In “Left Behind by Design: Proficiency Counts and Test-based Accountability”, Neal and Schanzenbach(2010) use data from the Chicago Public Schools to analyze how the implementation of “No Child Left Behind Act(NCLB)” affect the distribution of measured changes in achievement among students. Specifically, this paper mainly focuses on examining how the rules that accountability systems use to turn student test scores into performance rankings for schools affect teacher’s allocation of efforts among different students. The data shows that the reading and math scores of students in the middle of achievement distribution increase the most. On the other hand, for students with the lowest academic ability, their reading and math scores do not …show more content…
In particular, since “gains” and “levels” incentive schemes focus on the average term, these two incentive schemes need to transform individual students’ academic performance into a single measure. As a result, such performance index might weight some students in class more than others. In order to maximize their expected return to efforts in terms of gains or levels on the standardized exam, teachers might triage certain students in class at the expense of others.
Given the performance index and the reward structure, teachers will allocate effort across students in the class based on the cost of effort and their expected marginal returns to effort. For example, when teachers are ranked and rewarded according to the class average levels, teachers will choose an optimal allocation of effort that maximizes the class average score on the standardized exam. Assume costs of effort are similar across students, teachers will focus more on students for whom the expected return to effort is the highest in terms of gains on the standardized exam. In contrast, teachers focus less on students with high initial academic ability because they believe that these students’ achievement gains are less likely to be rewarded due
Education is a long-term investment. We, as students, work hard to acquire knowledge and to hone our skills so that we may use them one day. The effort we put into a single assignment should be considered as both for that specific assignment and for our rounding as complete, educated individuals. And with this mindset, students should be motivated even more to put more effort and hard work into academics, with the goal of bettering themselves for the future and advancing their prospects as individuals. And with this hard work and effort will come progress, and this progress should be reflected in the grading—not necessarily on individual assignments, but on the student’s education as a
A never-ending issue has loomed over the head of our nation-- education. According to the Institute of Education Sciences, 63.7% of American students are below proficient in reading and 65.7% in math. In order to improve educational standards and increase student achievement, Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act (also known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) in 2002. Designed to increase the role of the federal government in education, it holds schools accountable based on how students perform on standardized tests. Statistics show that the average student completes about 110-115 mandatory, standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and end of twelfth grade (an average of eight tests per year). Standardized testing utilizes
Margaret Heffernan once said, “For good ideas and true innovation, you need a mix of human interaction, conflict, argument, and debate.” In the article it is debated if there is any benefit in monetary rewards for students. Teachers, and parents alike are always trying to find the best way to reward and inspire there students to do well in school. Matthew G Springer is a professor of Public Policy and Education at Vanderbilt University. He is also the director of the National Center on Performance Incentives. He wrote this article to display his research and studies.
In the United States, the average grade has been slowly creeping up during the past years. This grade inflation has generally been seen as a positive for students and parents, but it has much more detrimental effects for the state of higher education. One person to address these consequences is Brent Staples, author of “Why Colleges Shower Their Students With A's.” In his essay, he not only explains how grade inflation came to be, but he also describes how it is something negative since it is the lowering of standards so that excellence is no longer excellent because of how easily higher grades is given out.
The author's main point in this article was focusing on the problems of standardized testing in the school system. Ronald Roach states how in the past decade since the no child left behind program was established that there was no sufficient gains in the overall student math and reading scores. The author then goes on to explain how the Obama administration has been criticized over the issues of no child left behind program and how they are not effectively improving the program.
NCLB, the most recent version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, was preceded by the Improving America’s Schools Act. Under that law, high-quality teaching and learning were not prevalent in all schools, and achievement gaps persisted, leading to agreement that a greater federal role for accountability was necessary—from which NCLB was born. NCLB authorized 45 programs in 10 different areas, but public debate tended to focus on the law’s testing, accountability, and teacher-quality requirements. NCLB required that students be tested in the subjects of English language arts (ELA) and math in grades three through eight and once in high school, and for states to use the results to assess how well schools were meeting “adequate yearly progress” goals for student proficiency in these subjects. Schools that consistently did not meet these goals overall, or for subgroups of students, were targeted for interventions, and eventually for sanctions.
The NCLB Act has become the largest intervention by the federal government. This act promises to improve student learning and to close the achievement gap between the white students and students of color. The law is aimed at having standardized test to measure student performance and quality of teacher. The Standardized exams are fully focused on reading and mathematics. This law characterizes an unequalled extension of the federal role into the realm of local educational accountability. High school graduation rates are also a requirement as an indicator of performance at secondary level. In low performing schools they get punished by receiving less funds and students have the choice to move to high performing school. The quality of our
“Unintended Educational and Social Consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act” Journal of Gender, Race and Justice, no. 2, Winter 2009, pp. 311. EBSCOhost. In this peer-reviewed academic journal article, Liz Hollingworth, an associate professor in the College of Education at the University of Iowa, explores the history of school reform in the United States, and the unintended consequences of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Hollingworth states that the great promise of NCLB is that schools will focus on the education of low-achieving students, reducing the gap in student academic achievement between White students and African-American, Hispanic, and Native American student populations. Hollingworth states that an unintended consequence of NCLB was that teachers and school administrators had to shift curriculum focus in an effort to raise test scores, but in some cases, they had to also abandoned thoughtful, research-based classroom practices in exchange for test preparation. NCLB also affected teachers, highly qualified teachers left high-poverty schools, with low performance rates especially those schools where teacher salaries are tied to student academic performance. Hollingworth concludes her article by stating “we need to be wary of policy innovations that amount to simply rearranging the deck chairs on the
Schools and college professors, who give you a good grade for excellent productivity on assignments, allow students to perform poorly, but still benefit relative to a person with an A. Two articles that observe grade inflation, find the rising problems of grade inflation, and finding solutions for grade inflation. Stuart Rojstaczer, an author from Grade Inflation Gone Wild, is a professor of geophysics at Duke university, and created gradeinflation.com in regards for his concern about grade inflation. On the other hand, Phil Primack is a journalist and teacher at Tufts University, and published in the “Boston Globe” Doesn’t Anybody Get a C Anymore? While college students, who work with little effort and still attain easy A’s by working poorly on assignments and exams, Primack and Rojstaczer, develop a firm connection towards grade inflation and the solution that can regain control over real education.
Following the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, US students have slipped from being ranked 18th in math in 2000 to 27th in 2012, with a similar decline in science and no change in reading. Standardized tests are unfair and discriminatory against non-English speakers and students with special needs [E. (2011, January 01)]. A 2007 national study conducted by the Center for Education policy revealed that since 2001, 44% of school districts had reduced the time spent on science, social studies and the arts by an estimate of 145 minutes per week in order to focus on reading and math while neglecting the other areas of study.
turning my head again I saw Simon dive to my aid. He did not utter a
Growing up I was repeatedly told to make sacrifices for the greater good by giving through acts of charity. In a sense, by donating 16 percent of my grade to be distributed to those in my class I would be preforming an act of charity. Everyone cannot test perfectly all the time due to outside factors, such as a relative’s death, long hours at work, or illness. By promising others a “security blanket” of percentage points that will come their way if they happen to score lower than they intended, we are teaching them that mistakes are bound to happen, and when they do, their peers will be there to help them raise their grade in an act of generosity. These acts of humanity will allow our population to find the fine line where we are “equal before God and the law” so that we may carry out His work while simultaneously abiding by the basic rules and regulations of the United States of America (Vonnegut 1). If Professor Darr were to implement this way of grading into his future quizzes, we could push each other to study harder so that we may bring the average of the quiz up to a higher grade where people, such as myself, will not have to donate as much percentage points to their peers. Promoting study groups would also stimulate not only growth in our overall percentage as a class, but it would prevent the people who do not study or take a cheat sheet out of the garbage to use on the exam from scoring high without “putting in effort” (Moore). All of these factors would level the playing field as we take our exam, and leave all of us when a sense of satisfaction and gratitude knowing we were able to help others or that others were able to help us: in reality, we would all receive a blue ribbon because “we tried” (Vonnegut 3). By trying but still knowing we might receive a better grade than we earned because the average on the quiz was high than our
A student can be excluded from their peer groups because they have a bad grade. Being left out can make a student not want to improve academically. If they get bad grades others will see them as a poor student and will expect them to do poor in life. The process most schools use to evaluate student performance is grade point average and class rank. The academic recognition programs that exist in the United States are driven by a student’s grade point average and class rank. Those measures serve as the primary method in establishing student recognition. If this ranking is not the sole factor in the recognition program, it is always included in the student’s assessment. The school culture recognizes individuals that are in the top one-third of the school’s class rank
Capital punishment has been part of the criminal justice system since the earliest of times. But opponents have argued that the death penalty is racist, economically unjustified, and in violation of the United States Constitution as "...cruel and unusual punishment" (“Chronology”). However, today much of the debate over capital punishment is about whether it is morally right to sentence a person who has committed a serious crime to death. This paper will address the moral issues in the controversy over whether capital punishment should be abolished.
Greek mythology is used for the explanation on how humankind lived. Religion was the main source of myths. There were many things it was used for like the explanation on how Gods, Goddesses, monsters and mythical creatures lived in ancient times. This mythology explained the origin of gods and their lifestyle and where humanity would go after death. The original gods were Uranus and Gaia. They had a total twelve Titans, one of the most known and powerful Titan was named Iapetus, he repr. During the Golden Age when Uranus was defeated, Iapetus was in charge of the Western part of the mythological world, until he was defeated by Zeus and imprisoned.