WAYS TO ENSURE THAT NO CHILD IS
April 4, 2005
EDUCATOR CALLS FOR MORE FUNDING,
by Dan Hardy
To really "leave no child behind," we must give low-income and minority students
better resources and better teachers, rather then simply depend on high-stakes
tests and punitive sanctions, a nationally known educator says.
That pointed assessment of the federal No Child Left Behind Law from Linda
Darling-Hammond set the theme for a three-day conference at Bryn Mawr College on
"Educating All Children: Challenges, Possibilities, and 'No Child Left Behind.'
In her address Thursday, Darling-Hammond, professor of education at Stanford
University and former executive director of the National Commission for Teaching
and America's Future, said the achievement gap between white and minority
students had widened since 1990.
Some people explain this by saying that a "culture of poverty" discourages
achievement or that some families and communities don't support learning, said
Darling-Hammond, a 1973 Yale graduate whose doctorate is from Temple University.
She also has taught in several Philadelphia-area school districts.
And, she said, some educators and officials want more accountability, and
"typically, what accountability means today is 'we need more testing.' "
But Darling-Hammond had a different explanation: Schools serving minority and
low-income students are larger and have larger classes, receive less funding,
and have fewer qualified teachers, college prep or advanced placement courses,
and computers, books and supplies.
Nationwide, "the top 10 percent of districts spend 10 times more than the bottom
10 percent," she said. "In Pennsylvania, as in most states, the ratio between
the high-spending and low-spending districts is at least three or four to one."
When provided with good teachers and comparable curriculums, she said, minority
and white students do equally well. But "we have systematically structured what
is now an apartheid school system... we have schools that might as well be in
She said the No Child Left Behind Law, with its emphasis on testing and
sanctions for schools that do not perform well, is not the answer to educational
ills. Students in states with assessment tests that are used to target resources
for improvement of children's education perform better than children in states
where tests are used to impose student or school sanctions, she said.
Darling-Hammond said that many people have come to accept the inequities between
better-off and poorer schools. Their attitude, she said, often is, "It's not my
problem if your kids can't get an education."
"We have to turn that around... . People who live in places like Bryn Mawr have
to be willing to fight for the education of people who live in Philadelphia and
Chester. It has to become as much a part of civic responsibility as worrying
about our own local community."