NCLB, Questions, Despair, an Oprah Reference, and A Glimmer of Hope

Prologue:

“Dear America, teachers are NOT the enemy! Teachers are NOT the enemy of our nation’s ability to prosper and progress! Teachers are NOT the enemy of your taxpayer dollars. Teachers are NOT the enemy of your child's ability or opportunity to learn meaningful material. Teachers are NOT the enemy of your child's chances at success! Yes, teachers are human and they are fallible, but they are NOT the enemy, so please STOP talking about and to them like they are!! (this message has been paid for by time Nicole should have spent reading)”

---This Week’s Chapter 3-Induced Facebook Status

Last week, as we talked, we touched on the issue of enormity—both in size and scope—of the NCLB legislation: how much reading or knowledge of  the bill is enough; when and how do you know that you know enough; and who do your (or do you not) trust to fill in the gaps you may have in your knowledge. Though I still feel uneasy about not having personally read all or most of the NCLB legislation, I was delighted to discover in their third chapter, “Troubling Images of Teaching in No Child Left Behind,” Cochran-Smith and Lytle provide precisely the kind of information and analysis I didn’t even know I was looking for. While their presentation of the material is most certainly not neutral--as they themselves acknowledge—this chapter provided me with exactly the kind of detailed examination and close analysis of the bill, its assumptions, and its embedded ideologies, that I needed to feel as though I was getting a more complete picture. While it is not a new realization to see that the values embedded in NCLB emphasize the importance of teachers’ content area knowledge and the paramount usefulness of “scientific” research in classroom best practices, Cochran-Smith and Lytle offer a critical and thorough examination of these values in a clear, concise, and logical way that I have not before seen explored so systematically.

While the banking model of education is not new to me, I had never before considered fully the ways this model (and its values) are embedded within and play themselves out through the mandates of NCLB.   Cochran-Smith and Lytle clearly demonstrate that one of the grounding tenants of NCLB is the an assumption that the job of education is to pass knowledge from one individual to the next, in a direct, linear, and systemic way. If, then, knowledge is a commodity that can be passed from one individual to another, it is flows logically that, as Cochran-Smith and Lytle point out, “What it takes to teach is subject matter [knowledge], many American teachers are not competent in subject matter [hence why schools are “failing], teachers are not competent because existing teacher peroration and licensure systems do not work” (65).  Moreover, if content area knowledge is steady and unchanging, as NCLB conceives of it, then it follows that if teachers are primarily responsible for student success, and student success is measured through standardized assessments of students’’ knowledge in various content areas, and students are consistently scoring poorly on these assessments, then teachers must lack adequate knowledge of the subjects they teach. However, as Cochran-Smith and Lytle point out, “decades of research have shown that learning is a process of developing useable knowledge… by building on previous knowledge and experience” (67). My question, then, is, if there are decades of research demonstrating that learning is a process rather than a product, and if NCLB is so highly concerned with research-based legislation, why is THIS research in process-based learning, not the research undergirding the policy? And perhaps even more disconcerting, I find myself asking, have these people who wrote this legislation never been taught or learned anything? I mean, come on, everyone has had that teacher or professor who was brilliant in practicing their field of expertise, but couldn’t teach their way out of a paper bag! Do these people not remember learning to ride a bike? Just as someone cannot explain to you the mechanics of a bicycle, demonstrate their function, model how to ride, and then you hop on a bicycle for the first time and ride; neither can academic knowledge be packaged and delivered in a linear way—why would they think it could be?!

Both more vexing and even more interesting to me, however, is the portrait of teacher knowledge and authority which Cochran-Smith and Lytle argue NCLB is creating. They argue, “NCLB’s assumptions about the nature of teachers’ work and its significance are tied directly to testing, accountability, and scientifically based research as the key to improving the quality of what teachers do” (69). As I read this section, I had—in the words of the immortal Oprah—an “Ah-ha! moment.” Of course, it all makes sense now. The minds behind the NCLB legislation still conceive teacher experience, wisdom, and knowledge in the terms of Stephen North’s (also immortal) house of lore. How can the collective, but localized and sometimes varying, and often unempirical knowledge of a bunch of teachers (most of whom are women), be of any use?! They can’t even agree on a single right way of doing things, so how can this lore, passed like juicy town gossip at the local salon, be of any value?  Furthermore, if we are measuring the success of this pedagogy of lore based on students’ performances on a series of large scale assessments which are rooted in terms of unidimensional national standards, is it any wonder that we understand teacher knowledge/training as directly causing student failure? When you see NCLB through the deeply rooted values that undergird it—and which Cochran-Smith and Lytle so effectively unpack from the law’s language—it’s almost not hard to see how we’ve become a nation who seems to see teachers as the enemy and national mandates as the solution.

A Slight Digression and (Unfortunately) Another Story About Mom:

As I read the latter half of the chapter, in which the authors pointed specifically to NCLB’s distrust of localized teacher knowledge and unraveled some of the reasons behind this distrust, I found myself chewing on a recent and vexing conversation with my mother.

Last Sunday when I--as my mother sighed more than she actually spoke at supper—asked her what she was thinking about, she answered, “school, of course.” She explained that despite having taught American history for 30 years, she was newly frustrated and overwhelmed because she was weeks behind where the school district-mandated curriculum said they should be at this point in the semester. “We’re supposed to be talking about Reconstruction,” she said, “And I haven’t even started the Civil War yet!” An American history teacher because of her love stories, she explained that her trouble was that there are so many cool stories and activities to be done to teach the lead-up to the war, that she can’t bring herself to sacrifice her favorite parts of the curriculum for the district learning objectives. “They just want us to spend so much damn time on Reconstruction… and how bad it was for black people…” she said, beginning to trail off, “OK. Yes, we get the race stuff already, but get over it…”  Knowing this was not the moment to contest her racist and narrow-minded statement--and also knowing by the way she held my gaze for just a split second, daring me to say something, that she was fully aware of what I was thinking—I said nothing.

For days, though, her words (and my lack of them) have haunted me. What do you mean, “get over it?” And, no, you  clearly don’t “get it already” or you wouldn’t think something like that. My reading of Cochran-Smith and Lytle’s argument and the perspective of NCLB which they lay out, only further roved to complicate and trouble my consideration of this event.

In this case, it seems to me that the system- (district-) mandated curriculum has its heart in the right place. It seems to be espousing (at least on the surface) a pedagogy centered in critical thinking about the histories we learn and their implications for social justice. (Either that or I’m giving the curriculum too much credit). However, my mother, who in this case really does know the material (her content area) extremely well, either politically or pedagogically doesn’t see a need to focus on this aspect of history. It strikes me, then, that something is being lost in translation. As Cochran-Smith and Lytle so aptly point out at the end of their chapter, teaching “entails how teachers’ actions are infused with complex and multilayered understandings of learners, culture, class, gender, literacies, social issues, institutions, herstories and histories, materials, texts, and curricula [and I’ll add, race]” (84). In other words, as it turns out, teachers are human and thus subject to all the many human influences as the rest of us.

Thus, if my mother, in this case, is an expert on the material she teaches, but is ideologically opposed the district-minded but more socially aware curriculum, what is missing? In this case—and seemingly in some contrast to what Cochran-Smith and Lytle seem to be implicitly arguing—the person who (I think Cochran-Smith and Lytle would expect) should be more likely to teach the more socially and culturally aware curriculum is not, and it is the system-mandated curriculum that seems to be more aware of local conditions and issues of social justice. In this case, how can the district’s curriculum be better expressed in a way that my mother (and other teachers liker her) might see its value?

Moreover, just because my mother’s version of the curriculum omits or at very least diminishes this racial aspect of history, does not mean that what she is teaching is worthless or wrong. She is a story teller and lover of hands-on experiential learning—a pedagogy which her students have consistently loved and learned from over the years—so she focuses on the parts of the curriculum (of history) that best lend themselves to this kind of teaching. The notes she’s received and the conversations I’ve been whiteness to over the years, testify to the effect her story-rich, hands-on pedagogy has had on students, helping them to love learning and history.

So is it better, then, that students learn a particular, fairly white-centric version of  history, but be encouraged to love learning and history; or is it better that they learn a more complex view of history that encourages thinking about social justice, but run the risk of not being exposed to the kind of pedagogy that seems to foster a love of learning? I don’t mean to suggest that the two sides must be mutually exclusive, because they’re not, but pragmatically, there just doesn’t seem to be time to do it all. And even if there was, how can we teach (or guide) a seasoned teacher, complete with her own set of biases and cultural beliefs, a whole new set of stories (or curriculum) so  that she can embrace them enough to teach them with the same creativity and passion she has always taught with?

* * * * * * * *

I’m sure the connection of this story and these questions to the issues raised by Cochran-Smith and Lytle in the chapter still aren’t very clear. I have a strong sense the connections are there—and aren’t entirely a self-interested digression—but I’m still having trouble articulating them. I hope that as we talk, perhaps I can better articulate my thoughts.

* * * * * * * * *

A Few Connecting Thoughts on Chapter 4:

To be honest, as I finished chapter three, I found myself in a pretty dark place, feeling as if the system was too big, the values too deeply entrenched, and the ideologies that undergird them only seeming to gain momentum. However, I was pleasantly surprised to have found a dim light in the darkness in Cochran-Smyth and Lytle’s examination of “Practitioner Research and University Culture.” As they explained the various programs and research they have participated in at their various institutions, and the ways in which they can imagine using practitioner research to disrupt and potentially rearrange the university structure, I found hope.

Though convincing politicians, policy makers, and the larger culture that our cultural understandings about what education should be and what teachers should do are wrong, feels overwhelming and quickly leads to me melting into a soggy puddle of distraught sobs, the notion of changing university culture seems just a bit more do-able. If we can work, as community of “academics,” to push back against the cultural devaluations of practitioner research and knowledge, and push universities to reimagine themselves in terms of this kind of work, perhaps this can be the first step toward greater cultural change. Because institutions of higher education hold a good deal of cultural capital, if a critical mass of academics (and their universities) started doing and valuing practitioner researcher, then perhaps policy makers and the general public might look up and say, “well, ok, if our country’s ‘brains’ think this is a  valid way of thinking and making knowledge, than I guess we’ll try it too.” Though still, likely farfetched very naive on my part, somehow, reimagining and changing the structures of university culture seems just a little bit more possible than directly changing the minds of policy makers.

Some Things I Believe...

I believe education should be locally controlled—as locally as possible—including decisions about standards, outcomes, and assessment.

As NCLB has marked much of my adult life—my latter years in school and the years during which I have been most attuned to educational policy—I accredit it (and the educational trends and polices that led to it) with much of my distrust of federally mandated education policy. While I could potentially envision myself supporting broad standards that outline absolute core skills we, as a nation, hope any student would have mastered upon graduation (e.g. basic reading and writing skills, foundational math skills, and elementary understandings of science and history), I simply do not understand how we can expect, in a nation as large and diverse as ours, that any set of standards or educational policies could possibly be beneficial to all students (or even the majority of students). Because our country is so geographically, culturally, ethnically, religiously, and socioeconomically diverse, the educational needs and expectations of students in one state, I think, are difficult to compare to those in another, let alone the varying needs of students even within a single school.

Furthermore, because I believe in the wisdom, authority, and professionalism of most teachers (and educational professionals), I believe that teachers and administrators in local contexts (states, cities, districts, and individual schools) should have the autonomy to set specific standards and decide on a curriculum to achieve those standards based on the needs of their students.
  I imagine that if teachers were given the autonomy to negotiate their own standards and create their own curriculum as a community of educators, they would be more likely to take responsibility for what and how they teach, and be able to respond to the needs of their students in effective and innovative ways.

However, in order to have schools that are staffed by responsible and dedicated educators with whom we can entrust decisions about standards and curriculum, we need to create a clement in which teachers are treated and trained as professionals, capable of and expected to engage in critical thought, team work, self0 and peer-evaluation. It seems to me one of the wicked and self-propagating problems education faces in our country, is a national culture that understands teachers as neither professionals or intellectuals. The educational system strips teachers of so much sovereignty, works hard to police teachers rather than perceive them as trusted and intellectual mentors, and as a manifests its devaluing of teacher work with low salaries and compensation packages. These issues combined with our many pre-service teacher training programs which educate future teachers with a “need-to-know” model rather than a “need-to-know-how-think” model, fail to draw the best and brightest into the field of education. The less sovereignty teachers have (both in their own instruction and in their ability to police themselves as a profession), combined with the poor compensation, and the ever-increasing work-loads of teachers; the more likely it seems that even the “best and brightest” teachers are likely to grow frustrated and either drop out of education all together or work to move up the educational food chain, and thus out of classrooms where they are most needed.

If teacher education programs were forced to focus less on instructing  pre-service in “the standards” and “the rules” of the educational system (because practicing teachers had greater sovereignty) and could spend more time mentoring developing teachers, instructing them in critical thinking and problem solving skills, content area information, and theories and practices of pedagogy; then it seems the field would be more likely to attract and retain motivated, intelligent, and qualified teachers.

Alongside localized education policy, I believe in the importance of small, community-based schools. 
 When I consider the problems cited by many teachers—apathetic students, students with uninvolved parents, discipline problems, overwhelming workloads—and those often cited by the media and general public—bullying in schools, violence in schools, poor student performance, etc.—it strikes me that smaller, localized school communities, with small class sizes might help to alleviate some of these problems. It seems that often the public expects schools to provide the parenting for children—a model which I believe only leads to an educational model that is rigid and institutional in nature—however, such expectations are simply unrealistic. If the public wants the educational system to help solve social concerns, then we need to create environments in which students can receive personalized attention that is able to attend and respond to a student’s individualized educational, personal, and social needs. With thirty students or more in a classroom and potentially up to 150-200 students in a given teacher’s teaching-load, how can we expect educators to see bullying, productively address behavior problems, or see a student’s individual academic and personal needs.

Me and the 12A class of the Max-Beckmann Schule

While I disagree with significant portions of their educational system, after a year of working in a German high school, I am convinced that their (or at least my) high school’s community model may be both beneficial and applicable to American schools. In my Frankfurt high school, though the school’s student body numbered nearly 600, each student was part of a small, meaningful community. Each grade level in the school (11^th, 12^th, and 13^th grades) were divided into a series of classes supervised by a single teacher, similar to the American notion of homeroom. Like American “home rooms” students remained in these classes and with the same teacher throughout their three years in the school. However, unlike American home rooms which tend to only meet briefly and primarily seem to serve as a point of information dissemination and clerical work, the German classes were designed to be functional, meaningful, and sustaining communities for students.

Me and my fellow English teaching colleagues. An odd, but loveable bunch.

Not only did students within a given class, have at least one academic course together each day, every year, they also worked as a team to be involved in school activities and even plan class outings and their graduation trip (which is chaperoned by the class teacher). These opportunities to engage in meaningful team work and community activity, at best drew students together as friends, and at the very least seemed to encourage a sense of community responsibility for one another within the class. Even more importantly, because classes rarely exceeded 20 students and teachers remained with the same class for three years, each class teacher was extremely familiar with his or her students. “Class teachers” were able to monitor students’ academic progress, be attuned to their personal and social situations, and were aware of any problems their students faced elsewhere in the school. If another teacher was having behavioral or academic concerns about a given student, that teacher could always go to the student’s “class teacher” to seek advice, context, or to collaborate on solutions. As a result of this network of students and teachers, I had the impression that students who may have otherwise struggled or fallen through cracks of the American model, were often caught by the safety net of their peers and teacher. Even if there was no one available or able to see them at home, students had a community small enough and interconnected enough at school to truly see them.

I believe small communities, similar to the German model, in our schools may lead to both better academic education for students and a more socially just and caring school environment.

I believe in an educational model that is as diverse as our nation’s population, a model that offers a wide variety of learning structures and institutions that can serve a range of students interests and needs. (i.e. charter schools, structured/military schools, “traditional” schools, vocational and technical programs, emersion/experiential schools, and any other number of models that I can’t even imagine).

In our attempts to “standardize” education, we have, in many ways done just that: created a general, basic, flat-line of a standard—an average—educational model that, in the end, does not really fit any student. As we have rushed to define academic success with standardized assessments and a school’s rates of college attendance, we have lost sight of the many learners and individuals who do not fit and do not want to fit in that model. By focusing so intently on a limited range of academic skills (proficiency in which can only be demonstrated in a singular way) and by increasingly structuring curricula around “college-prep” skills, we have entirely lost sight of the usefulness and necessity of mechanical, artistic, and service-industry skills that are better learned through apprenticeship than classroom work. Because we devalue the work of plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, farmers, child care providers, and others, we have created educational environments in which not only are students not having the opportunities to learn these trades, but they, themselves, are being devalued as un-intelligent, un-academic, and/or un-intellectual.

I am convinced that college attendance is not the mark of educational success and rather it is preparing an engaged, curious, and critically thinking citizenry that is prepared to do good and to do the work that interests them and betters their community. In order to achieve this—to provide learning opportunities that motivate, engage, and genuinely educate students—we need an educational system that provides a diverse range of educational models in which students can participate. By providing students with exploratory learning environments, apprenticeships, hands-on learning, real world problem solving opportunities, and more, students—regardless of socioeconomic status, race, gender, or disability—are more likely to be engaged and motivated learners.

I believe writing can be a powerful social tool, can be empowering to students, and can be, for many people, a means of thinking.

 Because I believe that for many people writing is the one way we have to make our thoughts stand still long enough to make them make sense, I also believe that writing instruction should focus on helping students learn to organize their thoughts, think critically communicate effectively through language, and find their voices (and the skills) to use language in order to advocate for themselves and others. Such instruction, however, is not possible when teachers are over-burned by enormous class-sizes, are not treated or trained as professionals, and when the educational system does not allow for the kind of local control that would enable teachers to provide the kind of meaningful instruction that might lead to such learning. Furthermore, I will be the first to admit that such a paradigm for writing instruction is not easily achieved, and that is why teachers desperately need professional, personal and financial support.

NCTE Ch. 10: "Savory Alliances"--Jacqueline Jones Royster

Royster's chapter offers a fairly detailed and useful overview of  NCTE's founding, the development of its organizational structure, and the alliances and relationships it has formed with other professional and educational organizations. Opening with a brief history of NCTE's four founders--James Fleming Hosic, Fred Newton Scott, Edwin L. Miller, and John M. Clapp--Royster argues that these men's story lay the groundwork for what would become the "two primary frameworks within which NCTE was able to grow beyond the charter group: the organization's constitution and its organization into sections" (366). In addition to these two framing concepts,  throughout her chapter Royster emphasizes NCTE's group commitment to "democratic principles," professional alliances, and the group's focus on advocating for "the exercising of agency and authority by English professionals and their students" (362).

By way of exemplifying these values, Royster recounts the formation of NCTE's various sections and caucuses. Both highlighting the organization's commitment to diversity, while not ignoring the gender and racial discrimination in its past, she spends a good deal of time tracing the history of women and African Americans within NCTE. In closing she briefly highlights the many secondary and outside organizations which NCTE members have helped found and with whom NCTE has formed alliances in order to advocate for the good of educators and students.

Thoughts.

As I read Royster's chapter for a second time, I could not help but return to the same questions and concerns I've had since first reading it a year ago. Royster argues that NCTE's organizational structure which favors division without complete separation has allowed it to  grow as an organization, adapt dynamically to its members' needs, and provide a variety of outlets through which members could address their individual needs. While I agree that such division, "sectioning," and "caucusing" has undeniably enabled NCTE to grow, what troubles me is whether or not all this branching, without any effort to remember that all the branches are attached to the same tree, is really all that good for the organization and the profession.

        in addressing NCTE's response to changing historical contexts in the twentieth century (i.e. greater equality for women and minorities), Royster points out that a question that has perhaps plagued the organization from its inception is: "advocacy for whom in particular?" (377). And with this, I think she nails on the head  the trouble I see with NCTE's constant branching. After reading these histories of the organization, it seems that for a hundred years NCTE has been trying to negotiate who its constituency is, never wanting to exclude anyone but always also wanting to serve everyone’s best interest. As a result, as I see it, several of the sections (like CCC) have grown from branches into huge limbs with their own network of branches growing from them, and consequently seem to have forgotten that at their roots they're attached to the NCTE tree. The Community College Section is concerned with their issues, CCC has its own concerns,  the Conference on English Education has its constituencies, and NCTE "basic" concerns itself with secondary teachers. While each of these groups, I think, needs a place to voice and work on its own issues and concerns,  with no real space to come back together as a whole professional English Educators, each section seems to sort of forget about the others. Because (at least my impression is) not many university types attend NCTE and few if any secondary teachers attended CCCC, and likely only a little cross over happens within TYCA and CEE, as a profession, I think we sometimes fail to pool our resources. Because my impression is that NCTE  (the supposed parent organization) has become the home of primary and secondary educators and everyone else has their own sections, there's not really place for all of these folks to get together and really discuss the profession and education holistically.

Sometimes I Get Angry When I Read... Be Advised

STROL Ch. 1: "Cross Currents in Language Policy and Pedagogical Practices"--Scott, Straker, Katz

Summary:

In the opening chapter to their edited collection, Scott, Straker, and Katz both provide a chapter outline for their collection, and more importantly provide historical, linguistic, and policy  background that informs chapters that follow. Breaking history down into 5 periods (1740-1845, 1845-1905, 1905-1954, 1964-1980, 1980-to the present), they briefly analyze the linguistic concerns and trends of the period, as well as key legal cases that dramatically impacted language policy, education, and racial/ethnic rights in the US. The authors characterize our present conditions as marked by "intolerance for language diversity" as evidenced by the English Only Movement, and which is only reinforced by policies like NCLB (6).

The authors describe three major sources of present language diversity in the US: the dialects of African descendants, the languages of indigenous people, and the languages spoken by past and present immigrants to the US. The authors then explain the challenges created by polices like NCLB for speakers of these dialects and non-English languages.

Finally, before outlining the work of the books chapters, the authors briefly explain the intentions of STROL and a few of the ways in which it has been taken up. They also comment briefly on the five other resolutions which have extended and expanded the work of the original 1972 statement on STROL: the 1974 position statement on STROL, the 1986 Position Statement on English Only legislation, the 1988 Language Policy Resolution, and CCC and NCTE 2003 resolutions reaffirming STROL.

“The Hidden Linguistic Legacies of Brown v. Board and No Child Left Behind” –John Baugh and Aaron Welborn

Summary:

By examining NCLB alongside the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, in Brown v. the Board of Education, to desegregate American schools, Baugh and Welborn suggest that just as Brown v. Board, on its surface, promised equality to African American students but did not deliver, so too does NCLB perhaps further disadvantage African American students based on linguistic differences. Unlike other immigrants to the US, argue the authors, African slaves who were brought against their will to the country, did not have the same opportunities (socially and educationally) to be exposed to and acquire standard English, and as a result passed this limited access to Standard English onto the following generations of African Americans. Furthermore, they argue that the negative associations tied to AAVE only serve to further disadvantage contemporary speakers of the dialect.

        Bough and Welborn, continue on to explain the well-intentioned but inevitably detrimental educational policies that have resulted from NCLB. By linking school funding to student achievement on standardized tests (in spite of the “accommodations” made for several sub-populations), argue the authors, students with Limited English Proficiency and/or speakers of non-standard dialects of English do proportionally poorer on such tests and as a result attend schools that often receive harsh and unhelpful federal sanctions. In the end, Bough and Welborn argue that “because the native dialect of AAVE speakers represents a language barrier to full participation in school,” NCLB—with its focus on standardized assessment as a measure of school success--functions only to further widen the achievement gap.

LESSON LEARNED: Don’t read incendiary things before going to bed! RAAHHR!

RANT: I’m wondering if reading or hearing about the details of NCLB will ever fail to infuriate me and cause me to periodically have to stomp away from my reading in disgust. Why on Earth did anyone ever think it was a good idea to take money AWAY from schools  that preform less well. “Why, yes,” they thought, “if a schools students are struggling, I bet giving them fewer resources will solve the problem!”

NCLB is precisely the reason I am so skeptical of federally mandated education policy, because, as Bough and Welborn point out, it is nearly impossible for a federal policy to account for all of the local conditions (student populations, learning needs, community expectations, etc.) of every school (let alone student) in the country. Clearly those who decided LEP students should be able to learn English in three years, have never tried to learn a second language. And moreover, while it may be unrealistic to expect that every school could provide long-term (or even short-term) first-language instruction for all of its various LEP students, to ask these students to perform on a standardized test is absurd. I had the advantage of leisurely learning German over the course of a decade, free of any emergent pressures to become proficient or fluent, and after having lived in Germany for a year and a half, I still doubt I could pass the German equivalent of a State assessment! Bough and Welborn are right, of course NCLB is disadvantaging students with different language proficiencies and backgrounds—just as its disadvantaging most of the nation’s students!!

…OK.. Rant over…

More to the point…

While I agree fully with Bough and Welborn’s critique of NCLB—particularly their assertion that the biggest problem with NCLB is that it “mistakes measuring schools with fixing them”—I cannot help but disagree with their more specific argument about the speakers of AAVE. I begin to take issue with Bough and Welborn’s claim at the very root of their argument: their premise that “AAVE students need instructional methods that will enable them to acquire Standard English literacy” (51). Though I’ve long struggled with the issue of Standard English, I remain unconvinced that our goal as educators should be to further propagate it. By making Standard English our educational goal, we are only further reinforcing its embedded power and consequently devaluing other, equally legitimate, dialects of English.

Bough and Welborn argue that valuing dialect differences, “can help [students] not only explore their heritage and associate more deeply with fellow speakers of the same dialect, but also to overcome value judgment about “standard” language usage with a sense of pride in their community” (51). The trouble, however, is that this argument makes no blessed sense! If Bough and Welborn are still suggesting that, though educators should acknowledge and respect students linguistic differences, the goal of literacy education should still be Standard English, than the educational process itself will only reinforce to students that while their dialect might be “nice” and “cultural,” the language of academics and of power is not theirs! To explicitly teach the Standard, is to reify it!

Furthermore, Bough and Welborn argue that “the native dialect of AAVE speakers represents a language barrier to full participation in school” because Standard English is the dialect of academics (49). While they may be correct in asserting that  the Standard is the dialect of academics (a reality, which incidentally they are only further promoting), I am not sure I buy that being a speaker of AAVE inhibits students from participation in academics. Much of what I’ve read suggests that speakers of non-standard dialects have little trouble understanding spoken or printed Standard English. If educators, however, do devalue non-standard speech and writing, that would of course put these students at a disadvantage. But again, insisting on teaching them to speak and write in the Standard, only perpetuates the devaluing of a fully functional and eloquent dialect.