January 30, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

I just purchased shares of Fifth Third (FITB) a few days ago, so now’s a great opportunity for you guys to make yourselves some big money by shorting that stock like crazy. All the stock market pros call me before they make a move. They ask me what I’m buying and then they know what to sell.

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January 30, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

Hillary Clinton is total sleaze.

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January 30, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

In today’s WSJ, which begins:

Does restricting “eminent domain” — the power of government to seize private property — harm economic growth? A new report from the Institute for Justice looks at the evidence and concludes the answer is no.

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January 30, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

President Bush was eager to ask Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in his final State of the Union Address. Students are achieving record success, with minority students, poor students, and students with disabilities reaching all-time highs in a number of areas,” claims the Bush administration. The evidence, however, suggests otherwise.

With the impending reauthorization of NCLB, political officials around the nation are echoing the recent sentiments of Tennessee’s governor, Phil Bredesen, who recently said: “When you step back and look at all the things we can do to improve the quality of our workforce and the quality of life for young adults, there’s nothing more important than raising the high school graduation rate.” Most educators disagree. Graduation does not improve skills or the quality of life; learning does. But Governor Bredesen, along with others, is reacting to incentives created with the NCLB legislation.

Legislation is bound to contain incentives that lead to unintended consequences, but NCLB takes the cake. Not only does it harm the students it aims to help by rewarding failure, it reports this failure as success.

In a perfect world, Congress could pass legislation to improve student achievement and all would go according to plan. Since we don’t live in a perfect world, though, all Congress can do is enact legislation that intends to facilitate student learning. NCLB aims to help students by requiring schools to demonstrate yearly progress in their graduation rate and student test scores. Since schools can more easily manipulate data to show student achievement than to actually teach students, it’s no wonder we get more data manipulation than student learning. What’s most disconcerting is that schools are requiring less student achievement with NCLB than they ever did without it. Here’s why:

• NCLB requires schools to demonstrate improvement in student test scores on an annual basis. States, since they are free to design their own tests, are watering them down. That is, states are making tests easier to pass, and this is occurring nationwide. States have also been lowering passing grades on the state tests and permitting longer time to complete the exams. Because the states are free to administer tests that are watered down, they can manipulate the data. These states can report that student achievement is improving when, in fact, nothing has changed but the definition of passing. For example, a state could create an easier test with a lower passing score, and this would be reported as success. How convenient. Only in government is failure reported as success.

• Schools are also asked to report annual progress in their graduation rates. Several techniques are being used by the schools to meet this requirement, and not one of them has anything to do with helping students succeed in school. Some schools are now promoting their own grading scales. The grading scales are staring at the lowest possible passing grades—70% for many schools. When the lowest grade on the scale is still passing, nobody can fail. This tends to promote high graduation rates.

• States are developing and promoting “alternative” diplomas. For example, my state of Tennessee has an alternative diploma that requires 21 credits for graduation. Prior to NCLB, my school district required 28 credits for graduation and would not offer this diploma; we are now pleased to offer this 21-credit diploma. Now we are cutting an extra year of education from graduation requirements, but our graduation rate is obviously improving. Our graduation rate goes up (which is reported as progress), but student achievement continues to drop—all thanks to the incentives created by NCLB.

• NCLB leaves loopholes so schools only have to test students who can pass the tests. For example, high-school juniors must take a writing assessment, which is typically organized through junior homerooms. Schools are excluding from the tests those students in those junior homerooms who lack enough credits to be juniors. The next year those students will be in senior homerooms and thus be excluded from the writing assessment. So schools have found ways to improve their text scores by excluding test takers who are most likely to fail. 

You will see the president and others report extraordinary statistics showing how NCLB is improving student learning, but take a closer look and you’ll see an education system that is being torn asunder by this legislation.Schools can’t work the miracles asked of them. In fact, nobody works miracles. Not even a privately-operated school system could meet the requirements of NCLB. When legislation is based on fantasy rather than reality, those impacted by the legislation must manipulate the system to report figures that can live up to the fantasy.

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