No Child Left Behind leaves most kids behind

It is popular to blame the federal No Child Left Behind Act for California's educational woes, but the state's misery is largely homegrown and predates the 2001 law.

A friend who teaches at a prestigious suburban school recently told me that she was on leave and didn't think she was going back. "I can't stand giving kindergartners timed standards tests and watching tears trickle down their cheeks," she said. "It's just not right."

I know how she feels. This fall, we were at first forbidden to teach novels — any novels — in the college preparatory English classes at our high school. We must teach from the textbook because, "The Holt textbook is aligned to the California content standards," the principal said. No "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." No "To Kill a Mockingbird."

The good news is the administration at my award-winning urban district relented and is allowing us to teach one novel, now that we are finished with 18 hours of California Standards Tests.

The bad news is the district tells us we can do so only if we use the novel to "reinforce content standards" and not "teach it cover to cover," and the novel must "not supplant Holt's minimum course of study."

The district allows me seven hours to teach "To Kill a Mockingbird" to my students, one-third of whom are English learners and two-thirds of whom qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

The even worse news: The administrators are eliminating "sustained silent reading." That's the 15 minutes a day when all students stop everything and read. By eliminating it, we gain "over two minutes of instructional time aligned to the standards in each period each day," so we can "improve student achievement," the principal tells us.

"Improve student achievement" means "get better scores" on high-stakes standardized tests. "Aligned to the California content standards" means teaching to the tests — in my case, a food chain of tests to prepare students for other tests, almost all multiple choice. Easily 10 percent of my students' classroom time is spent taking these tests.

In a crescendo of circular logic, so-called "high-achieving schools" have become those whose students are successful test-takers, without asking if they are prepared for work, for college, for citizenship or for a meaningful life.

The National Center on Education and the Economy reports that we lack workers who are "creative and innovative, self-disciplined and well-organized." Colleges contend that freshmen cannot think critically or write lucidly. As the center points out, "What gets measured is what gets taught."