No Child Left Behind epitomizes the folly of politicians creating feel-good legislation. The title of this 2001 federal monstrosity certainly sounds as if every child benefits from its reforms.

Not so. The numerous requirements in this 700-page boondoggle blurred the lines between intent and compliance.

How?

They forced educators to forgo an earnest implementation of instruction in favor of the much more rewarded activities of gathering data and compiling reports.

Documentation became the arbiter of success.

If our politicians thought all this paperwork would be confined to the  non-instruction portions of a teacher's workday, they were sadly misguided.  Very little of a teacher's day should be spent on paperwork, ideally.  Most of it should be in presentation mode. 

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But let's get to the heart of the NCLB doctrine: the requirement that states must test and report on student achievement.  To achieve the second part of this mandate, lawmakers created something they called Adequate Yearly Progress. Delving into the requirements of AYP leads to a dismal conclusion: it could never be a straight-forward process.  A singularly distressing aspect is that the obligatory assessment results can lawfully be mitigated by exemptions such as special ed or English-language-learner labels, homelessness, and poor home environment.  (Really.)   

 

Another requirement of NCLB was the revamping of teacher evaluation schemes to include so-called 'performance-based' protocols, an aspect that heavily influenced a school's AYP.   School districts as a whole were then issued an annual report card, affecting the federal funding they receive.  

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The number of non-teaching personnel added at the district-level increased significantly, and a large portion of the annual budget was allocated to the personnel necessary to administer these new activities. 

 

In the classroom, teachers evolved their own protocols:

It didn't take long for them to understand that the documentation of their activities was more valuable to their supervisors than the instruction they delivered.

 

School districts created online documentation portals, and encouraged teachers to enter information frequently regarding their differentiated instruction. Because collecting such data was now highly rewarded by the Dept. of Education, affecting a school district's annual report card heftily, these portals became very user-friendly, even allowing for bulk entries like this:

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The savvy teacher soon realized that the more she documented, the happier her bosses were.  Principals, assistant principals, and instructional coaches could quickly skim the type and amount of instruction a teacher was entering to her online account, and update their own accounts accordingly.

    It should not be surprising that the increasingly burdensome paperwork foisted upon everyone increased the likelihood that some of that paperwork would not represent reality.

 

Teachers also created their own documents for logging activities: making phone calls and sending emails to parents; putting up hallway bulletin boards; attending committee meetings; assisting a colleague with something; working one-on-one with a student; arriving early or staying late to complete a project; planning lessons and projects collaboratively with the team.....the things teachers could come up with to illustrate their productivity became endless.

 

Even more tantalizing was the knowledge that none of these activities needed verification, as if that were even possible. This documentation, however, was given the same credence as a courtroom exhibit:  if it was written down, it happened. Teachers could positively influence their annual evaluation with this yearly log of accomplishments, and even if a principal suspected it defied the laws of physics, he knew it was not in his best interest to contest it.  As a result, teachers realized that their personal house of cards carried a lot of clout and would most likely go unchallenged. Currying favor with one's principal made this even more likely.

 

All this documentation was considered performance-based, fulfilling a significant chunk of the mandate to revise teacher evaluations. Throughout the last 15-odd years, this practice has become more and more an accepted part of the fabric of education, and teachers entering the profession soon adapt to it because to do otherwise is not only futile, but career-damaging.

At the same time, however, they battle with the lunacy of it. They understand that none of it helps children learn better or faster;  demoralization slowly creeps to the forefront of the psyche, where eventually, it sets up permanent residence. 

 

Out of desperation, many teachers settle into a survival mode guided by the following rules: 

• let go of the ideals you had at the entrance to your profession; 

• place documentation and data collection above instruction,

• put on the occasional dog-and-pony show, and

• make sure you are in good favor with your principal.

Public education is now a facade, and the participants are

cast members in a modern rendition of "The Emperor's New Clothes".

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What's wrong with requiring teachers to document their activities? It goes to realistic expectations.  When is this documentation happening?  On planning time?  During lunch? After school?  Perhaps some of it, but likely not all of it.  

 

Shadow a teacher throughout her school day and see what it takes to work with kids. Lots of face time is required.  The teacher weighs this reality against the counsel she has been given by her principal:

If it isn't written down, it didn't happen. You only get credit if it can be verified on paper.

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It doesn't take long to figure out that instead of working with the kids, the teacher can put them into groups, give them a worksheet, and then sit at her desk and document how she is working with groups.  At first, she does this only sparingly in an attempt to not feel overwhelmed by all the paperwork.  She reassures herself that she won't shortchange her students all the time.  Just when she's feeling stressed.

Gradually, that stress appears more and more often, and she eventually rationalizes that she is only adjusting to an impossible situation not of her making.  As the years pass, this becomes more and more acceptable to her.  In my first book, Finishing School, I relate this to the parable of the frog in the boiling water.

This is the slippery slope of bureaucratizing education.

When the paperwork becomes more important than the activity it supports,

people will spend more time on the paperwork than the activity.  This is

especially true if that paperwork is not audited, and in most cases at the school level,

auditing is not feasible or even possible.   One can only imagine how this paperwork 

can be manipulated at the district level.

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The more layers of bureaucracy that exist in an organization, the more prone to misrepresentation everything becomes.  And that's putting it politely.  One could also use words like fraud and corruption to describe the potential.

What's the antidote? 

First, recognize that a mandate as intrusive and report-driven as NCLB ensures its own defeat simply through human nature.

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And second, make testing count more for the students than for the teachers and their school districts.  The incentive to fudge data cannot be overstated.  And the apparatus to do so is written into statute.

 

Finally, make sure the tests used to measure grade level success actually do what they purport to do.   The Common Core tests we subject our students to are questionable at best in their validity.  I urge you to read chapters 4 and 5 in CHAOS in our schools carefully.

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It's time to repeal the ill-advised monstrosity that is No Child Left Behind and its equally imprudent follow-up enacted in 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).  Until that happens, we are all just swirling in an eddy of facade and futility.  And most of us don't even realize why.

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This is the trouble with bureaucracy.

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