Steve DeLapp: Reflections on NCLB and AYP
/No Triathlete Left Behind
Principal Comments, September 9, 2004 Clara Barton Open School
The No Child Left Behind legislation has certainly created quite a stir with policy makers and educators. Although the law is flawed in many ways, one cannot and should not argue with the belief that all our children must succeed in school, not just a privileged few. The law’s accountability perspectives are narrow and misleading. The tests themselves are often instructionally insensitive and too much of a one-time event to capture the real learning that is taking place for children. But, if we strip away the conflicting politics behind the law, underlying its best intentions is the recognition that we can no longer use students living in poverty, students learning English for the first time, or students who come to school with learning disabilities as excuses for children not learning. All of these must be seen as important conditions that influence a learner’s starting point in school but never as excuses for why we can’t teach them. And, no matter what the starting point for our students, beginning way ahead of the curve or way behind, we must believe, and act on the belief, that all children will learn with enough time and resources, and good teaching geared to the unique needs of the individual child. That belief is the very heart of our open school mission.
It’s the accountability perspectives and the negative labeling of schools that irks me the most about the NCLB law and the AYP list. I want to illustrate what’s problematic with this system through a personal example and then come back to the work we have to do this year as a school community.
I will frame this story for you as No Triathlete Left Behind. Here are the details… Through the experience of watching my youngest son compete in a triathlon four years ago, and then, the next year, entering a triathlon as a member of a relay team with my wife swimming, me biking and my oldest son running (we were still beat by my youngest son doing the course on his own), I decided I really wanted to do a triathlon myself. The problem was I couldn’t swim. I not only couldn’t swim. I was afraid of the water and found it very difficult to put my head under water. With the help of our sons’ high school cross country coach, Ben Zhao, I began a training program to learn to swim. During that first season, Zhao emphasized having fun in the water and simply learning to relax. Now I want you to know that “water fun” was an oxymoron as far as I was concerned but I persevered. In my impatient style, I eventually learned a sidestroke that enabled me to cover some distance slowly with my head out of water. When I put on a wet suit, the newly discovered buoyancy gave me great confidence. I felt I was ready for a triathlon.
As it turned out, the swimming component in my first triathlon was cancelled because of thunderstorms and lightening on the morning of the race. It’s not good form to send a thousand triathletes into a lake when a storm is overhead. The race was changed to a duathlon -- run, bike, run, and I finished in the middle of my age group. Not too bad for an old man; clearly age and grade level proficient.
Zhao kept coaching me the following year. Through weekly workouts, I made the gradual change over from the sidestroke to real free style swimming, the head-in-the-water kind. I even passed on the need for a wet suit and figured out I really could complete a quarter mile swim on my own power. I can’t say I was ever having much fun in the water but I knew I wasn’t panicking because of the fear of drowning anymore.
This past summer’s triathlon was the real thing for me. I swam, incredibly slow, but I swam. I was passed before the turn around point by most of the swimmers in the wave that started three minutes behind our wave. My oldest son stayed with me, out of the family’s concern that maybe I wouldn’t make it after all. He yelled directions at me occasionally when I got off course and made feeble attempts to lift my head out of the water to see where I was going. Training in the YMCA pool had not prepared me well for the need to look up occasionally in the lake.
I felt great coming out of the water realizing I had actually completed the swim. The bike and run portions were accomplished in a similar pace to the previous year’s race. And, although I had expected to finish in the middle of my age group again, I was a little surprised and somewhat disappointed when I discovered that I had finished almost last in my age group this year. Well, the swim time was really slow…
In applying the No Triathlete Left Behind/AYP age level proficiency standards to my performance (and here I’m borrowing headlines from the Star Tribune articles about the AYP school list), I was under performing, lagging, failing and, as one article put it this fall, ailing. I didn’t feel like I was ailing or failing but if adequate yearly progress was measured by a rigid grade level proficiency, and I was almost last in my age group, then clearly I was an under performer and not making adequate yearly progress.
The flaw in the accountability system is clear. If we really want to measure progress with our learners, then accounting for starting points for individuals is essential. In most cases the schools on the AYP list have groups of children who need more time, more resources, and definitely good teaching and coaching to continue to make progress reaching a proficiency standard. But the label itself tells us nothing about the progress these students have made because where they have started from is discounted in the measurement system, whether it’s in the challenge of learning English as a second language, overcoming a learning disability or in overcoming one’s fear of the water in learning to swim.
What’s wrong with Steve that he finished so low in his age group in the triathlon this year? What’s wrong with Barton now that we are listed as a school that is not making adequate yearly progress for one of its cohorts of students in reading?
The answer in both cases is that there’s nothing wrong. Both situations involve learners who started quite a ways below the proficiency standard, students new to the game so to speak, and both situations involve learners who need more time and practice, and targeted coaching and teaching to help assure ongoing progress.
No matter what labels are attached to us from the outside because of this federal legislation, Barton School must continue to act on the strong belief that all our students can and will learn to their fullest potential. As we welcome growing numbers of children new to our school who need more time to learn what’s tested in reading and mathematics, because they are simultaneously engaged in learning to speak English as a second or even third language, we must renew our commitment and school mission to meet all learners at the levels they come to us.
I am grateful that we have a Leadership Council that has dedicated school fundraising resources this year to support our ELL program. I am grateful that we have open school teachers who are driven professionally to know children as individuals and to tailor curriculum and instruction to meet their unique needs. And I am grateful that we have involved parents in this school who want what’s best for all our children, not simply their own.
The AYP label is not an indictment against the school but the simple realization that we now, more than ever before, have groups of kids with different starting places as learners. Amidst an external political climate that is negative and cynical about public education and urban schools in particular, let all of us reaffirm that the greatest gift we can offer our children in school are educational opportunities that match personalized teaching to the full range of learning needs that children bring to us. If I can learn to swim, I know we can accomplish anything at Barton Open School.
--Steven R. DeLapp, Principal