider their impact, strengths, and weaknesses for education.

Common Core Standard Initiative


The Common Core Standards were created as a way to provide “the ‘high standards’ that are necessary for students to ‘have the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life upon graduation from high school, regardless of where they live” (Anderson, 2016, pg. 46). The aim was to create a set of standardized goals across the nation for everyone no matter the state they lived in or the type of schools they went too so all students would be equally prepared when they left school.

Common Core has faced a lot of criticism but working to make sure students have certain skill sets when they leave school really can better prepare them for their future. The problem with Common Core is people assume all students should be taught these standards in the same way. This is not the case, teachers can teach the same skills without teaching them in the same way and adapt their teaching practices to the needs, strengths, interest, and cultures of their students. The CCSSI acknowledges this. “No set of grade-specific standards can fully reflect the great variety of abilities, needs, learning rates, and achievement levels of students in any given classroom” (CCSSI, 2018). I believe these standards can make in impact raising expectations for students, if teachers use them as a base for skills, they should be teaching but still make the material relevant to their students and their lives.

No Child Left Behind


            The No Child Left Behind law was signed and became a law on January 2, 2002 and was an adaption of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

The NCLB law­—which grew out of concern that the American education system was no longer internationally competitive—significantly increased the federal role in holding schools responsible for the academic progress of all students. And it put a special focus on ensuring that states and schools boost the performance of certain groups of students, such as English-language learners, students in special education, and poor and minority children, whose achievement, on average, trails their peers (Klein, 2015).

States who choose to follow NCLB guidelines received Title I funding for making “adequate yearly progress,” but the standards set for NCLB were extremely high. Standardized testing was stressed as a way of testing “adequate yearly progress” for all students and subgroups of students and the main goal was for every student to test at the “proficient level” by the 2013-2014 school year.  If the schools did not meet these goals, they would face sanctions and possibly be deemed a failing school.

            This law was based out of great intentions, but it was not successful in its implementation. The large focus on math, language arts, and standardized testing caused many schools to “teach to the test” and ignore other subject areas. Though NCLB sought to set equal standards and opportunities for disadvantaged students, many of these students which the law targeted did not received the benefits of Title I funding. The free tutoring and highly qualified teaching aspect specified by the law were often ignored. I believe while the main focus of this law should have been using funding to create equitable opportunities for disadvantaged students by increasing teacher training, implementing practices based on their specific needs, and giving urban and low-income schools more resources, the implementation of this law really just focused on increasing U.S. education rating on the international level. In turn, the students who really could have benefited from these high standards were forgotten about and made to feel like their “inadequacies” put their schools at risk for losing funding.

Every Student Succeeds



            In 2015, Barack Obama replaced the NCLB law with the Every Student Succeeds Act. This act took into account a lot of the criticisms of the NCLB, by decreasing the focus on standardized testing and putting less “emphasis on math and reading at the expense of untested subjects like science, history, art, and music” (Darling-Hammond, Bae, Cook-Harvey, Lam, Mercer, Podolsky, & Stosich, 2016, pg. 1). The ESSA marked a shift towards teaching students more real-world skills, like problem solving, and also allows states to have more say in their accountability system.

While the approach of NCLB was problematic, its intent was to ensure that the success of traditionally underserved students mattered as much as that of other students. Now, under ESSA, states are largely responsible for creating a system that supports the success of all students. Figuring out how to use the new flexibility to achieve both greater equity and deeper learning is the challenge for the new ESSA (Darling-Hammond, Bae, Cook-Harvey, Lam, Mercer, Podolsky, & Stosich, 2016, pg. 2).

While I feel like this act shifted NCLB in a few very positive ways by using more holistic assessment processes and implementing more real-world skills, I am not sure this will be effective in raising expectations for minorities and other subordinate groups. I fear that when the act shifted away from accountability of subgroups and only focuses on “all” students, the needs of disadvantaged students will be forgotten. As previously discussed in my “Teacher Influences” blog, when laws and curriculum are designed for “all” students, policymakers and teachers often use what they believe to be the “norm” or white, middle-class view to set expectations for all students. Since the states are setting their own accountability systems, I want to know how policymakers will make sure they are creating learning conditions for students who deviate from the norm to create educational opportunities which raise the low standards often set for these students. I fear these guidelines are so open-ended that the strong implicit biases and systemic oppression in our country will prevent any positive change from occurring.  

References

Anderson, M. (2016). “High expectations” discourse as an epistemology of oppression: Implications for urban education. Philosophical Studies in Education, 47, 46–55. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.ucs.louisiana.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,uid,url&db=eric&AN=EJ1113074&site=eds-live 

CCSSI. (2018). Read the standards. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/read-the-standards/ 

Klein, A. (2015, April 10). No child left behind: An overview. Education Week. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/no-child-left-behind-overview-definition-summary.html

 (1999, September 3). Excerpts from Bush’s speech on improving education. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/03/us/excerpts-from-bush-s-speech-on-improving-education.html




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