NCLB, Spellings can't "Touch the Sound "

Still marching to the No Child Left Behind education act's high-stakes test drummer, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings adjusted a few testing rules recently to help special-ed students. "We know not all students learn the same way." Brilliant deduction, Margaret. What took so long?

For a post-holiday treat, Spellings and her NCLB special-ed team at the U.S. Department of Education should toss aside their testing data sheets in favor of popcorn and a soft drink, and see the highly acclaimed documentary film "Touch the Sound." It has been garnering attention throughout the country during 2005. German filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheiver spent a year filming Evelyn Glennie, the Grammy-winning classical percussionist from Scotland. Why choose Glennie from all the world's great percussionists? She's profoundly deaf.

Secretary Spellings spoke to "more than 100 policymakers and educators" at Guilford elementary school in Columbia, MD on December 14, 2005 to officially announce an increase to the current 1 percent alternative assessments for special-ed students, adding another 2 percent to be "assessed with modified standards." Her official press release began, "You're lucky to have Nancy Grasmick as your superintendent in Maryland. She began her career in Baltimore as a teacher working with deaf students, and she's been a leader on special education issues in the policy arena as well."

"Before I begin, let me say." was her lead into the next paragraph in the press release. Maybe an anecdote to embolden superintendent Grasmick's work with deaf students? A short promo for "Touch the Sound"? Neither. She continued, ".Tomorrow we'll have the chance to see history unfold before our eyes in Iraq. Millions of men and women - ordinary Iraqis - will show extraordinary courage as they take their place at polls all across the country. The people of Iraq will come together to defy terror and elect a parliamentary government. And they will be sending a powerful message of hope throughout the Middle East." Say what? No doubt, Karl Rove, the president's devious deputy chief of staff, couldn't resist a War in Iraq promo instead. "Hey, Margaret, I have an idea." Spellings gulps. "But Karl, this is a major NCLB special-ed announcement!" Rove rolls his eyes. "Margaret, you don't understand!" Judging from news media accounts, they saw through the guise of the political detour. None published the war bait.

Washington Post staff writer Nick Anderson reported December 15, 2005, "As a result, up to 3 percent of all students tested in reading and mathematics under the federal law soon may be scored as proficient through alternative or modified assessments, even though they are academically below grade level." For educators in the Washington area, the new leeway on special education is quite tangible, he reported. "Seventy-six Maryland schools and 54 Virginia school benefited in the last academic year from temporary relief that Spellings granted." Spellings told reporters afterward, "The flexibility is going to provide (states) with a smarter way to serve these students - not a loop hole." She had stated earlier, "We know not all students learn the same way. And we want to give states the flexibility to design assessments that match their needs." Local officials cheered the announcement, said Anderson. "Clearly, enabling schools to develop a separate set of standards and assessments for special-needs children is a step in the right direction," said Leroy Tompkins, chief accountability officer for Prince George's County schools.

"We're seeing the hard work pay off across the country," said Spellings in her press release. "The latest nation's education report card showed students with disabilities are making gains at every level in both reading and math. And they're catching up to their peers, particularly in reading. As I like to say, 'In God we trust - all others bring data.' And with this data, we can see we're moving in the right direction.In other words, No Child Left Behind is working and we must stick with it."

Of course, Spellings's definition of "data" is limited in scope to NCLB draconian high-stakes testing scores, ignoring her previous education enlightenment: "We know not all students learn the same way." But still, testing "data" only applies to the nation's public schools - not private and religious schools that have received the greatest financial and political support from the Bush administration. Nor did she mention that if only one NCLB subgroup - including special-ed - failed to achieve annual yearly progress (AYP), an entire public school would suffer the impending consequences, including possible closing.

Whether for special-ed, English learners or regular student populations, NCLB high-stakes testing continues to have its most negative impact on central city public school districts in socioeconomic poor neighborhoods and poor rural public school districts. For all practical purposes, education in these districts has been reduced to an annual 3-ring circus parade, focused entirely on achieving reading and math testing benchmarks. In her book "High Stakes Education - Inequality, globalization and urban school reform," Pauline Lipman focuses on Chicago K-8 public schools. "Teaching and learning and daily life in school are most dominated by test preparation in the lowest scoring schools. This is an inevitable result of the district's policy. These are the schools that hold Iowa Test pep rallies in the spring, that focus professional development on passing 'the Iowa' and Illinois State Achievement Test (ISAT), that substitute test prep books for the regular curriculum, that decorate hallways with posters and banners urging students to 'Zap the Iowa.'"

During her research, Lipman noted that "preparing for standardized tests dominated talk about schooling. Classroom talk was shaped by test preparation, and phrases like 'That's the kind of question you will have on the test' or 'you will need to know this for the test' ran through teachers' commentary with their students." A Grover elementary school administrator summed it up this way. "We are looking at how to teach reading to get off probation in place of how to teach reading for lifelong learners." The emphasis on testing reading and math also pushed out arts and other subjects, except in the specific grades when students were tested on the ISAT. "After Christmas, unless your grade level is being tested in social studies, they stop teaching it and concentrate on reading and math to pass the scores.They don't see or hear about any social studies from January thru May, and nothing after that." Lipman stated, "The Grover teacher with the highest scores received an award in a public ceremony, whereas a teacher who had won a prestigious state teaching award received no public recognition."

Although both teachers and students felt similar unfairness of non-stop testing mania, it was virtually impossible to vent publicly. NCLB was Congressionally mandated and a federal law. It was either sink or swim. Students had to stay and try to survive under any circumstances. Teachers did not - and many bailed out. "At Grover, voices of anger, demoralization, and despair became increasingly insistent in my teacher interviews and observations in the steady exodus of teachers, including some of the most committed and intellectually engaged," noted Lipman. "Most of those I talked with said they could no longer live with the contradictions the current Chicago public schools policies posed for them. They were replaced by a succession of inexperienced teachers and interns and uncertified and/or substitute teachers." Her interviews were several years ago, not recently. Is it a mere coincidence the public school bashers (and those education experts who should know better) now take their complaints to the next level - complaining vociferously of the low numbers of "qualified" teachers in socioeconomic distressed neighborhood public schools not only in Chicago, but throughout the country? Does "As ye sow, so shall ye reap" ring a bell?

Thankfully, there were no such NCLB-type high-stakes testing shenanigans in Scotland's public schools when Evelyn Glennie first noticed her hearing loss at the age of 8. Although the school suggested she transfer into a special program for deaf students, her parents were hesitant. "Hearing or not, she will do what she wants to do," her father said. "She had intended to be a pianist but switched to percussion upon entering high school," wrote Stephen Holden for the New York Times in his review of "Touch the Sound." "A gifted music teacher advised her to remove her hearing aids and learn to distinguish musical intervals by pressing her head to a wall and feeling the percussive vibrations in her hands and arms," wrote Holden. "Out of these experiences developed her sense of sound as a tactile as well as an auditory phenomenon."

"Hearing is a form of touch," Glennie declares. "You feel it through your body, and sometimes it almost hits your face." That, it does. From the middle of Grand Central Terminal in New York City playing snare drums, barefoot - to a Japanese restaurant using chopsticks, dishes, a glass and metal lid giving impromptu demonstrations, the brilliant percussionist provides impromptu entertainment.

To "Touch the Sound," NCLB can't rely solely on high-stakes testing.