The No Child Left Behind Act has been ineffective in bolstering the achievement of low-income and immigrant students because it has failed to address the needs of the whole child, and President-elect Barack Obama must redirect the focus of this federal policy accordingly in the law’s reauthorization, policymakers and scholars said.
Dr. Clancy Blair, a professor of applied psychology at New York University says a lack of school readiness is setting some kids back from the start. “Kids are getting kicked out of preschool at a rate of seven per 1000,” said Blair, adding that in some areas that rate is one in 40.
Blair attended a breakfast along with other policymakers in New York last Friday.
During the session, titled “Closing the Achievement Gap: Facing Challenges From Outside the Classroom,” held at NYU, Blair defined school readiness in simple terms as a child’s ability to stay in his or her seat, use language and take turns, among other things. “School readiness is synonymous with self-regulation,” and education is acquired through self-regulation, he added.
Many of these students are coming from single-parent homes, low-income families and neighborhoods that are fraught with poverty and crime, which often program children to become either hyper reactive or listless, said Blair in his presentation. “Education policy is poverty policy, and poverty policy is education policy.” As the economy worsens and families experience more stress economically, these problems will escalate, Blair said.
During the question-and-answer portion of the session, he suggested that the Obama administration improve and expand headstart and early childhood education because children who start off with a bad experience typically stay on that trajectory. “That would make the job of middle-school teachers, high-school teachers and college professors that much easier,” Blair said.
Eugene Prisco, a Staten Island educator who was among many education practitioners in attendance, commented that President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society policy addressed many of these societal issues by capping class size at 18, providing one counselor per grade and having an on-site psychologists to help struggling students.
