philosophy and no child left behind: an epistemological
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Philosophy and No child left behind: anepistemological analysis of the effects ofeducational policy on knowledge development.Gouveia, Gleidsonhttps://iro.uiowa.edu/discovery/delivery/01IOWA_INST:ResearchRepository/12730537780002771?l#13730816390002771
Gouveia. (2015). Philosophy and No child left behind: an epistemological analysis of the effects ofeducational policy on knowledge development [University of Iowa].https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.b9s4nu94
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PHILOSOPHY AND NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND: AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL
ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY ON KNOWLEDGE
DEVELOPMENT
by
Gleidson Gouveia
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy
degree in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies in the
Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
August 2015
Thesis Supervisors: Professor David Bills
Professor Richard Fumerton
Copyright by
GLEIDSON GOUVEIA
2015
All Rights Reserved
Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
____________________________
PH.D. THESIS
_________________
This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of
Gleidson Gouveia
has been approved by the Examining Committee for
the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy degree
in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies at the August 2015 graduation.
Thesis Committee: ____________________________________________
David Bills, Thesis Supervisor
____________________________________________
Richard Fumerton, Thesis Supervisor
____________________________________________
Gregory Hamot
____________________________________________
Brian An
____________________________________________
Ali Hasan
____________________________________________
Marcus Haack
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge those who have helped me during my sojourn at the
University of Iowa College of Education. First of all, I would like to thank the teachers
who were willing to share with me their thoughts on the effects of No Child Left Behind
on knowledge development among elementary school students. They provided me with
rich and valuable information on their teaching practice and experience. Without their
help, this study would not have been possible. I would like to extend my gratitude to Pat
Fumerton, Mary Farmer, and Marsha Nichols for helping me locate experienced school
teachers who were willing to be interviewed for this project.
I am grateful for the help and guidance my dissertation committee provided me
for the past year. I am particularly indebted to David Bills, who oversaw the process of
development and writing of my dissertation, Richard Fumerton, for serving as a co-chair
and assisting me with social and virtue epistemological literature, and Gregory Hamot,
who provided methodological guidance to this study. I would also like to acknowledge
the help of the other members of the committee: Brian An, Marcus Haack, and Ali Hasan.
I would like to recognize some people at the University of Iowa and the College
of Education who went beyond the call of duty to make of this a great experience: Laura
Holtkamp, who helped make sure I was under immigration status and out of trouble with
the law, the staff in the College of Education Dean‘s Office, Judy Brewer, Chris Grier,
Elizabeth Holmes and Tina Hass, who put up with my daily multiple visits to the dean‘s
office for coffee, questions, magazines, and stories, the EPLS secretary Jan Latta, and
Christopher Morphew, for his support of everyone in the College of Education.
iii
There are family and friends who were essential to the successful completion of
this project. They are, first and foremost, my wife Jaqueline and our dog Bella, who
provided love, attention, and support whenever it was most needed. Our friends Marilea
and Alberto Bornschein provided not only close friendship but financial support, without
which this project would not have been possible. Our friend James Lemos, who worked
his magic incessantly to always find the best airfare deals for the countless trips we made
between Iowa and southern Brazil during our eight-year stay in Iowa. Finally, my parents
and Jaqueline‘s parents deserve our most sincere gratitude for what they did for us.
Finally, we were very lucky to have made several deer friends in Iowa, who make
a world of difference in our lives: Jill and Justin Fishbaugh, our great and close friends
who taught us about airplanes and the best of American pop culture and language, Sue
and Phil Jordan, whose hearts are so big they adopted us as their own children the day
they first invited us to their house for Thanksgiving dinner, Kristi Marchesani and Bob
Pesek, without whom we would never have come to Iowa in the first place, Samuel
Gladden, the best letter of recommendation writer we have ever met, Amanda Gallogly,
for her talent with writing skills and text editing, the Cedar Valley Family members, and
our Cedar Falls, IA friends: Paul Sapp, Jessica Moon, Joan and Joe Marchesani, and the
Fontanas. Thank you for making such a difference in our lives and for teaching us, by
example, how to be better people. We have all of you deeply ingrained in our hearts.
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ABSTRACT
The purpose of the study was to identify teacher perception regarding the effects
of NCLB on the development of knowledge among elementary school students in two
school districts in a Midwestern state. I applied a case-study design to address the
research questions, with data obtained from interviews with eight experienced school
teachers, who reported on the state of the cognitive development of their students.
Epistemology, specifically social and virtue epistemology, served as the theoretical
framework for the analysis of the data, thus filling a gap in the literature for an
epistemological study of the effects of NCLB. The hypothesis for the study was that
NCLB is detrimental to the development of knowledge among elementary students by
placing too much emphasis on mandated standardized testing, and by limiting the
curriculum to the subjects that are under the requirements for Adequate Yearly Progress
(YAP). The analysis of teacher input indicates that NCLB hinders the development of
knowledge among elementary school students. This is because educators are constrained
by excessive testing requirements, and are thus not able to foster in their students the
intellectual virtues necessary for the development of the lifelong learner, the student who
is capable of and understands that learning continuous throughout one‘s life. Future
research is needed to link the scholarship on intellectual virtues to the education of school
children, making of the virtues a central and intrinsic part of the educational effort.
v
PUBLIC ABSTRACT
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), the most recent iteration of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), has been at the center of
educational debate and scholarship for more than a decade. Controversial from its
enactment, NCLB has been criticized for relying too heavily on standardized testing and
for reducing the curriculum to a few subjects.
My dissertation addresses the question of how NCLB affected the development of
knowledge among elementary school students. Epistemology, the study of knowledge and
belief justification, served as the theoretical framework for the analysis of the data.
Applying a case study analysis methodology, I interviewed eight experienced teachers for
their opinions on the impact NCLB had on the cognitive formation of their students.
Specifically, I asked the teachers to report on the state of intellectual virtues development
among their students, fundamental for knowledge development.
The findings of the study indicate that NCLB has a negative impact on the
development of knowledge among elementary school students. Instead of providing
students with the tools they need to become lifelong learners, NCLB forces teachers to
teach only content that will be on the mandated tests their students have to pass to
demonstrate they know the things they have to know. If the students fail these tests, the
consequences are dire for the entire school community.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................1 Overview of the Study ......................................................................................1 Statement of the Problem ..................................................................................2 Rationale/ Purpose of the study ........................................................................3 Theoretical Framework .....................................................................................5 Research Questions ...........................................................................................6 Research Methodology .....................................................................................8 Limitations ........................................................................................................9
CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ............................................................11 A Brief Historical Overview of Educational Policy in America ....................11
Reauthorizing ESEA and implementing No Child Left Behind .............18 Academic Achievement of Disadvantaged Students ......................................20 Standards, Assessment, and Accountability ...................................................22 Adequate Yearly Progress ..............................................................................24 Obama and NCLB ..........................................................................................27
Race to the Top ........................................................................................29 ESEA Blueprint for Reform ....................................................................33
NCLB Pushback .............................................................................................41 Summary .........................................................................................................43
CHAPTER 3: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ..............................................................44 Introduction .....................................................................................................44 History ............................................................................................................44
Distinct types of knowledge ....................................................................48 Social Epistemology .......................................................................................54 Virtue Epistemology: from Aristotle to contemporary philosophy ................64 Why Social Epistemology and Virtue Epistemology .....................................76 Summary .........................................................................................................83
CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ...............................................................85 Introduction .....................................................................................................85 Restatement of the Problem and Research Questions ....................................85 Appropriateness of Qualitative Research for this Study .................................88 The Qualitative Researcher .............................................................................92 Research Design .............................................................................................93 Site Selection and Participants ........................................................................96 Data Collection ...............................................................................................98 Interviews .......................................................................................................99 Pilot ...............................................................................................................104 Data Analysis and Coding ............................................................................106 Coding...........................................................................................................108 Summary .......................................................................................................116
CHAPTER 5: DATA ANALYSIS .................................................................................118 Introduction ...................................................................................................118 Salient Themes that Emerged from the Data ................................................121
NCLB and Stress/Pressure ....................................................................121 NCLB and High-Stakes Testing ............................................................129 NCLB and teacher accountability .........................................................136 NCLB and higher-order thinking ..........................................................143
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Improving NCLB: teacher perspective ..................................................148 Summary .......................................................................................................153
CHAPTER 6: FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION ...........................................................154 Introduction ...................................................................................................154 Changes Brought by NCLB and the Implications for Knowledge Development .................................................................................................155 Improving education with intellectual virtues ..............................................162 Concluding Remarks ....................................................................................164 Future research ..............................................................................................171
APPENDIX A ..................................................................................................................172
APPENDIX B ..................................................................................................................173
APPENDIX C ..................................................................................................................174
APPENDIX D ..................................................................................................................176
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................179
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CHAPTER 1:
INTRODUCTION
This is an epistemological study of the effects of NCLB on the development of
knowledge among elementary school students. I begin the introductory chapter by
providing an overview of this study and setting, a statement of the problem, purpose of
the study, theoretical framework, research questions, research methodology, limitations,
and significance of the study.
Overview of the Study
The purpose of this study was to examine teachers‘ perceptions of the process of
knowledge development among elementary school students under the accountability
requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. I applied qualitative methodology
(case-study analysis) to interview eight teachers from two school districts in a
Midwestern state, who told me about their experience teaching before and after NCLB
and what they think the act has done to the educational enterprise.
The first phase of the study involved the review of the literature on the effects of
the NCLB requirements. This phase took three months to complete, and it took place
during the Fall semester of 2014. Subsequently, the study questions gave rise to the
design of a qualitative study involving school teachers who have been teaching since
before the enactment of NCLB. The teachers were interviewed either via the telephone or
in-person at the school where they worked. The data collection took two months for
completion (January and February 2015), with the interviews ranging in time from
twenty-five to fifty-five minutes. Upon completion of the data collection and
transcription of the interviews, I analyzed the data using epistemology as a theoretical
2
framework. This phase took three months for completion, and it resulted in the findings
and conclusions described at the end of this dissertation.
This study emerged in the context of NCLB reauthorization. On April 9, 2015,
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stated that the nation is at a crossroads with two
different directions for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act (ESEA). According to Duncan (2015), the choice entails moral and economic
consequences: ―The current law, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), should be replaced with
a law that ensures opportunity for every child in this country; strengthens our nation
economically; and expands support for schools, teachers, and principals, as well as
accountability for the progress of all students.‖ Duncan also stated that teachers and
principals know ESEA is overdue for repairs, and he made suggestions on what needs to
be done to fix the bill. This study has the potential to inform the efforts in the
reauthorization of the ESEA law.
Statement of the Problem
NCLB has been the subject of education and policy debate for more than a decade
since its implementation in 2002. The fruit of bipartisan effort, NCLB was implemented
with hopes that it would improve the overall state of affairs of American education and
bridge the equality gap of educational access among students. Closing the educational
gap would be achieved, according to the designers of the plan, through the
implementation of equity in educational policy and practice, holding states, school
systems, and educators directly accountable for the achievement of educational success
(Sunderman, 2008; Fusarelli, 2004).
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In spite of all the promises, criticism of the law emerged early, and the fact that
NCLB failed in what it proposed to accomplish remains a common topic of discussion
among educators and policy scholars. Dissatisfaction with NCLB has come in just about
every form, from the way it forces important subjects out of the curriculum to how it
unfairly treats schools across the country, creating an uninviting and discouraging
learning environment for teachers and students. There are also those who defend NCLB
as a piece of legislation that has improved the educational quality offered at schools
across the country, putting American students more closely on par with the students of
other develop nations in the world. Both supporters and detractors have used a myriad of
theories and hypothesis to analyze NCLB: theories in law, sociology, psychology,
education, and value theory, to name only a few. One area appears to have been
underused as a theoretical framework for the study of NCLB: philosophy. Epistemology
seems to have been particularly overlooked in the analysis of NCLB, as a thorough
review of the literature resulted in not a single epistemological study of the NCLB Act.
This is surprising, given the fact that knowledge should be most certainly at the center of
any educational policy or law.
Rationale/ Purpose of the study
The primary purpose of this study was to explore what teachers think of the
effects of NCLB on the development of knowledge among elementary school students.
Social and virtue epistemology served as the framework to analyze the experience of
teachers before and after NCLB was enacted, with the intent of realizing whether the
students are intellectually benefiting or being harmed by the requirements and effects of
the policy. Within the primary purpose was also an evaluation of the place of education
4
for intellectual virtues in the schooling of elementary school students, an essential
component of knowledge development.
This study focused on the development of intellectual virtues as a means towards
knowledge development and the construction of the lifelong learner, the student who
understands learning does not stop at school, but instead extends itself throughout one‘s
life. The virtues of curiosity, open-mindedness, resilience, persistence, patience, among
many others, received prominence in the analysis, as they are fundamental for students to
be able to develop their cognitive capacities. This study analyzed how the public
education system foster or hinders such capacities in students under the requirements of
NCLB.
This study contributes to the literature on NCLB by providing evidence of how
NCLB negatively impacts the development of intellectual virtues among elementary
school students. The discussion I provide in this dissertation also brings attention to the
fact that teachers think the accountability model of NCLB is not currently benefiting the
kids. As a matter of fact, the teachers I interviewed for this project state that the heavy
emphasis on testing put forth by the accountability model of NCLB causes high levels of
stress in the staff and the students, leading to a potential negative attitude in students
towards their education, learning in general, and the development of the intellectual
virtues, essential for the transformation of the student into the lifelong learner. This is
very important information to have in mind and for the legislators to know, as congress is
currently working on reauthorizing NCLB.
This study also contributes to current scholarship on NCLB because it brings to
light the fact that, according to teacher perspective, students do not have access to
5
opportunities to develop critical thinking and deep reasoning because teachers feel they
are very constrained by the curriculum and the manuals they have to follow. If a student
is curious to know something that is not in the curriculum, or that is not in the manual,
the teacher does not have the time to stop the lesson and answer the question, regardless
of how important the teachers understands it to be for the education of their students,
because teachers know that they must follow the manual to make sure students learn what
they need to know to pass the mandated NCLB tests. If students fail the tests, and the
school does not make the required adequate yearly progress, the stakes are high and the
consequences dire. This study brings attention to this problem and to the fact that more
discussion is needed before NCLB is authorized, so that students have a chance to
develop the intellectual virtues through their elementary school education.
Theoretical Framework
At the core of my theoretical framework is social and virtue epistemology, which
I applied to analyze the answers I obtained from the teachers on the relationship between
NCLB and the development of knowledge. Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study
of knowledge and justified belief: As the study of knowledge, it investigates the
necessary and sufficient conditions, sources, structures and the limits of knowledge; as
the study of justified belief, epistemology is concerned with the concept of justification,
and the markers of justified belief (Steup, 2014). Understood more broadly, epistemology
is the study of the ways by which knowledge gets created and disseminated in different
fields of inquiry. Under this broader definition is social epistemology, the study of the
epistemic effects of social interactions and social systems. In other words, social
epistemology is a broad set of approaches to the study of knowledge that construes
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knowledge as a collective achievement. Alvin Goldman, one of the most prominent
contemporary social epistemologists, developed a concept for the study of the social
dimensions of knowledge within social systems. Goldman (1999, 2009) calls it the social-
systems variety of social epistemology, or SYSOR, and applies it to social institutions
with the intent of evaluating the effects of the methods and practices that are in place. In
this dissertation, I apply Goldman‘s SYSOR variety of social epistemology to analyze the
data and draw conclusions on the effects of NCLB on the development of knowledge
among elementary school students.
Virtue epistemology, the study of intellectual (epistemic) virtues, was also at the
core of the theoretical framework for this study. There are several different versions of
virtue epistemology. Some philosophers argue for virtue epistemology to replace the
more traditional forms of epistemology, defending the view that intellectual virtues
should replace the true justified belief conception of knowledge. Others argue that virtue
epistemology should function as an addition to justified true belief. In this dissertation, I
follow the latter and argue that the intellectual virtues are essential for the development of
knowledge and for the formation of the student into the lifelong learner, and I analyzed
the data against the development of the virtues among students through their schooling
experience.
Research Questions
During the course of this study, the following research questions emerged:
1) According to the teachers interviewed, how do students learn/gain knowledge
differently because of NCLB?
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-Did NCLB institute new practices among teachers and students or did it
accelerate existing practices?
-Are these the best practices that there could be for the development of knowledge
in the students?
-Does NCLB contribute for all students to gain knowledge on an equal basis, as it
purports to do?
2) What do the teachers think NCLB did to the soft skills of intellectual virtues? Are
students more or less critical because of the changes brought about by NCLB?
-Do the intellectual virtues have any space in the curriculum followed by schools
under NCLB?
-Are the students receiving any help to gain the intellectual virtues so important
for the development of knowledge?
3) Are the standardized testing requirements mandated by NCLB undermining the
development of critical thinking abilities in students, according to the teachers?
-What are teachers‘ perceptions of the testing requirements imposed by NCLB?
-Do teachers sacrifice teaching what they might deem is important information for
their students because of the testing requirements of NCLB?
-How much time does the accountability part of NCLB requires of teachers and
students?
4) Is there a noticeable change in how thoughtful, imaginative, creative, etc. students
are as a result of the policies enacted with NCLB?
5) Does NCLB prepare students to be lifelong learners? In other words, are students
learning the tools they will need to continue learning after they leave school?
8
These questions guided this project, from the review of the literature to the data analysis
process and the findings and conclusions for the study.
Research Methodology
This dissertation applies a qualitative methodology to study the effects of NCLB
on knowledge development. I conducted a case-study analysis with eight participants,
school teachers who have been teaching at least since 1999, two years prior to the
enactment of NCLB, and who are still teaching. I chose to interview only experienced
teachers so that a comparison between teaching before and after NCLB was possible. The
intent was to analyze teacher opinion of the effects of the policy on the development of
knowledge among students.
According to Denzin and Lincoln (1992), qualitative research is multimethod in
focus and committed to the naturalistic perspective of interpretative understanding of
human experience. The multimethod and interpretative characteristic of qualitative
methodology made it possible for an epistemological study of NCLB, with case-study as
the most appropriate research method for the project. Yin (2013) states that case study is
the preferred methodology for a study that seeks to answer ―how‖ or ―why‖ questions,
and when a study aims to analyze and interpret a phenomenon that is contemporary. In
addition, Yin (2013) states that case studies analyze and interpret phenomenon that is
located in a real-world context, especially when the boundaries surrounding the case are
not very clear. Finally, Yin (2013) claims case-studies can be useful to evaluate a
program.
Following Yin (2013), a case study methodology was appropriate for this study
because it sought to answer ―how‖ questions, (how NCLB affects the development of
9
knowledge in students); because NCLB is a contemporary phenomenon, located in the
real-world context of the schooling of children in the United States, with boundaries that
are difficult to locate and define, and because NCLB is a program which, as any other
program, may be the subject of evaluation.
Limitations
There are several limitations to this study. Perhaps the most prominent limitation
is sample size. Given that this case study was inevitably bound by the restrictions of the
project, I did not have an opportunity to expand interviews beyond the eight teachers.
This group of teachers is not necessarily a representative sample of all educators to which
the reader can generalize the findings. The replacement of even one teacher in this study
with another may have altered considerably the results of this study.
My status as the author-interviewer in this study had its limitations also. I
acknowledge my own bias and pre-conceived notions against NCLB. Before the start of
the study, I held the view that NCLB has a negative impact on the development of
knowledge by placing too much importance and emphasis on testing while neglecting to
cater to the individual differences in the learning process of the students. Although I
controlled for bias, it is inevitable that my perspective on the issue be read in this study.
Finally, issues of anonymity and confidentiality posed difficulties when
presenting the findings. This limitation stems from the fact that, because I interviewed
only eight teachers, I decided to provide no specific information when presenting the data
and the findings of the study. I chose to refer to the teachers in a generic format, as ―the
teacher‖ or ―the participant,‖ thus protecting their identity from being uncovered by
10
anyone reading this study. While this was an important measure to protect the identity of
the participants, some readers might find it off putting and distracting.
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CHAPTER 2:
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
In this chapter I offer an overview of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. I
start with a brief history of the act, present some of the highlights of implementation,
accountability standards, assessment, and move on to the current state of affairs of the
act.
A Brief Historical Overview of Educational Policy in America
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is the United States Act of Congress supporting
standards-based education reform for the improvement of individual outcomes in
education. Signed into law in 2001 by President George Bush, NCLB is commonly
presented as the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)
of 1965. The main ideas behind ESEA and NCLB can be traced to the beginning of the
20th
century, when scientific management and the efficiency movement were in vogue. In
the early 1900s, the strategies used to organize factories and make them more efficient
were transferred over to the educational arena: on the one hand, teachers and
administrators were supposed to organize schools and deliver education in an efficient
way and, on the other, ensure that students became citizens capable of meeting the new
needs of the emerging industrial society (Kaestle, 1983).
In Education and the Cult of Efficiency Callahan (1962) states that the efficiency
influence was exerted upon education in many ways: through books, journals,
newspapers, presentations at educational meetings and, most importantly, through the
decision-making process of school boards. Callahan (1962) also argues that the influence
of the business model of education happened through suggestions or demands for schools
12
to be organized and operated in businesslike fashion, and by placing more emphasis on a
practical and presently useful education. With this new focus on practical education, the
efficiency movement became aligned with vocational education in the early 20th
century,
offering an initial synopsis of what would later be named accountability, functional
literacy, competency-based education, etc. (Wise, 1979). Vibrant for a couple of decades,
the focus on educational accountability diminished in scope until the 1950s, when two
major events brought the theme of efficiency back to the educational reform table: 1) the
court case Brown v. Board of Education of 1954 and its impact on the strengthening of
the Civil Rights Movement; and 2) the technological and scientific advancements of the
Soviet Union, climaxing with the launching of the Russian satellite Sputnik on October 4,
1957.
The success of the launching of Sputnik created tension in the American society,
giving instant centrality to the development of a connection between education and
national security (Clowse, 1981; Urban, 2010). Sputnik impacted Americans‘
understanding of education and the role schools had in describing who they are as
students, teachers, and citizens (Steeves, 2009). After Sputnik, Americans realized that
there was a crisis in education, particularly science education, and public support for the
improvement of school science grew dramatically (Yager, 1984). Although supporters of
school science were already designing new courses and planning to improve upon science
course offerings prior to 1957, ―it took a Sputnik to provide the trigger needed for the
appropriation of significant finances to mount the first national experiment in the United
States dealing with curriculum development for schools and direct support for in-service
teacher education‖ (Yager, 1984). Congress responded a year later with the National
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Defense Education Act (NDEA), providing funding for education at all levels, but with a
focus on scientific and technical education. Signed into law by President Dwight
Eisenhower, NDEA provided funding to improve schools and to promote higher
education, offering financial assistance for a large number of university students in the
1960s (Schwegler, 1982).
Large investments in education through federal programs such as NDEA brought
to the educational arena something Americans had long distrusted: federal control of
local education. A topic of contention since the founding of the Republic, Americans
have always struggled over the role that the federal government should have in the
education of young Americans (Spring, 1998; Kaestle, 1983). For most of the history of
American education, the federal government had a limited role in the operation and
management of schools across the country educational policymaking as a decentralized
affair. But with these new programs came a need for some form of federal control, which
happened primarily through accountability programs. The federal government needed to
know whether the money they were investing was, in fact, bringing positive results.
During this time, making public education more accountable became a national priority,
particularly because it was believed that education was too stagnant to respond quickly to
the new requirements, or to make proper use of science and technology for the
development of change (Kuchapski, 1998). For this reason, educational reforms were
created and funded by the Department of National Defense (DND) and the Programming,
Planning and Budgeting Systems (PPBS) to train educators and school administrators to
be more effective in face of the rapidly changing economy.
14
The other major event that brought accountability back to the educational sphere
was the policies that began to be instituted after legal segregation was repealed by Brown
v. Board of Education in 1954. The Brown case reverted the 1896 Plessy v. Fergunson
case and called for schools around the nation to integrate and to enroll students without
racial discrimination. But integrating schools was not an easy matter, as footage and
accounts of school desegregation at the Little Rock Central High School (Little Rock,
Arkansas) in the fall of 1957 show (Eyes on the Prize, 1987; Bates, 1962). For this
particular episode, tension was so high within the community that President Dwight D.
Eisenhower had to send federal troops to contain a mob created by those who would not
accept the integration of their schools, and that white and black students were now to
learn together in the same classroom (Beals, 1994). Sending the troops to control the mob
was only the first step in federal involvement and control of education after Brown v.
Board of Education. Much was yet to come in terms of federal government educational
control and accountability for the years and decades when integration took place (Fraser,
2001).
A decade later, President Lyndon Johnson responded to a national poverty rate of
around 19 percent by introducing legislation that became unofficially known as ―War on
Poverty‖ (Weisbrod, 1965; Humphrey, 1964; Gillette, 2010). Among the major initiatives
of the legislation was the enactment of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA) of 1965, a federal education aid program and the most far reaching federal
legislation affecting education ever passed by congress (Bailey & Mosher, 1968; Jeffrey,
1978; Rhodes, 2012). Initially, the main purpose of ESEA was to provide funding for
states and local governments across the nation, so that they could establish compensatory
15
education programs designed for socially and racially disadvantage students, fostering
educational equity. During this period of initial federal involvement in education, policy
makers, aware of their constituents‘ distrust of federal control of education, thought that
it would be best to delegate to states and localities primary responsibility to put reforms
into practice (Spring, 2008). Furthermore, policymakers were careful not to have ESEA
intrude too much on the rights of states in making decisions on curriculum and the
general operations of schools. Local governments, however, were still held accountable
to the federal government in meeting the minimum progress required (Standerfer, 2006).
Under ESEA, if a state didn‘t meet the minimum requirements for students‘
educational progress, the federal government would, at least theoretically, withdraw
funds and intervene in the management of the school or school board. This was rather
unprecedented, since for most of the nation‘s history, policymaking—particularly
educational policymaking—did not come directly from the federal government. Since the
U.S. Constitution does not mention education, policymakers had up until then understood
that it should be left to the states to establish and organize schools. The ESEA of 1965
changed that practice by becoming the first main act of federal government to directly
affect national education since the post-Revolutionary period.1
In the decades following the implementation of ESEA, the United States federal
system was responsible for yet another implication in educational policy and regulation.
In the 1960s and 1970s, states had different levels of educational achievement and, most
1 Interestingly, in the 1960s the federal programs evolved in ways that tended to reinforce the divide between the regular
and compensatory school programs (Meier & Wood, 2004). In addition, the compensatory programs initiated in the 1960s did not have the impact that policymakers, at all levels of government, predicted it would have (Kim & Sunderman, 2005). Scholars have
questioned the effectiveness and efficiency of such programs, with some going as far as arguing that these programs have not offered
much ground for closing the gap in school achievement between disadvantaged students and those with access to better education (Vinovskis, 1999).
16
importantly, preparedness for the political, fiscal, and administrative challenges brought
by the increase in preoccupation with standards, testing, and accountability (Rhodes,
2012; Standerfer, 2006; Guthrie, 1968). As a response to the problem, Ronald Regan
formed the National Commission on ―Excellence in Education‖, charged with assessing
the state of public education in the country. A few years later, the commission published
A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (1983), a landmark event in
modern American educational history. The report contributed to the already present idea
that American schools were failing, and it touched off a wave of local, state, and federal
reform efforts. A Nation at Risk was published at a time when federal involvement was in
the rise, decentralization was being implemented, benefits were being dispersed more
broadly, and strong interest-group support was taking place. At face value, this political
environment offered at least something for everyone while encouraging long-term
institutional stability (Vinovskis, 1999). The regime, however, was inattentive to matters
of educational performance such as the findings of studies that provided evidence ESEA
was not as fruitful as promised (Meier & Wood, 2004; Kim & Sunderman, 2005) which
turned into a liability for the government as changes in spending in the federal and state
level raised considerably during the period. In addition, economic conditions at the time
were no longer welcoming for educational liberalism (Rhodes, 2012; McDill & Natriello,
1998).
The rhetoric surrounding the American education system took a different
direction in the 1980s, when a new paradigm took shape, going by the name of
―Excellence in Education‖ (Toch, 1991; Bracey, 2002; Finn, 1983). Politicians, business
leaders, and educational conservatives claimed that America was losing its place at the
17
head of the global economic game due to the low quality of public schooling offered to
American students. Because schools were failing to form well-educated citizens, critics
claimed that the industry could not operate effectively as it lacked a competent
workforce. The publication of A Nation at Risk came amidst such climate, spurring
reform that promoted ―Excellence in Education.‖ Several other reports aggressively
promoted ―Excellence in Education‖ in the 1980s, such as the Committee for Economic
Development‘s Investing in Our Children in 1983 and Children in Need, the second
report by the Committee for Economic Development, published in 1985. Education
scholars also contributed to the ―Excellence in Education‖ campaign. In 1985, Michigan
State professor and author David K. Cohen coauthored The Shopping Mall High School,
stating that high schools have diluted the curriculum and sent their minority and
disadvantaged students into ‗tracking‘ systems that neither prepared them for college nor
for post-secondary school work.
Not all were in favor of the ―Excellence in Education‖ movement in the 1980s.
Educational liberals argued that the proposals for an ―Excellence in Education‖ program
failed to address issues of equity, and that disadvantaged students were being left out of
the new system (Gross & Gross, 1985). In the influential A Place Called School, John
Goodlad (1984) explains that although education is accessible to all, knowledge is not
being offered to all. The challenge, he argues, is to achieve both equity and quality in the
new school programs. Critics of the movement also pointed out that although it was
agreed that ―Excellence in Education‖ was rhetorically powerful and analytically viable,
nobody knew how the reforms would be carried onto practice. They questioned how
states, districts and schools would actually implement the reforms in cooperation to raise
18
educational standards. To the critics, these crucial issues had been poorly explained by
policymakers and reformers (Elmore & McLaughlin, 1988). Albeit strong and pervasive,
the opposition of the critics was clearly not sufficient to stop the ―Excellence in
Education‖ movement from shaping educational policy in the 1980s.
Prominent through the rest of the century, the theme of ―Excellence in Education‖
culminated with Goals 2000: Educate America Act, developed in the 1990s by the
National Education Goals Panel.2 A large number of Goals 2000 were grounded on the
outcomes-based education principle, which became the centerpiece of President Clinton‘s
education-reform program. Goals 2000 were given continuity in the Improving
America‘s School Act (IASA), a major part of the Clinton administration‘s endeavor to
reform education. IASA, signed by Clinton in 1994, reauthorized the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act of 1965 for five years and allocated eleven billion dollars for
most k-12 education programs managed by the federal government. It also enacted
program changes that are believed to be the most important since ESEA. Scholars argue
that the goals established in the Goals 2000 Act—and subsequently in IASA—functioned
as predecessors to the No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law by president Bush in
January 2002 (Superfine, 2005).
Reauthorizing ESEA and implementing No Child Left
Behind
After NCLB was signed into law in 2001, the Bush administration moved quickly
to push states to implement the act. The implementation was a challenging project, given
2 The panel was assembled by President George H.W. Bush after a meeting with states‘ governors in Charlottesville in
1989 (Panel, 1995).
19
the short deadlines and the harsh penalties for failing to achieve the goals. The latter was
unprecedented in the history of educational policy in America: when ESEA was passed in
1965, almost no federal guidance was offered to states on how they should proceed with
spending the money. In other words, the money was allocated to the state by the federal
government, but the decision on how to spend it remained with state officials, not in
Washington, D.C. Although NCLB is not the first reauthorization of ESEA, it is the first
time the federal authorities enforce penalties for states and local school districts for
failing to implement standards and assessments as scheduled. For example, although
President Clinton‘s IASA highlighted student achievement and systemic education
reforms for the states, it neither enforced a standards-based reform strategy nor penalized
states for any failure to achieve standards. Even after six years of IASA implementation,
the several states that had not integrated systemic reforms to their educational platforms
were not penalized. As a matter of fact, ―as late as April 2002, only 19 states and
jurisdictions had complied with the final IASA assessment requirements, while another
33 were put on time-line waivers or had entered compliance agreements with the
Department of Education. Yet none of the states that failed to complete the IASA
standards and assessments lost federal funds for failing to comply‖ (Vinovskis, 2009).
With NCLB, however, states failing to comply with the requirements could be sure to
lose federal funds.
The following are the main pillars of the NCLB legislation: higher academic
achievement of disadvantaged students; standards, assessment, and accountability;
assurance that schools hire only good, competent teachers and principals; improved
20
language instruction for ESL students; state standards and assessments; average yearly
progress; and school choice. I take on each one of these in detail in the paragraphs below.
Academic Achievement of Disadvantaged Students
NCLB was designed to reduce inequality in education. From A Nation at Risk in
1983 to IASA in 1994, the federal government attempted to raise standards and
coordinate curriculum, instruction, and assessment in the schools with the objective of
bringing equality to education (Gamoran, 2007). But NCLB is rather unique in which it
aims to raise standards and level the playing field of educational attainment among
students in different demographic groups, such as racial minorities, ESL, disabled, and
poor students. Allegedly, by increasing standards and holding schools accountable for
student performance, NCLB gives disadvantaged students a chance to succeed in school.
Some scholars believe otherwise; they think that schools that enroll more diverse students
may be more prone to being characterized as schools that are not making progress, as the
fact that they have larger numbers of subgroups means that they also have more targets to
achieve. In addition, the large level of improvement required by the law indicates that
schools with a large body of disadvantaged students may be unable to succeed in making
the required progress (Gamoran, 2007).
When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed ESEA into law 50 years ago, the act
intended to offer compensatory early childhood programs for disadvantaged students with
the hopes of improving their academic condition. Developed as part of Johnson‘s War on
Poverty, the original ESEA statute focused primarily on delivering federal aid to help
improve the educational condition for poor and minority children (Robelen, 2005).
Holding true to the core mission of the 1965 statute, NCLB similarly intended to help
21
disadvantaged students improve academically, primarily through the Title I program.
Amended from ESEA, Title I of NCLB reads as ―TITLE I—IMPROVING THE
ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF THE DISADVANTAGED‖ (No Child Left Behind
[NCLB], 2003). The statement of purpose of section 20USC 6301 of the law states: ―The
purpose of this title is to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant
opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on
challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic assessments‖
(NCLB, 2003). Furthermore, the law indicates that accomplishment of the purpose of Title
I comes through insurance of the following: high-quality assessments and accountability
systems, teacher training, and instructional materials that are aligned with state academic
standards (so that the school community can measure progress against expectations for
academic achievement); the educational needs of low-achieving students in highest-poverty
schools are met; the achievement gap between high- and low-performing children is closed;
holding schools and states accountable for providing the academic achievement of all
students; improving accountability, teaching, and learning by utilizing state assessment
systems designed to ensure that especially disadvantaged students are making progress;
promoting school-wide reform to ensure children have access to effective instructional
strategies and challenging academic content; and offering parents substantial opportunities
to participate in the education of their children (NCLB, 2003).
Title I is a clear statement that NCLB is an effort to improve equality in education,
with a declared goal of having all students meet state standards in order to eliminate
achievement gaps between students. It is also clear that this mandate is the main
preoccupation of districts and schools across the country (Linn, Baker, & Betebenner,
22
2002). The good intentions behind NCLB have not convinced all, though, as several critics
question the validity of Title I and its implication. For them, NCLB sets up and elaborates a
system of testing (federally mandated) with each school getting as many as forty different
test score targets. Any school that fails to meet even one of these targets for two
consecutive years faces an escalating series of sanctions, including the loss of federal funds
or the imposition of private management on public schools and, eventually, even possible
closure. Stan Karp (2004) argues that the goal of equality in test scores for all student
groups, with special education and bilingual students included, ―contrasts sharply with the
widespread inequality that is tolerated, or even promoted, by federal policy in many other
areas. NCLB imposes a mandate on schools that is put on no other institution in society:
wipe out inequalities while the factors that help produce them remain in place.‖ This is one
of the reasons, Karp (2004) states, why so many believe that NCLB is part of a neoliberal
agenda that intends to use achievement gaps to label schools as failing, so that these
schools may be privatized.
Standards, Assessment, and Accountability
On June 10, 2003, President George W. Bush stated: ―The No Child Left Behind
Act sets a clear objective for American education. Every child in every school must be
performing at grade level in the basic subjects that are the key to all learning: reading and
math. This ambitious goal is the most fundamental duty of every school, and it must, and it
will be fulfilled‖ (Bush, 2003). The president continues by asserting that the era of low
standards and low expectations is ending, replaced by a new era of high standards and
proven results. And in order to achieve this ―ambitious goal,‖ President Bush says that
every state is required ―to submit an accountability plan that leads to measurable gains in
23
student performance.‖ Finally, the president addresses the crowd with the following:
―together, we are keeping a pledge: Every child in America will learn, and no child will
be left behind‖ (Bush, 2003).
The president‘s statement was very accurate: a new era of standards, assessments,
and accountability had just started. With the intent of assuring parents and the community
that their tax money is being used effectively and responsibly, NCLB enforces academic
standards and accountability for meeting such standards on public school teachers and
administrators. Provisions in the NCLB law specify that states have to create an
accountability plan to assure that every American student meets proficiency on state
academic standards for the following core disciplines: science, math, reading, and language
arts. This plan ―shall demonstrate that the State has developed and is implementing a single
statewide State accountability system that will be effective in ensuring that all local
educational agencies, public elementary schools, and public secondary schools make
adequate yearly progress‖ (NCLB, 2003). The State accountability plan was also to follow
a rather strict deadline, for the law was designed so that every single American public-
school student reach proficiency on these standards by the year 2014.3 As a metric for
evidence of progress, the legislators who crafter NCLB thought the best tool for public
education accountability was an old one: testing, and more specifically, standardized
testing. The results of these tests were to identify the schools that were ―failing‖ and,
therefore, ―in need of improvement‖ (NCLB, 2003).
3 This has not been achieved and the plan was modified under the Obama administration, as I will later discuss.
24
Adequate Yearly Progress
Part A of Title I of NCLB presents the main form of accountability with NCLB:
adequate yearly progress (AYP):
Each State [accountability] plan shall demonstrate […] what constitutes adequate
yearly progress of the State, and of all public elementary schools, secondary
schools, and local educational agencies in the State, toward enabling all public
elementary school and secondary school students to meet the State‘s student
academic achievement standards, while working toward the goal of narrowing the
achievement gaps in the State, local educational agencies, and schools (NCLB,
2003).
AYP is not a new feature of educational policy. It has been present since the 1994
reauthorization of ESEA into IASA. For that reauthorization, a requirement was put for
Title-I schools (those receiving Title-I dollars) to provide evidence, once a year, that their
students were making adequate yearly progress. Title-I schools serve a large number of
underprivileged students and receive significant amounts of Title-I money, which is
intended to improve the academic experience of these students, therefore closing the
achievement gap between subgroups.4 IASA required Title-I schools to offer evidence that
the money provided for the improvement of the educational condition of disadvantaged
students was in fact being used rightly and effectively; otherwise, sanctions were to take
place. This evidence had to come through annual AYP data that schools were required to
report. For both IASA and NCLB, therefore, the federal government set state requirements
for challenging math and reading standards that the states had to follow. But whereas under
IASA each state developed its own AYP, with NCLB the federal government was in
charge of delimiting what the AYP should be.
4 NCLB defines the Title-1 subgroups as: limited English proficient children, migratory children, children with disabilities, Indian children, neglected or delinquent children, and young children in need of reading assistance‖ (NCLB, 2003).
25
Leaving the states in charge of their own AYP (under IASA) led to an
accountability problem: because educational policymakers in most states feared that their
schools were incapable of meeting the demands of a high-level AYP, they decided that it
would be safer to lower the bar for adequate yearly progress. The result was that several
states ended up establishing AYPs that were completely trivial (Popham, 2005). Aware of
this problem, the legislators crafting NCLB changed the rules for AYP to avoid having
states apply the same maneuver they had done with IASA. With a much more restraining
regulation, adequate yearly progress under NCLB went from a vaguely defined and loosely
enforced requirement to a major educational deal-breaker for public schools around the
country. For IASA, average yearly progress was calculated based on average achievement
of the students in a given school, in spite of the fact that some student subgroups had been
previously neglected.5 After the implementation of NCLB, socioeconomically
disadvantaged students, non-white, disabled and students with limited proficiency in
English all have to make AYP, with the school running the risk of being labeled in need of
improvement in case AYP is not made for two or more consecutive years. In other words,
if a school cannot demonstrate that its students are making progress, then the state will
punish that school: replace unsuccessful administrators and teachers, turn schools over to a
for-profit private company, offer parents public school choice, or even close the school
(Shannon, 2004).
5 Shannon (2004) argues that ―although Fair Test and others interpret these gaps as evidence of cultural bias in the logic of
testing and the test themselves, the authors of NCLB assume that the tests measure valued learning and that lower teacher
expectations, poor instruction, and lack of teacher and student effort cause the gaps.‖ In addition, Shannon (2004) states that teachers
usually recognize that gaps in achievement often reflect the inequalities in society, that is, children do not start school on the same level of emotional and intellectual development, and they do not have the same level of support as they grow. Some of these teachers
are concerned with the failed rationality behind requiring all these students to produce the same results at the same pace when they
share no other commonalities in their lives. Despite these concerns, NCLB requires schools to separate the achievement level for each group and use these results to as metric for progress.
26
NCLB offers a clear definition of adequate yearly progress, denoting that the YAP
accountability system must be based on state academic standards, statewide assessments,
and indicators such as graduation rate and attendance. It takes into account the achievement
of every students enrolled in public elementary or secondary schools; it is the same
accountability system that a state utilizes for all the students and the school districts, and it
includes rewards and sanctions that the states will use to hold schools accountable for the
progress of students. As Yell and Drasgow (2005) put it, ―this accountability procedure
means that a school‘s AYP status is judged by the achievement of its students on the state-
defined standards.‖ And the achievement of standards is proved through scores on
standardized tests.
AYP has become a significant issues for schools and states because, in addition to
being strict, it is also very comprehensive. NCLB requires one hundred percent proficiency,
that is, the law is intended to work in such a way that no child, not even a single one, will
be left behind his school peers. Critics of NCLB claim that such an ambitious purpose is
designed for failure, since it is clearly not acceptable to expect, in fact to require, that every
student attending a public school in America reaches certain standards in only a few years
(Neil, 2003; Porter, Linn, & Trimble, 2005). Others argue that the legislators who crafted
NCLB knew that they were setting the public education system up for an impossible task,
but political rhetoric impeded them from sending out the more honest message that it is
unrealistic to expect for every single child to achieve academically (Popham, 2005). With a
no-child-left-behind message in mind, the authors of the Act wrote into law a requirement
that in twelve years (to count from the 2001-2002 school year), one hundred percent of the
public school students in the United States had to achieve proficiency as measured by AYP.
27
In order to ensure that students from all groups are making progress towards
reaching 100 percent proficiency in reading and math, NCLB requires states to establish at
least three levels of student achievement: basic, proficient, and advanced. What is more, in
addition to reporting the cumulative general AYP for all students, schools also need to
report test scores by subgroups, according to the following criteria: 1) socioeconomic
disadvantage, 2) race and ethnicity, 3) disability, and 4) limited English proficiency. These
subgroups are also required to attain proficiency in the twelve years allotted for schools to
improve scores (NCLB, 2003).
Lastly, in order to curb past attempts to dodge AYP requirements, NCLB requests
that States plan to make AYP improvements in equal increments of time from 2002 to
2014, when the standards should be met. In other words, state officials were given the
autonomy to decide how they would go from the current state of affairs of their State‘s
educational achievement, whichever that might be, to full proficiency in twelve years.
Obama and NCLB
When Barack Obama campaigned as a presidential candidate in 2008, he ran on the
theme of change from the administration of President George W. Bush. During his
campaign, Obama made an effort to distinguish himself from the then current
administration on most issues of importance to the country (such as economic policy, the
healthcare system, the war in Iraq, etc.).When it came to education, however, Sen. Obama
had a more ambiguous take, particularly on NCLB (Rhodes, 2012). While visiting a public
school in Arlington, Virginia, Obama delivered the ―What‘s Possible for Our Children‖
speech, in which he stated that the broken promises of NCLB must be fixed, but that the
goals of the law were fine: ―I believe that the goals of this law were the right ones.
28
Making a promise to educate every child with an excellent teacher is right. Closing the
achievement gap that exists in too many cities and rural areas is right. More
accountability is right. Higher standards are right‖ (Obama, 2008). But for Obama,
NCLB had serious problems, and he referred to them as ―what‘s wrong with No Child
Left Behind.‖ Obama states:
Forcing our teachers, our principals and our schools to accomplish all of this
without the resources they need is wrong. Promising high-quality teachers in
every classroom and then leaving the support and the pay for those teachers
behind is wrong. Labeling a school and its students as failures one day and then
throwing your hands up and walking away from them the next is wrong. We must
fix the failures of No Child Left Behind.
Obama proposed that the funding that was promised be given, that the commitment to
special education be followed, and that high standards be met without forcing teachers
and students to spend a year preparing for one high-stakes test. Instead, the assessments
should improve achievement across the nation by including research, scientific
investigation and problem-solving that students will need in order to compete in the
global economy of the 21st century. For Obama, NCLB should not be replaced by another
law, but it should be fixed so that it is made ―right.‖6
Obama does not seem to have followed his promises. Under his administration,
NCLB is very similar to what it was under the predecessor he criticized so openly. Arne
Duncan, Obama‘s secretary of education and a strong proponent of standards-based
educational reform, has focuses attention on enforcing standardized testing and
6 Wayne Au (2009) argues that, although it was a relief when Obama stood against some of the most harmful aspects of
NCLB, ―he fails to offer significant reform for educational policy today. This failure results in the continuation of a system of
education premised on the basic principles and assumptions associated with capitalist production, competition, and inequality. Thus,
while Obama symbolically provides hope that education in the United States may become more fundamentally democratic, the stark reality of his policy language and selection of Arne Duncan as secretary of education belie the promise of progressive educational
reform that his election represents. Instead, our real hope for an educational system that meets the social, cultural, economic, and
political needs and realities of our children and their communities will require grassroots activism to create sustainable and equitable change in schools‖ (Wayne Au, 2009).
29
accountability. When Obama spoke in Arlington, Virginia, in 2008, he proposed that the
single most important factor in determining the success of a student is the teacher, the
educator who goes beyond his or her call of duty to assure that students are receiving the
best education available. Obama said he want to rewards these teachers: ―I don‘t want to
just talk about how great teachers are. I want to be a president who rewards them for their
greatness‖ (Obama, 2008). Some of Obama‘s education programs, however (such as
Race to the Top, a part of the American Recovery Reinvestment Act), used federal
economic stimulus monies to have states raise their education standards by increasing the
number of charter schools while tying teacher evaluation to student test scores. Linking
teacher evaluation to test scores goes against what Obama stood for in 2008, for there is
much more than the results of student test scores to the quality of a teacher. More
recently, researchers have argued that the Obama administration has failed to address the
importance of teacher quality and the distributional challenged that states face (Berry &
Herrington, 2011).
Race to the Top
The Race to the Top (RTTT) initiative was the most ambitious educational effort
of the first years of the Obama administration (Robe, 2006). As part of the America
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (commonly known as the ―stimulus plan‖),
RTTT was a Department of Education contest in which states competed for funds (a total
of 4.35 billion dollars) through promoting innovation and reform in state and local district
k-12 education. In the contest, states were awarded points for meeting educational
policies that would comply with Common Core standards, such as: adopting college and
career-ready standards and assessment; building systems to measure student growth and
30
success to inform teachers and principals about how to improve instruction; recruiting,
developing, and rewarding teachers and principals; and turning around struggling schools
(U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development
[0PEPD], 2010).
Secretary Arne Duncan claims that the RTTT program started a federal
partnership in educational reform with states, districts and unions to stimulate change and
increase achievement. Addressing the criteria used to award funds under the competition
through which states can increase or decrease their chance of winning extra federal
funding, Duncan announced: ―states that limit alternative routes to certification for
teachers and principals, or cap the number of charter schools, will be at a competitive
disadvantage. And states that explicitly prohibit linking data on achievement or student
growth to principal and teacher evaluations will be ineligible for reform dollars until they
change their laws‖ (Duncan, 2009). In 2009, Duncan engaged in a type of crusade,
pushing states to change their course of action to seek alignment with RTTT
requirements. His effort yielded results, for by August 2010, thirty-one states had
modified laws or policies so that they might increase their chances of receiving RTTT
funding (McNeil, 2009).
In addition to the requirements mentioned above, RTTT called for teacher training
focused on performance in contrast to course credit for obtaining teacher certification.
Linking student test scores to the credentialing program of teachers and principals was
also a central requirement of the program:
(D)(4) Improving the effectiveness of teacher and principal preparation programs
The extent to which the State has a high-quality plan and ambitious yet
achievable annual targets to—
31
(i) link student achievement and student growth (both as defined in this
notice) data to the students‘ teachers and principals, to link this
information to the in-State programs where those teachers and principals
were prepared for credentialing, and to publicly report the data for each
credentialing program in the State.
On the matter of teacher evaluation, the Democrats for Education Reform (DFER)
recommended to U.S. Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan that student test scores be
used in teacher evaluations. ―A Great Teacher For Every Child,‖ the brief put together by
the DFER suggest that test scores, referred to as ―student performance,‖ be used in the
form of data-driven reform. In the RTTT, the DFER recommendations were integrated
as:
(D)(2) Improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance
(i) establish clear approaches to measuring student growth (as defined in this
notice) and measure it for each individual student;
(ii) design and implement rigorous, transparent, and fair evaluation systems
for teachers and principals that (a) differentiate effectiveness using
multiple rating categories that take into account data on student growth as
a significant factor, and (b) are designed and developed with teacher
principal involvement.
Although it is too soon to judge the RTTT‘s long-term consequences for schooling, some
have complained that the emphasis the contest puts on competition is at odds with the
principle of opportunity for all they viewed as central to the civil rights movement
(Rhodes, 2012). As a matter of fact, the policies in the RTTT are in direct contradiction
to the speech Obama gave when he was campaigning in July 2008, in which he declared
that the teacher was the most important part of a good education, and that he wanted to
reward the teachers that go beyond the call of duty to provide their students with the best
education they can have. He did not say he also wanted to punish teachers severely, but
this is what his administration actually does. It is a well-known fact that in America,
schools perform according to the neighborhood where they are located. Schools in well-
32
to-do neighborhoods or suburbs tend to perform at high levels because of a myriad of
factors: parents tend to be more educated and directly invested in the education of their
children; they are better prepared to assist their children with homework and school
projects; and schools in neighborhoods with high SCS have more funds, since in America
public schools are substantially funded through property tax. Schools in poor
neighborhoods, in addition to being underfunded, enroll students who come from low-
SCS families with low levels of educational achievement. These families have difficulty
understanding and engaging in school matters, and they often lack the resources to help
their children with school homework and other projects (Astone & McLanahan, 1991;
Snow, Barnes, Chandler, Goodman, & Hemphill, 1991). Clearly, given the way the
public k-12educational system is organized in America, teachers who work in high-SCS
schools will have students who are more prepared and motivated to learn (and can make
more progress more quickly) than students who attend schools in low-SCS areas. In a
very problematic school, a teacher may go way beyond his or her call of duty and still
achieve very little in terms of the performance of students on standardized tests.
Evaluating teachers according to the performance of students, then, is not only counter-
intuitive, it is unfair.
The White House claims that RTTT has driven states nationwide to seek higher
standards, enhance the effectiveness of teachers, and follow new strategies to improve
schools that are struggling (White House, 2014). Although this might in fact be the case,
RTTT has been a controversial program, receiving criticism for lack of transparency and
favoritism in the process to select the wining states to receive program funds (Lips, 2010;
Manna & Ryan, 2011). In addition, RTTT signals that Obama has not followed through
33
with his campaign promises to reward teachers who give their best and don‘t spend the
majority of the time teaching to standardized tests.
ESEA Blueprint for Reform
NCLB revisions have been on hold since the law‘s expiration in 2007, but it has
yet to be updated.7 In March 2010, the Obama administration released A Blueprint for
Reform with guidelines for revising ESEA. In the introduction of the document, Obama
repeats several of his campaign ideas for educational reform, such as that the teacher is
the most important element of a successful school. Obama states: ―We know that from
the moment students enter a school, the most important factor in their success is not the
color of their skin or the income of their parents – it is the teacher standing at the front of
the classroom‖ (A Blueprint for Reform, 2010). And in order for every American child to
receive the best education, Obama continues, we must do a better job of recruiting,
training, and rewarding these teachers. Obama thinks that teachers themselves cannot
accomplish this task alone. In order to achieve a world class education, there needs to be
a school environment where teachers are allowed to collaborate with one another, and
they must receive the professional recognition and respect that all professionals deserves.
Moreover, Obama stresses the importance of the family and the community in the process
of a world-class education, because a parent is a child‘s first teacher.
According to A Blueprint for Reform, state accountability systems are to set high
standards to prepare students for college and for careers. A Blueprint also recognizes and
7 The NCLB law expired in 2007, but it has remained enforced in the books. This means the states still have to abide by its
requirements until another law preplaces it. In 2011, when Congress failed to rewrite the law, the Obama administration offered states
a waiver if they agreed to certain reforms, such as teacher evaluations linked to student test scores. The waiver eased states out of
NCLB‘s strictures, and so far, 43 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico are approved for what is called ESEA Flexibility (Wong, 2014).
34
rewards schools in high-poverty areas that have managed to improve the educational
attainment of their students. It asks states to continue to work on closing the achievement
gap, particularly in the schools that still have issues with disparities in educational
achievement among students. For the other schools that have not had salient problems
with the achievement gap, states and districts would be given flexibility to decide on
options for a school recovery plan (ESEA Blueprint for Reform, 2010). In other words,
the Obama administration blueprint invites states and districts ―to develop meaningful
ways of measuring teacher and principal effectiveness in order to provide better support
for educators, enhance the profession through recognizing and rewarding excellence, and
ensure that every classroom has a great teacher and every school has a great principal‖
(ESEA Blueprint for Reform, 2010).
A Blueprint for Reform lists the priorities that the reauthorization of ESEA should
aim to accomplish. The priorities are divided in 5 subgroups: college- and career-ready
students; great teachers and leaders in every school; equity and opportunity for all
students; raising the bar and rewarding excellence; and promoting innovation and
continuous improvement.
The first priority listed in the blueprint is to have every student graduate from
high school prepared for college or a career. This should happen for every single student
in America, regardless of race, ethnicity, social class, religion, language background or
disability. Students will receive a complete, well-rounded education that will form them
into citizens who are prepared for a global economy. The subjects shall range ―from
literacy to mathematics, science, and technology to history, civics, foreign languages, the
arts, financial literacy, and other subjects‖ (A Blueprint for Reform, 2010). To achieve
35
that goal, the Blueprint plan calls on states to set high standards for language arts and
math, so that students will be prepared for college or a career by the time they graduate
high school. States are given the autonomy to choose between raising their existing
standards to better prepare their students, or they may choose to work in partnership with
other states to create and establish common standards. Under the first priority, states will
also have to work on improving upon their existing assessments, so that they be aligned
with the college- and career-ready standards. That will allow states to be better prepared
to conclude whether the students have learned the knowledge and skills they need to
succeed in further schooling and in life. According to the Blueprint, these new
assessment systems should test for ―higher order skills, provide more accurate measures
of student growth, and better inform classroom instruction to respond to academic needs‖
(A Blueprint for Reform, 2010). The Blueprint provision to improve upon testing is
interesting, given that Obama criticized the emphasis on teaching to the test that NCLB
fostered (Obama, 2008). Since standardized testing has a salient place in the Obama
administration‘s plan for reform of the No Child Left Behind Act, one might conclude
that Obama was not so much of a critic of standardized testing when he spoke against it
in the 2008 campaign, but that instead he thought that NCLB standardized testing
requirements should be revamped.
The second priority of the Blueprint is to have effective teachers and principals in
every school in America. That includes evaluating teachers to recognize, encourage, and
reward teaching excellence. The systems of teacher and principal evaluation and support
shall be developed on the basis of, among other factors, student growth. On the theme of
teachers and principals, the Blueprint also proposes funds to states and districts to
36
develop a plan supplying needy schools with effective teachers and principals. In other
words, this means transferring good, successful educators to high-poverty, minority-
concentrated schools.
The third priority of the Blueprint reveals a focus on equity and opportunity for all
students through an improved accountability system. That means students will be part of
an accountability process that is designed around priority number one (college and career
readiness) and will require imposing rigid sanctions to the lowest-performing schools.
But, unlike the current provisions of NCLB, the Blueprint will hold states and districts
accountable for providing their lowest-performing schools with the support they need to
succeed. Initially, this appears to be a good improvement over holding only the teachers
and principals accountable to meet the standards. It remains to be seen how this part of
the plan will align with the second priority of coordinating student progress with teacher
and principal quality. The third priority also asks states to see that schools support all
students, including by providing appropriate instruction and access to a challenging
curriculum along with additional support and attention where needed (A Blueprint for
Reform, 2010). In order to achieve equity, the reformed NCLB act will have states and
districts compare resources between high- and low-poverty schools. This also seems to be
a good and fair provision. But it does not state whether the comparison between the high-
and low-poverty schools will yield any results.
The fourth priority is to raise the standards and reward excellence by assisting
states and local leadership on reforms that are ambitious and effective, ―develop[ing]
comprehensive plans that change policies and practices to improve outcomes for
students‖ (A Blueprint for Reform, 2010). The objective of the fourth priority, higher
37
standards, is that the goal of college- and career-ready standards, the driving force behind
the Blueprint, be achieved by every school in the nation by 2020. States, districts, and
schools that work hard to accomplish this ―ambitious goal‖ will be rewarded. In addition,
―leaders at the state, district, and school level will enjoy broad flexibility to determine
how to get there‖ (A Blueprint for Reform, 2010). The revised NCLB will support the
spread of high-performing public charter schools, and aid local communities in the
expansion of school choice for students. According to the Blueprint in helping students
be college-ready, NCLB will push for a challenging high school curriculum, which has
the greatest potential on whether a student will attend and earn a 4-year college degree.
Schools shall also offer more college-level and accelerated classes, adopting strategies
that will help students enter college.
The fifth and last priority of the Blueprint is to promote innovation and
continuous improvement. One of the ways the U.S. Department of Education has
promoted innovation is through the Investing in Innovation (i3) Program, which allocates
money to support community leaders as they design programs to help discover the next
generation of innovators. Because the achievement gap in American schools has endured,
the Blueprint is a reminder that overcoming this challenge will take the shared
responsibility of community members and families. Following suit, the revisions of
NCLB will allow for education in the U.S. to prioritize programs that involve a
comprehensive redesign of the school day, week, or year, thus elevating the school to the
center of community life. This new model proposed in the Blueprint shall involve
families and other community members more directly and effectively in the education of
their children. The community/family involvement will purportedly keep students safe,
38
supported, and healthy, both in and out of school. Finally, this last priority intends to
write into NCLB that supporting, recognizing, and rewarding local innovations is
important for flexibility to local needs. By rewarding local innovations, NCLB
encourages it with the development of more flexible types of funding so that states and
localities can focus on their own needs. These new competitive funds shall provide for
more flexibility and allow for federal funds to be used more effectively (A Blueprint for
Reform, 2010).
The language of the Blueprint is clearly very vague. For example, the text
describes a support for the development of a new generation of assessments, but gives no
specifics on whether this new generation of assessments exists or needs to be created.
Furthermore, there is no mention on whether it is possible to create a new generation of
assessment, namely, whether or not there is research that makes it possible for new
assessments (that will be in fact better than the ones that are used now) to be generated.
After all, one can‘t simply create a new system of assessment out of thin air and claim
that it is better at testing for what we want tested. Another example of the vague character
of the Blueprint is the proposal for states to provide students with a challenging school
curriculum which, according to the Blueprint, is the best predictor on whether or not a
student will earn a 4-year college degree. Nothing, however, is said about what a
challenging curriculum actually is. What is more, the federal government wishes to
support college-going strategies and models, without specifying anything at all about
what these strategies might look like. One response to this critique is that the government
is trying to respect the autonomy and flexibility that states need in order to succeed.
Albeit the autonomy and flexibility are important aspects, a top-down type of plan such
39
as the RTTT of NCLB, which in spite of an attempt to give states more flexibility still
imposes quite a number of rigid requirements and enforces several forms of sanctions,
should be more directive in nature.
Education experts‘ response to the Blueprint range widely. Some have come
forward stating that it is an enhancement of the current norms of NCLB, that it is "a vast
improvement over the flawed No Child Left Behind program which it would now
replace‖ (Horan, 2010). Others, such as The National Education Policy Center (NEPC)
calls attention to the fact that high-quality research is not informing the process of ESEA
reauthorization. Although the U.S. Department of Education released six research
summaries in support of A Blueprint for Reform, the NEPC warns that experts in each of
these six areas have concluded that the research that informed the Blueprint ―does not
provide solid support for its proposals‖ (Mathis & Welner, 2010). Below is a list of what
the experts consulted by NEPC concluded on the research that was used to craft the
Blueprint:
The research cited was of inadequate quality; key omissions, such as the
Blueprint‘s accountability system and the rationale for competitive grants, as well
as an underdeveloped explanation and support for intervention models – despite
these being centerpieces of the administration‘s education reform efforts; a focus
on problems, as opposed to providing research to support the Blueprint‘s
proposed solutions; extensive use of non-research and advocacy sources to justify
policy recommendations; and an overwhelming reliance, with little or no research
justification, on standardized test scores as a measure of student learning and
school success (Mathias & Welner, 2010).
These are serious flaws that will not make of NCLB a better policy after reform; as a
matter of fact, it might make it worse. When Obama proposed to fix the problems with
NCLB, he specifically mentioned that it was wrong to categorize schools as failing and
walk away, leaving them underfunded. The formula for the ESEA reauthorization
40
contained in the Blueprint does exactly that: by making funding competitive instead of
comprehensive, it leaves many schools and students behind.
Other goals of the Blueprint have received criticism. Dennis Van Roekel,
president of the National Education Association (NEA), argues that the objective to more
actively include the family and the community members in their children‘s education is
left vague. Van Roekel (2010) states that although the plan encourages the participation
of all stakeholders of the education process, the current plan does not allow parents
enough participation. In addition, he is concerned with the plan‘s reliance and insistence
on more comprehensive assessment methods, which shall continue to use student test
results to evaluate schools. Van Roekel (2010) states: ―the accountability system of this
Blueprint still relies on standardized tests to identify winners and losers. We were
expecting more funding stability to enable states to meet higher expectations. Instead, the
Blueprint requires states to compete for critical resources, setting up another winner-and-
losers scenario.‖
Overall, the Obama administration‘s proposal for ESEA reauthorization responds
to a number of state concerns with NCLB, but it fails to recognize the extension of the
adversities states have to juggle. In other words, the Blueprint responds to the
apprehension for more flexibility in focus, timing, and the remedies that states
communicate, and it recognizes the importance of teacher and principal quality and the
distributional challenges. But as Berry and Herrington (2011) argue, ―it does not sustain a
more robust body of knowledge regarding effective intervention, the pragmatic obstacles
to retribution of high-quality teachers and leaders, and the political and fiscal challenges
that states combat in intensifying and funding the level of performance it demands.‖ And
41
by ignoring these important issues, the proposal for the iteration of ESEA jeopardizes its
own goal: bringing access of quality education to every children in America.
NCLB Pushback
One of the most vocal critics of NCLB is Diane Ravitch, the historian of American
Education and assistant secretary of education under President George H. W. Bush. Once
quoted praising NCLB,8 Ravitch has recently come forth condemning the two main
principles of the law: school choice and standardized testing. In The Death and Life of the
Great American School System (2010), Ravitch reviews a number of academic studies on
school effectiveness and claims that school choice leading to voucher schools and charter
schools never actually fulfilled its promises of giving minority parents the same options
available to middle-class families. That happened because school choice advocates have
focused on educational delivery and not on a serious, thorough examination of what
education is. She criticizes the ―education marketplace‖ NCLB has created, and argues that
―the fundamental principle by which education proceeds is collaboration. Teachers are
supposed to share what works; schools are supposed to get together and talk about what's
[successful] for them. They're not supposed to hide their trade secrets and have a survival
of the fittest competition with the school down the block‖ (2010). On testing, Ravitch
states that the basic strategy of measuring and punishing that NCLB has implemented is
hurting American public education. She claims that a focus on testing has led to cheating
and gaming of the system. Ravitch states: ―instead of raising standards, it has actually
8 In 2005, when Ravitch served as the Assitant Secretary of Education, she wrote: ―We should thank President George W.
Bush and Congress for passing the No Child Left Behind Act ... All this attention and focus is paying off for younger students, who are reading and solving mathematics problems better than their parents' generation‖ (Inskeep, 2010).
42
lowered standards because many states have 'dumbed down' their tests or changed the
scoring of their tests to say that more kids are passing than actually are"(2010). While
some states claim that a very high percentage of their students are proficient at reading
and math (some claim that as many as 90% of their children have reached said
proficiency), the reality exposed by the NAEP9 is that only about 25 to 30 percent of the
students have in fact reached math and reading proficiency. This gaming of the system
has led to a very low level of education that students have received. Ravitch mentions a
2009 study by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, which evidences
how the improvement of eighth graders in reading and math were the product of testing
modifications, and that by the time the students went to high school, these gains had
disappeared.
A range of scholars have come forward to speak against NCLB (Randolph&
Wilson-Younger, 2012; Abdul-Alim, 2011; Goodman, 2014; Armor, 2006; Fox, 2013;
Menken, 2008; Noddings, 2007; and Weiner, 2012). Among their criticism is how
education now completely revolves around standardized testing, the neoliberal model of
public school privatization that NCLB arguably fosters, the large number of students who
are being left behind when the law claims to leave no one student behind, and a teaching
to the test platform now widely used in public schools.
In addition to scholars, NCLB has received negative feedback from the general
public as well. A Gallup poll released in August 2012 reveals that a significant number of
Americans thinks NCLB has worsen education in the USA (Saad, 2012). Of the people
9 The National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP), a congressionally mandated project administered by the
National Council for Education Statistics (NCES), is a nationally representative assessment of what American students know in core
subjects (mathematics, reading, science, writing, the arts, civics, economics, geography, and U.S. history). It is commonly referred to as the Nation‘s Report Card.
43
surveyed, 29% believe NCLB has made education worse, and 16% think it has improved
education. Of those who claim to be ―very familiar‖ with the law, 48% think it has made
education worse, and 28% better. Perhaps most telling is the fact that 38% of surveyed
said the law hasn‘t made much difference. The results of this poll are in line with another
poll Gallop had release in 2011, in which one in six Americans believed NCLB should be
eliminated (Jones, 2011).
Summary
In this chapter I offered a historical review of NCLB, the most recent
authorization of the ESEA of 1965, the law that authorizes spending of federal dollars on
elementary and secondary education. I started the chapter explaining the process of
reauthorizing ESEA into NCLB, and then moved on to the interest of policymakers in the
academic achievement of disadvantaged students that forms the basis of the development
of the policy. I also talked about student assessment and accountability with AYP as the
main indicator of progress, and examined Obama‘s stake on NCLB, as well as the ESEA
Blueprint for Reauthorization that the Obama administration developed. Finally, I raised
the ideas of scholars who offer pushback, criticizing the efforts to reauthorize ESEA as it
stands. In the next chapter I offer an overview of social epistemology and virtue
epistemology, and I consider how these two theories function as a theoretical framework
for the study of how NCLB impacts the development of knowledge.
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CHAPTER 3:
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Introduction
In this chapter I present the theoretical framework for the study of the effects of
NCLB on knowledge development among elementary school students. I start with a
historical overview of the study of knowledge, and move on to more contemporary
discussions in the field of epistemology. I discuss in further detail developments in social
epistemology, focusing on Alvin Goldman‘s ideas for the systems-oriented (SYSOR)
variety of social epistemology. I also offer an overview of virtue epistemology, which
together with social epistemology forms the theoretical framework I apply in this study. I
explain how these two kinds of epistemological developments will give basis to the study
proposed here, and I discuss why they have been chosen as the theory framing this study.
History
In Meno, Plato questions the distinction between knowledge and right (true)
opinion. He formulates the following idea: if someone knows something, and someone
else only has true opinion (but not knowledge), then the first person has everything the
second person has, in addition to something else. Roderick Chisholm (1966) puts the
approach to Plato‘s question schematically with the expression ―S knows that h is true.‖
―S,‖ says Chisholm, may be replaced by the name or the description of a person, and ―h‖
may be replaced by a sentence such as ―It is raining‖ or ―Anaxagoras was a Greek
philosopher.‖ Chisholm states that this expression tells us some things: first, that S
believes that h, and second, that h is true (that is, that it is indeed raining, or that
Anaxagoras was a Greek philosopher). But, as Plato put it, there is something else to
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knowledge than true opinion, and that is where epistemologists focus their efforts. In
other words, epistemologists ask the following question: what is it that, when paired with
true opinion, becomes knowledge?
Philosophers have been concerned with the issue of knowledge and true belief
since Plato wrote Meno in 380 B.C.E. Epistemology—from the Greek episteme, meaning
―knowledge,‖ ―understanding,‖ and logos, meaning ―the study of‖—is the branch of
philosophy that studies the nature and scope of knowledge. As the theory of knowledge,
epistemology is concerned with the manners through which knowledge can be acquired,
and the extent to which knowledge, relative to any such subject or entity, may be
acquired (Steup, 2014). Over the years, philosophers have defended an epistemological
tradition that goes back to Plato, holding that three conditions must be met in order for
one to have knowledge. This account is known as the tripartite theory of knowledge, and
it analyzes knowledge as justified true belief (JTB). The tripartite theory holds that if
someone believes something, has justification for the given belief, and the belief is true,
this person knows it; otherwise, he does not.
According to the tripartite theory of knowledge, the first condition of knowledge
is belief: unless you believe something, you cannot know it. Something might be true,
and there might be excellent reasons to believe it; but without actually believing it, one
cannot know. The second condition is justification: it is not enough to correctly believe
something and for it to be true, one must also be justified in believing it. In other words,
we can only know the things for which we have good reason to believe. The third and last
condition for knowledge under the tripartite theory is truth: if I know something, then it
must be true. No matter how well-justified and believed something might be, if it is not
46
true, it will not constitute knowledge. What is false, therefore, cannot be known, because
knowledge must be knowledge of the truth.
Accepted for centuries, the tripartite theory of knowledge was challenged in the
1960s when Edmund Gettier critiqued it using thought experiments known as the Gettier
problem. In ―Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?‖ Gettier (1963) used counterexamples
to argue that some beliefs may be both true and justified, which satisfies the three
conditions of knowledge on the JTB account, but that yet do not seem to be genuine cases
of knowledge. With these counterexamples, Gettier (1963) argued that the JTB account
of knowledge is false, and that a new account is needed. The Gettier problem is based on
two counterexample cases to the JTB analysis of knowledge, which postulates that
justification is sustained by entailment.
To understand it better, let us look at the cases Gettier proposed. The first is that
of Smith and Jones, both of whom have applied for the same job. For the sake of
argument, Smith has strong evidence for the following conjunctive proposition: (b) Jones
is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket. The evidence
Smith has for this belief is from information he heard from the HR department, in which
they have decided that Jones will be selected for the job. Also, Smith himself counted the
coins in Jones‘s pocket just before he learned the HR information. Proposition (c)
entails—by the rule of closure—that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his
pocked. The entailment from (b) to (c) is clear to Smith, and he accepts (c) on the
grounds of (b), as he has strong evidence for the belief, and is justified in believing that
(c) is true. But as it so happens, unbeknownst to Smith, he will be the man who gets the
job, and not Jones. In addition, by sheer chance and unknown to Smith, he himself has 10
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coins in his pocket. Proposition (c) is then true, but proposition (b), from which Smith
inferred (c), is false. Gettier states that in this example all of the following are true: (i) (c)
is true, (ii) Smith believes that (c) is true, (iii) and Smith is justified in believing that (c) is
true. But Smith does not know that (c) is true. Proposition (c) is true because of the
number of coins in Smith‘s pocket, but Smith doesn‘t know how many coins he has in his
pocket. He bases his belief in (c) on the coins that he knows are in Jones‘s pocket, which
he falsely believes will be the man who gets the job. Although Smith has a justified
belief, it does not appear to constitute knowledge.
The second case Gettier presented is that of Smith, who has a justified belief that
―Jones owns a Ford,‖ and therefore concludes—by the rule of disjunction introduction—
that ―Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona,‖ even though Smith does not have
any knowledge whatsoever on the whereabouts of Brown. As it turns out, Jones does not
have a Ford, but due to sheer coincidence, Brown is in fact in Barcelona. Once again,
Smith‘s belief does turn out to be true and justified, but similar to the first case proposed
by Gettier, it does not seem to constitute knowledge.
The problem of what conditions must be met for something to be constituted as
―knowledge‖ is as old as Philosophy. Plato‘s dialogues,10 for instance, display one of the
first discussions in Western philosophy about the conditions that need to be met in order
for there to be knowledge. Although Gettier (1963) has won prominence with the specific
problems he raised in the short paper he wrote, he was not the first one to question JTB;
others prior to him have argued similar cases. Perhaps even more popular than the Gettier
problem is the problem of the stopped clock, offered by Bertrand Russell (2008) in The
10 See Meno 97a-98b for Plato‘s discussion of the conditions for knowledge.
48
Problems of Philosophy. Suppose someone looks at a clock and learns it is five o‘clock in
the afternoon. Unknown to this subject, however, the clock stopped exactly twelve hours
ago. Although it is indeed five in the afternoon and he has an accidentally true and
justified belief, Russell claims that his belief about the time, as yielded by the clock, does
not constitute knowledge. Although philosophers have disputed whom should be given
credit as the real originator of the JTB problem,11 what can be stated without dispute is
that the Gettier cases have indeed changed the way philosophers understand knowledge.
After ―Is Justified True Belief Knowledge‖ was published in 1963, it is rare to see a
philosopher discussing knowledge as only justified true belief without some form of
Gettier proofing.12
Distinct types of knowledge
Traditionally, the reasons that concern the epistemologist are reasons that, if good,
are supposed to make probable, or at least increase the probability of the proposition
believed being true. As stated previously, philosophers have been captivated with
achieving propositional knowledge since Plato wondered, 2,500 years ago, what must be
added to true belief in order to achieve knowledge. Although they disagree in what is to
be included in the study of epistemology, it is safe to affirm that most epistemologists
will allow that the concept of knowledge is somehow involved in epistemological
investigations. The concept of knowledge, or what people mean when they say they know
something, can be divided into three types: personal knowledge, procedural knowledge,
11 For a discussion on the JTB originality issue, see John L. Pollock (1970), Ralph Wedgewood (2002),Alvin Plantinga
(1993) and the debate over Internalism and Externalism views of justification.
12 In other words, the Gettier cases have been at the center of epistemological discussions for the last 50 years, and justified true belief with some sort of Gettier-proofing is now a common requirement for knowledge in epistemological discussions.
49
and propositional knowledge. One might say that he knows John, or that he knows New
York, and that would characterize personal knowledge. One might also say that he knows
how to swim, or knows how to drive, and that would be an instance of procedural
knowledge, or knowledge of how to do something, of possessing the skills to perform
whatever is said to be known (know-how). But when someone says that they have
knowledge of facts, such as ―I know that the internal angles of a triangle add up to 180
degrees‖ or ―I know that it was Jessica who stole my bag,‖ this person is claiming to have
propositional knowledge, to know that such and such is the case (know-that).This type of
knowledge is called ―propositional‖ because the ―that‖ clause that takes the object of the
verb ―knows‖ indicates a proposition, which is either true or false. Philosophers are
interested in getting at the truth of various matters, and they want to have or know what is
the reason or justification for believing that something is true. This interest in truth leads
to propositional knowledge, the form of knowledge in which most epistemologists are
interested (Greco & Sosa, 1999).
In the discussion of the three types of knowledge, most traditional epistemologists
move beyond procedural to propositional knowledge quickly, and particularly in the
context of social epistemology, people move too quickly. But because this project
involves VE, knowing how plays a more important role than it does in traditional
epistemology. This happens because VE involves skills such as some types of curiosity
and some types of carefulness, for example, so knowing how to listen carefully to both
sides of an argument in order to recognize where distinctions need to be made is
important. Moreover, without an investment in the development of procedural
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knowledge, the educational system is likely to produce epistemic agents who are
incompetent in their capacities to use procedural knowledge.
I want to take a moment to bring attention to the distinction between knowing
how and knowing that, and the place of knowing-how in the current educational system.
It‘s important to bear in mind that knowing how should not be restricted to activities such
as swimming, playing basketball, or driving, as there is also an intellectual aspect to
knowing how. In education, for example, we could talk about teaching students how to
calculate the square root in mathematics, or how to figure out the answer to a difficult
question. Another example would be to teach children how to intelligently research a
given topic in order to get an answer. It would also involve helping children use certain
methods of discovery on their own to answer certain scientific questions, or knowing how
to use Mill‘s methods,13 etc. My worry here is that with the requirements imposed by
NCLB, teachers are leaving out what should be a basic aspect of the educational
experience of children. I will discuss this issue in further detail later in this dissertation.
In Epistemology, Richard Fumerton (2006) argues that epistemological questions
pertain to the concepts of ―knowledge, evidence, reasons for believing, justification,
probability, what one ought to believe, and any other concepts that can only be
understood through one or more of the above.‖ Furthermore, Fumerton (2006) states that
although knowledge is the paradigmatic subject of epistemological investigation, it is in
many ways the most puzzling, which explains why many epistemologists (including
himself) have chosen to categorize knowledge as of secondary interest to the
13 Mill‘s methods are five methods of induction describe by John Stuart Mill (1843). The methods are: direct method of
agreement, method of difference, joint method of agreement and difference, method of residue, method of concomitant variations. For further reading on Mill‘s methods see A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive by John Stuart Mill (1966).
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epistemologist. This does not mean that Fumerton and the other epistemologists are
interested in epistemic reasons to believe, but not in knowledge. What Fumerton (2006)
argues is that an epistemic agent can control, by careful reflection, whether his beliefs are
justified or not; if he is careful enough, if he considers the evidence properly, he can
believe all and only what he is justified in believing. But the epistemic agent cannot
control whether he knows something because the world has to cooperate with him. There
are some cases, for instance, when the epistemic agent does not believe because of bad
luck. Here is an example, adapted from Zagzebski (1996): Mary enters the house and
looks into the living room. A familiar appearance greets her from her husband‘s chair.
She then thinks to herself, ―this cannot be my husband because he is away on a business
trip. It must be my husband‘s brother.‖ But unknown to Mary, her husband returned
home early and is indeed sitting in the living room. He just did not tell her, which led to
her not believing he was the one sitting in the living room (bad luck).
There is an indefinite number of ways bad luck can rob one of knowledge, but it
is much more difficult for bad luck to rob one of justification. Another instance of how
the world has to cooperate with the epistemic agent is the fact that someone can think his
friend‘s name is Matthew, and he would be justified in believing that, as he heard from
Matthew that this is his name, and this is how most people get justification for believing
other people‘s names. But as it turns out, Matthew is a pathological liar who goes around
lying about many things, including his name. The epistemic agent cannot control whether
or not people are pathological liars. All he can do is make sure his beliefs are rational and
justified. It is for that reason that some epistemologists believe that one is better off
focusing on what one can control, namely, that one‘s beliefs are rational and justified.
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All the agent can do is hope that there is not some type of massive deception going on,
that there is no Cartesian evil demon, that one is not constantly hallucinating or, as
Russell (1968) proposed, that a person was not created five minutes ago complete with all
their memory experiences. This is the reason why some epistemologists think justified
belief is more interesting than knowledge in what you can control, since you cannot
control knowledge.
Similar to the Gettier proofing, one can no longer talk about epistemology without
also discussing the internalism vs. externalism (I-E) conception of epistemic justification.
Some philosophers claim that the I-E is one of the most widely discussed distinction in
current epistemology, applied both to accounts of epistemic justification and to accounts
of knowledge (Kim, 1993). Talking about the I-E distinction is challenging, as
philosophers have come up with widely different interpretations of internalism and
externalism. Fumerton (1998), for instance, claims that ―much of contemporary
epistemology takes place in the shadow of the internalism/externalism debate,‖ but that
the distinction has not been clearly defined, and that philosophers are taking sides without
a clear understanding of the views. The problem seems to be that there isn‘t only one way
to characterize said distinction.
In general terms, internalism and externalism are theses about the basis of
knowledge or justified belief. The basic idea behind internalism is that factors internal to
the epistemic agent are what determines the justification for knowledge or belief.
Externalists, to the contrary, deny this, holding that there are external factors upon which
justification depends.14 There are several forms of internalism. One of them holds that an
14 Externalism is generally the denial of some internalist position (Pappas, 2014).
53
agent can have access to the basis (and be aware of it) for knowledge or justified belief.
Laurence Bonjour, for example, defends that ―a theory of justification is internalist if and
only if it requires that all of the factors needed for a belief to be epistemically justified for
a given person be cognitively accessible to that person, internal to his cognitive
perspective‖ (1992). Externalists, on the other hand, deny the idea that one can have this
type of access. A second type of internalism holds that what matters is the basis for
justified belief, not access. This thesis concerns justified belief but may be extended to
knowledge as well. This is known as mentalism, the thesis that some mental state of the
person who holds the belief is what ultimately justifies any given belief. In this regard,
Ernest Sosa writes that ―justification requires only really proper thought on the part of the
subject: if a believer has obtained and sustains his belief through wholly appropriate
thought, then the believer is justified in so believing—where the appropriateness of the
thought is a matter purely internal to the mind of the subject, and not dependent on what
lies beyond‖ (1999). To that extent, externalism holds that something other than mental
states functions as justifiers. A third form of internalism is the deontological concept of
justification, concerned with the concept of justification, not so much access or the nature
of justifiers. It is deontological because the concept of epistemic justification is supposed
to fulfill the intellectual duties and responsibilities of a person. Externalism with respect
to the concept of epistemic justification would be the thesis that this concept is to be
analyzed in terms other than special duties or responsibilities (Pappas, 2014).15
So far, I have presented a brief history of epistemology from the classical period
to contemporary discussions. There are several other problems with the notion of
15 For a thorough discussion of internalism vs. externalism versions of justification, see Bonjour & Sosa (2003), Conee &
Feldman (2004), Bergmann (2006) and Dougherty (2011).
54
justification that philosophers have raised over the years and more recently. Given the
scope of this project, I shall refrain from further discussions on the issue and turn instead
to social epistemology and virtue epistemology, the theory upon which I frame the
present study.
Social Epistemology
AJ. Ayer (1956) argues that it is by its methods instead of its subject matter that
philosophy is to be distinguished from other fields of study. Philosophers often employ
arguments which are meant to be true, and they generally rely on arguments to support
their own theories and to dispute those of others. Unlike the sciences, philosophical
theories are usually not empirically tested because they are neutral to factual matters.
Ayer (1956) states that this is not because philosophers aren‘t concerned with facts, ―but
they are in the strange position that all the evidence which bears upon their problems is
already available to them.‖ Further scientific information will be of no avail to decipher
the philosophical questions—such as whether the physical world is real, whether objects
exist when they are not perceived, or whether the senses are a reliable source of
information for the outside world. These are questions that cannot be answered by
experiment, because the way by which they are answered establishes how any experiment
should be interpreted. The question for Ayer (1956), then, is not whether a given event
will or will not happen, but instead how anything that indeed happens is to be
characterized. This method is known in philosophical discussions as armchair
philosophy, meaning that in order to do philosophy, one needs his own intellectual
apparatus, and nothing else.
55
More recently, some epistemologists have attempted to go beyond armchair
philosophy by studying the social dimensions of knowledge or information, giving rise to
the field of social epistemology (SE). Frederick Schmitt (1999) offers the following
definition of SE:
Social epistemology may be defined as the conceptual and normative study of the
social dimensions of knowledge. It studies the bearing of social relations,
interests, roles, and institutions – what I will term ―social conditions‖ – on the
conceptual and normative conditions of knowledge. It differs from the sociology
of knowledge in being a conceptual and normative, and not primarily empirical,
study, and in limning the necessary and not merely the contingent social
conditions of knowledge. The central question of social epistemology is whether,
and to what extent, the conditions of knowledge include social conditions. Is
knowledge a property of knowers in isolation from their social setting (and in
what sense of ―isolation‖), or does it involve a relation between knowers and their
social circumstances?
This question will depend on the kinds of knowers, knowledge, and social relations that
are involved, and it may take several forms. For example, on whether or not the
conditions of knowledge include social conditions, it is important to know what the term
―social‖ means. For Schmitt (1999), a social condition is one in which there are two or
more persons ―related by some intentional relation (e.g., friendship, mutual admiration,
etc.). Important here is the fact that SE may have empirical characteristics, but the focus
of a social epistemological study remains conceptual and normative. It delineates the
norms and concepts of a given social situation that is being studied and it depicts the
necessary social conditions of knowledge.
Although there is little consensus on what the term ―knowledge‖ means, the scope
of the social, and the style or purpose of the study, philosophers believe SE ―should retain
the same general mission as classical epistemology, revamped in the recognition that
classical epistemology was too individualistic‖ (Goldman, 2009). Social epistemologists
56
hold that traditional epistemology, particularly the Cartesian interpretation of
epistemology, is self-reliant as it is implicated with the mental operations of individuals
in isolation from other people. In other words, traditional epistemology is individual
epistemology in which the agent has to figure out his mind and what is outside of it—if
anything—on his own. For social epistemologists, the development of knowledge,
particularly in the modern world, is a deeply social enterprise. Individual epistemology,
therefore, needs a social analogue.
There are two main ways in which SE is social: 1) it studies how knowledge is
formed through social instances and the institutions present in society,16 and 2) it
investigates how knowledge gets distributed among people (Goldman & Blanchard,
2015). On the one hand, SE looks at the many believers involved in the project of
believing, and it analyzes the path of belief that involves interaction with other agents (in
contraposition to the traditional epistemology method of private, nonsocial paths to belief
attainment). On the other, it investigates the dissemination of information (both correct
and wrong) amidst a group of people (friends, office coworkers, students in a school,
etc.). Unlike the Cartesian epistemological method of individual scrutiny of knowledge,
SE considers the spread of knowledge or error within the larger social structure
(Goldman & Blanchard, 2015).
Historically, SE refers to a set of approaches to the study of knowledge that
construes human understanding as a collective achievement (Goldman, 2010). The term
―social epistemology‖ first appeared in discussions by library scientists Margaret Egan
16 For example, social epistemologists are interested in studying how people acquire knowledge through the venues of a
social institution, in which rules allow or preclude the sharing/disseminating of certain information. The school is a pertinent example, since it is perhaps the most prominent social institution around the world where knowledge is formed and disseminated.
57
and Jesse Shera in the 1950s (Egan & Shera, 1952). But it was not until the1990s that it
gained traction when two authors reinstated the discussion of SE, each taking it in a
different direction: Alvin Goldman and Steve Fuller. The latter founded Social
Epistemology: a journal of knowledge, culture, and policy in 1987, and in 1988 he
published Social Epistemology. Goldman published Knowledge in a Social World in
1999, and is the editor of the journal Episteme: a journal of social epistemology.
Rejecting traditional Cartesian epistemology, Fuller defends a type of epistemology that
is more open to science studies in addition to philosophy. Fuller (2002) believes that the
Cartesian attempt to reduce knowledge to some variant of justified true belief is an
artificial explanation of what counts as knowledge, since the belief condition privileges
beings with a conscience, or consciousness, as knowledge-bearers. Instead, Fuller prefers
to believe that knowledge operates as a principle of social organization, as a motivator for
how people will act with regard to one another and their place in the world. According to
Fuller, SE is not so much interested in the problem of knowledge as classically posed by
epistemologists (justified true belief). Rather, the focus is on a literal sense of knowledge
production: how given linguistic artifacts (such as texts) achieve certification as
knowledge, the patterns of circulation of these artifacts, and finally the development of
certain attitudes by the producers on the nature of the entire knowledge project.
Goldman (1999), on the other hand, intended to make a distinction between
epistemology and SE without rejecting Cartesian epistemology. Goldman (1999) thinks it
is critical to answer the questions ―what is knowledge?‖ and ―what is justified belief?‖,
but he does not think that social epistemological questions are incompatible with the
questions that classical epistemologists asks. Goldman accepts that knowledge is to be
58
ultimately understood in terms of justified true belief with some form of Gettier proofing
condition. He argues the view that the pursuit of information is universal in the
experience of human beings in the world: we look at the calendar to know what day of
the month we are in, we go to the web to check the news for the day, and we check the
weather forecast to see how we should dress before we leave the house, to give a few
examples. Both natural curiosity and practical concerns fuel our desire for true belief, that
is, knowledge (in a weak sense).17 For example, our natural curiosity makes us fascinated
by the possibility of intelligent life outside of planet Earth, even though learning whether
or not this is true may have no direct influence in our lives (if the other planets are too far
for any communication, for example). But when students ask their teacher for the date of
the next quiz, or when the secretary asks her boss when he wants the report delivered,
these people have a practical interest, namely, true or accurate information. One evidence
that truth is what people are after is a type of social interaction that is very common to
human experience: information seeking through question or inquiry. The primary purpose
of asking a question is to learn the truth from whom one is directing the question. No one
wants to be misled when asking someone for the time, or when asking if the fish in
display behind the counter in the market is fresh. People commonly seek the truth, or at
least a close conjecture to the truth (Goldman, 1999). For Goldman, the justified true
belief character of traditional epistemology is in consonance with the experience of
people, and it does not need to be cast aside.
17 Some epistemologists have suggested that there are alternatives to the tripartite theory of knowledge. One of these
alternatives is the weak sense of knowledge, in which only true belief is necessary. This is sometimes motivated by the idea that, when
people want to know if someone knows p, they are interested in whether or not the person has true belief of p; they are not interested in finding out if the person is also justified in knowing p (Ichikawa & Steup, 2014).
59
In ―Why Social Epistemology is Real Epistemology,‖ Goldman (1999)
approaches SE in a milieu where the relativism and anti-objectivity of postmodernism
and social constructionism have posed as substitutes for traditional epistemology. These
movements reject the quest for truth, reason, and objectivity, symbols of traditional
epistemology, and interpret the social factors as necessarily incapacitating anyone from
determining truth. These deluded ideas have ruled cultural studies and several other
disciplines, such as history, law, science studies, and education in the last few decades.
Against this type of relativism, Goldman defends the view that ―social practices can make
both positive and negative contributions to knowledge. The task is to show just which
social practices, under what conditions, will promote knowledge rather than subvert it‖
(1999). Goldman (2010) argues for an expansionist approach to SE by adding two more
topics, not addressed in traditional epistemology, but which are continuous with
traditional epistemology and therefore deserve to be called real epistemology: 1)
epistemic properties of groups, or collective doxastic agents, and 2) the influence of
social systems and their policies on epistemic outcomes. The expansionist approach to SE
is important for my project because I analyze a social system to understand the influence
of educational policy on epistemic outcomes.
On this broader conception of the social approach to the study of knowledge,
Goldman (1999) defends the view that at least some of what is included under SE is
purely empirical. He proposes an epistemic evaluation of social systems with the end of
improving epistemic practices of science or social institutions. Goldman (2009) argues:
Many sectors of social life feature practices and institutions ostensibly dedicated
to epistemic ends, but where one is entitled to wonder whether prevailing
practices and institutions are optimal. Subjecting such practices and institutions to
epistemic evaluation is therefore in order. Are they the best practices or
60
institutions (of their type) that can be devised? What alternative practices would
work better in epistemic terms?
In an attempt to evaluate practices and institutions devoted to epistemic ends, Goldman
(1999) discusses two social systems: one in law, the other in the sciences. The first
analysis regards the legal adjudication system, in which there are laws controlling the
types of evidence that can or cannot be introduced in the court for a trial. A question
follows: to what extent does exposure to a certain sort of evidence bias and/or makes it
more likely for a jury to reach a false conclusion about the innocence or guilt of a person,
or make the members of the jury more likely to want to find someone guilty when they
are not? This is called the notion of prejudicial evidence. But what does prejudice really
mean in this case? In other words, how is it that a piece of evidence may prejudice the
members of a jury? One explanation is that attorneys are not allowed to show the jury
very graphic images of a wound because doing so allegedly makes people more likely to
want revenge, and the jury is more likely to use the defendant as a focus of their revenge.
Here one cannot help but ask, is keeping this type of evidence from a trial the most
effective practice for the legal adjudication system? What if the given evidence that
cannot be shown to the jury is in fact the most important evidence for a case, the one that
will prevent the innocent from being convicted and the guilty from being set free to
continue committing crimes? Similarly, a question follows: in other social systems, are
there practices that are not the most effective for the system, even possibly harmful?
Goldman‘s second analysis concerns the emphasis that exists in the sciences to be
the first researcher to discover something. There is an emphasis in terms of reward, of
bestowing fame on individuals, and of putting people who discover something at the front
of the line in terms of future grants and other forms of recognition. Goldman thinks that
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this is dangerous because it causes people to hurry, skipping important steps that should
be carefully attended in the process. Perhaps somebody will arrive at the truth by
hurrying up, but a significant number of people are going to be sloppy in their work,
rushing simply to be the first to discover something. This race to be the first has the
tendency to result in a waste of time, energy, and resources. Not only might this not be
the best way to get people true beliefs, but a more serious concern is that this is not a
good way to get people genuine knowledge, genuine understanding, and more theoretical
sorts of abilities, such as reasoning abilities, so crucial for future development. Among
the questions Goldman raises for social epistemological studies are: what sorts of
practices in a given field are causally likely to get people to arrive at the truth? What sorts
of practices are dangerous and likely to get people to arrive at false beliefs? What sorts of
practice in a field lead to people achieving knowledge? What sorts of practice are likely
to discourage people from achieving knowledge? (Goldman, 1999; 2010). Goldman
wants to know which methods, when employed either by individuals or by social
institutions, are likely to produce two things: one is more justified belief or more
knowledge, and the other is more true beliefs (when you get knowledge you
automatically get more true beliefs, almost all epistemologists agree).s
Although epistemologists have focused attention on everyday thought and talk,
unraveling the norms that govern them, Goldman (2010) argues that SE should not be
restricted to this activity. As is the case with philosophy of science, epistemology should
be more sympathetic to the ―meliorative project of improving epistemic practices,
especially in the scientific arena.‖ Meliorative projects are infrequent in the history of
mainstream epistemology, but Goldman (2010) states they would be relevant to a number
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of projects in traditional epistemology by applying epistemic criteria of evaluation to
objects. Instead of only individual agents or even doxastic agents, social systems or
policies that have some form of a significant causal impact on the epistemic outcomes of
society can also become the target of epistemological scrutiny. Among these social
systems and policies is educational policy, and in the case of this dissertation, NCLB.
Critics (Alston, 2005) of meliorist SE argue that there are only two suitable
marks of epistemology: a) beliefs and psychological states, and b) persons who are
subjects of these states. Group or collective agents are not subjects of doxastic states, the
critics would claim, and collective entities lack the classic target of epistemic appraisal,
namely, belief-forming methods. For that reason, collective agents are not genuine targets
for epistemological analysis and assessment. The legal adjudication system, practices in
the sciences, or in the case of this dissertation, educational policies such as NCLB, and
school practices following it would not qualify as psychological states or doxastic agents.
This is because, as an educational policy, NCLB is a collection of rules and regulations
that need to be followed: a collective agent, to use a terminology proposed by the critics.
Goldman (2010) questions the warrants the critics have regarding the restriction
of the epistemological analysis to the two types of targets (beliefs and subjects). His
response is that ―social epistemology is prepared to study individual doxastic agents who
‗choose‘ among other doxastic attitudes toward a proposition. S.E. can imagine the
existence of collective agents and can study social systems that house institutions and
relationship partners‖ (2012). In other words, although collective entities and social
systems are not (belief-forming) methods, ―social systems and institutions are something
like methods insofar as methods are commonly evaluated by their (epistemic) upshots or
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outputs, which is exactly what is proposed for the epistemic evaluation of social systems‖
(Goldman, 2010). Goldman (2010) insists that ―a reasonable continuity holds between
methods and systems, each of which can be evaluated in terms of similar epistemic
outputs.‖ The adjudication system has a method, or methods that govern how attorneys,
prosecutors, and judges can operate in a court of law. The sciences follow a method of
recognition to reward those at the forefront of discovery. Educational policy enforces
rules, regulations, and methods that direct the endeavor of education. Goldman‘s claim is
that each of these systems can be evaluated for the epistemic outputs they confer, in the
same way as belief-forming methods are evaluated epistemically. Furthermore, Goldman
(2011) asserts that although epistemology is interested in questions about a variety of
beliefs, it usually focuses on broader categories of belief, such as belief based on
induction or belief based on perception, memory, or testimony.
Correspondingly, SE can investigate the epistemic properties of specific social
systems, or it may examine more theoretical levels by studying the epistemic
consequences of the more abstract parts of social systems, such as how they employ (or
decline to employ) expertise, or how they encourage or discourage various forms of
communication or division of cognitive labor. For Goldman (2011), an epistemic system
is a system that holds a series of procedures, institutions and types of peer influence that
affect the epistemic outcome of the people who are involved in the given system.
Goldman (2011) calls this the systems-oriented variety, or the SYSOR conception of SE.
He claims that paradigmatic cases of epistemic systems are formal institutions with
publicly specified aims, rules, and procedures. Not every epistemic system, however, is
formal in this sense, ―as some social systems have a fairly explicit aim of promoting
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positive epistemic outcomes in their members. These systems include science, education,
and journalism. The core mission of each of these systems is to elevate its community‘s
level of truth possession, information possession, knowledge possession, or possession of
justified or rational belief‖ (Goldman, 2011).
I believe educational policy may also—in fact it should—be the object of
epistemic evaluation. In this dissertation, I analyze NCLB as an epistemic system that
houses a variety of procedures and patterns of interpersonal influence leading to the
epistemic outcomes of its members. I offer a distilled version of Goldman‘s account of
SE, assessing the effects of NCLB on knowledge development among students by
seeking the perspective of teachers. I do the analysis exclusively in epistemic terms, that
is, using epistemic criteria of evaluation and normative appraisal to argue that NCLB
hinders epistemic development in students by forcing educators and schools to teach to
the test instead of teaching for the formation of the lifelong learner.
Virtue Epistemology: from Aristotle to contemporary
philosophy
Aristotle was the first philosopher to distinguish a class of intellectual virtues
from the class of moral virtues. Defining intellectual virtues not as character traits but
rather as the intellectual capacities one has, Aristotle characterized them as ―states by
virtue of which the soul possesses truth by way of affirmation or denial‖ (NE 1139b).
According to Aristotle, there are five main intellectual virtues: techne (art), episteme
(scientific knowledge), phronesis (practical wisdom), sophia (philosophic wisdom), and
nous (intuitive reason). These five intellectual virtues are what makes it possible for us to
know what is ―just and admirable.‖ In addition, Aristotle held that intellectual virtues
65
lead to happiness; they are ends in themselves, and they help us choose the best means to
the ends that the moral virtues teach us to aim (NE Book IV).
Over the centuries, philosophers (most prominently Thomas Aquinas) continued
the discussion of intellectual virtue Aristotle started. By the modern period, however,
Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill had brought a shift to philosophical discussions on
virtue. From the ancient/medieval focus on moral virtue, Kant and Mill influenced
philosophers to turn instead to the nature of an individual‘s act as conforming to the
moral law (Kant) and as maximizing utility (Mill).18
More recently, a return to the classical Aristotelian idea of virtue took place in the
late 1950s with the publication of G. E. M. Anscombe‘s ―Modern Moral Philosophy‖
(1958). In her work, Anscombe pointed out flaws in moral philosophy that could be
remedied only with a return to classical morality.19 The renewal of interest in virtue
concepts amidst moral philosophers brought about by the work of Anscombe inspired
some to respond to the intractability of the different analyses of knowledge that followed
the Gettier problems. Among those, Ernest Sosa gained prominence with the idea of
intellectual virtues in epistemological discussions. In the influential paper ―The Raft and
the Pyramid,‖ Sosa (1980) sets out to resolve the conflict between foundationalists and
coherentists over the structure of epistemic justification,20 arguing for intellectual virtue
as a means to resolve the conflict and bridge the gap, creating consensus between these
18 That‘s not to say Kant and Mill were not concerned with virtue or thought it was not important, he just didn‘t think
virtue were fundamental. For Kant‘s argument of individual acts conforming to the moral law, see Kant (1956), Aune (1979), Wolff (1973). For further reading on utilitarianism, see Hume (1978), Mill (1998), and Moore (1988).
19 For a review of the history of virtue epistemology, see Baehr (2011), Zagzebski (1996), Montmarquet (1994), and
Greco & Turi (2013).
20 Foundationalism and coherentism are views about the structure of justification or knowledge. Foundationalists defend
the view that all knowledge and justification have at their foundation noninferential knowledge and justification. Alternatively,
philosophers defending coherentism believe that the truth of any proposition depends on its coherence with a given (specified) set of propositions (Young, 2013; Fumerton, 2010).
66
two epistemological theories. Sosa believed both foundationalism and coherentism were
flawed: philosophers of the foundationalist approach had a problem giving an account of
how beliefs of the foundational kind pertain to the sensory experiences that maintain
them; coherentists, on the other hand, had their own difficulty, namely, how to explain
that justification can only be achieved by beliefs that are coherently tied in a belief
system when in fact perceptual beliefs often times do not have many logical connections
with other beliefs in the system. The coherentist approach was somewhat inappropriate to
integrate the attention normally assigned to perceptual information. The foundationalist
pyramid had no ultimate foundations; the raft of coherentism must inescapably find itself
drifting. In ―The Raft and the Pyramid,‖ Sosa suggests that virtue might be the vehicle
that helps avoid the disputes between the coherentist and the foundationalist accounts of
knowledge.21
Sosa‘s ―The Raft and the Pyramid‖ is a milestone in VE. It has generated
significant discussion and scholarship among epistemologists interested in intellectual
virtues and in resolving the Gettier problems of justification, and it has directed
philosophers to pay more attention to the issue of VE. To this end, VE is a recent
collection of philosophical approaches that gives intellectual virtues centrality in the field
of epistemology (Baehr, 2011). VE shares two commitments: 1) epistemology is
normative, and 2) intellectual agents and communities are the primary source of
epistemic value and the primary focus of epistemic evaluation. This focus involves
individuals and groups, as well as the characteristics essential to their cognitive character.
21 Sosa does not offer a direct argument for how virtue might bridge the gap between foundationalism and coherentism.
Instead, he argues that epistemologists need to take the concept of virtue into consideration more carefully, particularly the distinction
between moral and intellectual virtues: ―In epistemology, there is reason to think that the most useful and illuminating notion of
intellectual virtue will prove broader than our tradition would suggest and must give due weight not only to the subject and his intrinsic nature but also to his environment and to his epistemic community‖ (Sosa, 1980).
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That VE is a normative discipline entails two things: 1) it implies opposition to
Quine‘s radical suggestion (Epistemology Naturalized, 1969) that philosophers should
forget questions about what‘s reasonable to believe, limiting themselves to questions
about empirical psychology; and 2) it signals that epistemologists need to focus on
understanding epistemic norms, value and evaluation (Greco & Turri, 2013). Quine
(1969) argues that the attempt of epistemologists to derive statements about the world
from statements about our own sensations has failed. If we were able to infer our beliefs
about the world from our beliefs about sensations, we could then be sure of the inferred
truths about the world just as well. But these attempts to found our beliefs about the
world have failed, says Quine, because the derivations do not work. He calls for
epistemology to be replaced by the study of ―the psychological processes that take us
from sensory stimulations to beliefs about the world‖ (Feldman, 2012). The normativity
of VE implies that epistemologists need to focus on deciphering epistemic norms, as this
is a designating characteristic of the field. Some epistemologists have taken the idea of
―normative‖ in VE to a further extent, holding that it is not possible to define sufficiently
and competently epistemological terms and concepts such as knowledge, evidence, and
virtue in non-normative language (Zagzebski, 1996; Roberts & Wood, 2007). Other
epistemologists have argued for VE to be a form of inspiration that works to stimulate
portraits of intellectual virtues, promoting a reform of culture and intellectual
development. They argue that although there is a strong educative element in
contemporary VE, it is still far from being a defining characteristic of the field (Roberts
& Woods, 2007).
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The second commitment of VE, that intellectual agents are the primary source and
focus of epistemic value and evaluation, results in a unique course of inquiry
characteristic of virtue theories (both in ethics and in epistemology). According to Greco
and Turri (2013), with regard to the properties of an agent, virtue ethics explains the
moral properties of an action in terms of the properties of the agent (weather the action
arises from affection or enmity, for example). VE explains the normative properties of a
cognitive performance with regard to the properties of the cognizer (whether the inquirer
is careful or sloppy in his task). So for virtue ethics, the relevant properties are moral
virtues and vices, but for VE, the important features are intellectual virtues and vices.
Here is an example of VE‘s course of inquiry, as adapted from Greco and Turri (2013),
and how it differs from standard approaches to epistemology: in evidentialism,22 an
epistemically justified belief is taken to be one that is supported by the evidence, and then
the evidence is defined in a way that derives fully from the properties of the person.
Evidentialists take intellectual virtues to be natural dispositions to believe according to
the evidence, which is characterized separately, without referral to the virtues. Virtue
epistemologists, on the other hand, invert the order of analysis and determine the
justifiedness of belief as one that exhibits intellectual virtue, and evidence in relation to
intellectual virtue.
Among those who responded to Sosa‘s paper arguing for the centrality of
epistemic responsibility in epistemology is Lorraine Code (1987). Code is with Sosa in
his direction of analysis thesis, and she believes that primary justification functions as an
22 Evidentialism is a theory about epistemic justification holding that for a person to be justified in believing proposition p
at a time t, her evidence for p at time t supports believing p. There are several version of evidentialism, diverging in what sorts of
things can count as evidence, what it is for someone to claim to have evidence, and what it is for an agent‘s evidence to support the belief of a preposition (Connie and Feldman, 2004).
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attachment to steady inclinations to act in certain ways, and that secondary justification
amasses to certain acts due to their sources in virtues. She argues that this approach puts
the focus of epistemology on a person with cognitive activities placed in a community
defined by shared practices of inquiry. Code understands Sosa‘s position as a form of
reliabilism and states that her version of responsibilism is an improved version of Sosa‘s
initial insights. For Code, the notion of responsibility highlights the active nature of the
epistemic agent, and the component of choice comprised in the agent‘s activity. She
holds that while a passive knower may be portrayed as reliable, the quality of responsible
or irresponsible may only be ascribed to an active agent because only through being
active will an agent fulfill her duty to other enquirers. Furthermore, Code believes Sosa is
correct in inviting epistemologists to think about ways to use intellectual virtues in
epistemology. But the more organic way to cultivate this is to interpret intellectual virtues
in light of epistemic responsibility. Code goes all the way in stating that epistemic
responsibility is the central intellectual virtue from which all other intellectual virtues
stem (Greco & Turri, 2015).
Zagzebski (1996), one of the biggest proponent of the normative character of
epistemology, argues that at the center of the epistemological effort should be the
promotion of intellectual well-being. She argues that an epistemological theory should be
―practically useful‖ in helping us to recognize when we do or do not know something. In
Virtues of the Mind, Zagzebski (1996) argues that most epistemological theories are
shaped after act-based moral theories, and that there are no epistemological theory
closely shaped after a ―pure virtue theory‖ (1996). Zagzebski argues for a theory that can
be used to analyze the main concepts of normative epistemology, such as the concepts of
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knowledge and justified belief, and she attempts to develop a neo-Aristotelian version of
virtue theory, as well as a general analysis of virtue. She believes that the intellectual
virtues and the Aristotelian moral virtues are so connected that they should not be treated
as two different types of virtues; intellectual virtues should be taken as the object of study
of moral philosophy because they are a form of moral virtue. Zagzebski also states that
intellectual virtue is ―the primary normative component of both justified belief and
knowledge‖ (1996). With her theory, Zagzebski argues that virtue-based epistemology is
to be favored instead of a belief-based epistemology, in similarity to how a virtue-based
moral theory is more desirable than an act-based moral theory. Her idea is not so much
that VE should replace Cartesian epistemology, but that VE should be more central to the
processes of traditional epistemology. In other words, she argues that the primary
normative component of justified belief and knowledge should be intellectual virtue,
since ―the justifiedness of beliefs is related to intellectual virtue as the rightness of acts is
related to moral virtue in a pure virtue ethics‖ (1996). This is because she defines
knowledge as cognitive contact with reality arising from ―acts of intellectual virtue,‖ thus
giving distinction to Aristotle‘s phrenesis (as a virtue).
But what are the intellectual virtues? Most virtue epistemologists (Montmarquet,
1993; Zagzebski, 1996; Roberts and Wood, 2007; and Baehr, 2011) agree that, at a basic
motivational level, there is a direct relationship between intellectual virtues and a love of
epistemic goods. To be intellectually virtuous means that an epistemic agent desires and
is committed to the pursuit of qualities such as knowledge, truth, and understanding. It is
this epistemic orientation that makes it possible for the distinction between intellectual
virtues and what are typically thought of as moral virtues.
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In addition to the common motivational level that intellectual virtues share, each
intellectual virtue also has its own characteristic. Baehr (2013) puts this idea formally: for
any intellectual virtue V, a subject S possesses V only if S is (a) disposed to manifest a
certain activity or psychology characteristic of V (b) out of love of epistemic goods. For
example, an intellectually perseverant person has consciousness of the necessity to use
insights and truths even in the face of obstacles, such as the irrational opposition of
others. An individual driven by the virtue of intellectual curiosity constantly asks why-
questions because she is interested in learning more and understanding the world around
her. And someone who is fair-minded is aware of the importance of treating all
viewpoints alike, in spite of selfish vested interests, or the vested interests of a family
member or friend. In addition, being fair-minded involves adherence to intellectual
standards without reference to one‘s own direct advantage.
Also essential to the discussion of what intellectual virtues are is the idea that
although inquiry makes certain generic demands on cognitive agents (that they be
inquisitive and open-minded, for instance), knowledge can be acquired without the
exercise of these virtues. One example of this would be if the lights went off in my office
as I wrote this sentence. I wouldn‘t need to make use of any of the virtues to know that
the lights went off; I would automatically know that. The same happens with most
memorial and introspective knowledge (e.g., that the lunch hour is approaching and I‘m
getting hungry) and some a priori knowledge (e.g. all bachelors are unmarried).
Cognitive agents forms these types of knowledge automatically, without the need of the
intellectual virtues.
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Other cases, however, require deeper thinking, reasoning, search and evaluation
before an agent can claim he knows something. In order for the agent to function
successfully when it comes to the use of intellectual virtues in the search for knowledge,
Baehr (2011) argues that there are six demands or challenges imposed by successful
inquiry. One of these demands is motivational, for the cognitive agent must start the
process of inquiry. If someone is lazy intellectually, she will probably not even start the
inquisitive process. This is why intellectual virtues like ―inquisitiveness, reflectiveness,
contemplativeness, curiosity, and wonder‖ (Baehr, 2011) can be necessary for the pursuit
of knowledge.
A second demand of inquiry is the need for remaining focused. This is important
so that the agent attends to particular features of an object, or the fine nuances of a text.
Here the intellectual virtues of ―attentiveness, sensitivity to detail, careful observation,
scrutiny or perceptiveness‖ (Baehr, 2011) are necessary. These are all essential virtues to
remain focused, as one will need to have keen attention and remain observant to detail
when zeroing in his attention towards the center of inquiry.
A third requirement of inquiry is that the agent seeks out a wide variety of
sources, including what the inquirer may already accept or reject. For this challenge, the
virtues of intellectual fairness, consistency, and objectivity‖ (Baehr, 2011) are important,
in addition to the virtues of impartiality and open-mindedness. These will ensure that the
agent will avoid siding with views towards which one has a prior vested interest.
A fourth challenge that emerges in the context of inquiry is cognitive integrity, so
that the agent may treat new and existing evidence carefully, trusting only reliable
sources, and regarding only plausible hypothesis as compelling. The virtues of ―self-
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awareness and self-scrutiny,‖ as well as ―honesty and transparency concerning what this
awareness or scrutiny reveals‖ (Baehr, 2011) are fundamental to shielding the agent
against self-deception.
The last two groups of intellectual virtues are challenges to inquiry which,
according to Baehr (2011), are not as common. One of them is when the agent confronts
a matter that is either extremely complex or just alien to his experience. This will require
what is commonly referred to as ―thinking outside the box,‖ and it requires the following
intellectual virtues: ―imaginativeness, creativity, intellectual adaptability, flexibility,
agility, or open-mindedness‖ (Baehr, 2011).
Finally, in some instances of inquiry, the agent might be asked to exert an unusual
amount of exertion or endurance. For example, if getting to the truth of something
involves dangers, or if it requires a large amount of time, or simply very tedious but
necessary repetition of a given task, then readiness to persevere is the demand of inquiry.
In this case, it requires the virtues of ―intellectual courage, determination, patience,
diligence, or tenacity‖ (Baehr, 2011).
Critical to the discussion of the intellectual virtues is the fact that the motivational
aspect of the virtues, as well as the six demands or challenges of inquiry listed above are
not easily measurable. It would be difficult to devise a test to capture and assess how
much a student desires to know, or how much he is invested in understanding things
about the world in which he is placed. Educational policymakers need to be aware of this
limitation when devising accountability measures so that students may have opportunities
to develop these virtues. As of now, NCLB puts heavy emphasis on students making
progress by achieving a certain score on multiple standardized tests. Awareness of the
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fact that important aspects of one‘s education, such as the development of intellectual
virtues, cannot be measured by mandated testing will allow for students to receive with
their education the needed opportunity for the development of the intellectual virtues, and
to learn in school how to be lifelong learners.
Many epistemologists have contributed to VE, but the scope of this project limits
the extent of the discussion. In the interest of time and space, I will generally state that
contemporary virtue epistemology has given rise to two camps, or approaches: a
reliabilist/faculty-based approach (Axtell, 1997; Goldman, 1999; Greco, 1999; Sosa,
1980) and a responsibilist/character-based approach (Code, 1987; Montmarquet, 1994;
Zagzebski, 1996). For this dissertation, I focus on the latter.
According to Jason Baher (2011), there are four varieties of character-based virtue
epistemology divided into these two main camps: conservative and autonomous. The first
understands intellectual virtue as a channel to address traditional epistemological
problems; the latter is focused on intellectual virtue independently of traditional
questions, but still epistemological in nature. Each of these approaches has two sub-
categories: strong and weak, ―depending on how substantial [philosophers] think the
connection is between the concept of intellectual virtue and the problems and questions
of traditional epistemology‖ (Baehr, 2011). An example of a strong conservative
approach to VE is that in which intellectual virtues have a central role in traditional
epistemology. As I have discussed, Zagzebski has just this view of VE, arguing for virtue
to be the basis of epistemology. Conversely, other philosophers have claimed that VE
cannot form the basis of an adequate analysis of knowledge, but that virtue epistemology
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could, and should, have an important, yet secondary, place in epistemology (Baehr,
2006). This approach is the weak type of conservative virtue epistemology.
Autonomous virtue epistemology varieties take matters of intellectual virtue as
having more epistemological traction or significance, independent of more traditional
epistemological concerns. The autonomous approach is also composed of a week and a
strong type, with strong autonomous VE being the most extreme of all the four
approaches (as it calls for a replacement of traditional approaches entirely).
Epistemologists defending the strong autonomous approach to VE argue that intellectual
virtues are in and of themselves significant and should replace traditional approaches to
epistemology. Kvanvig (1992), for instance, claims that intellectual virtues ought to be
the focus of epistemological inquiry, as these virtues serve as part of our cognitive
system, and cannot be explained by the more common epistemological concepts of
justification or knowledge. In Kvanvig‘s view, intellectual virtues obtain epistemological
importance not from what they signify from the beliefs of the person, but from what they
express about the person having them. He goes so far as to suggest that the Cartesian
approach that has dominated epistemology be replaced by the virtue-based approach.
Others have a less radical position to autonomous VE, such as Lorraine Code (1984),
who argues for a weaker approach to VE in which the emphasis on intellectual inquiry is
shifted to an emphasis on the study of intellectual virtues. Code‘s approach does not call
for an abandonment of traditional epistemology but rather to have virtue epistemology
work as a complement to it.
In the rest of the chapter, I explain which one of these approaches are better fitted
to serve the purpose of this project, and I offer some examples to illustrate what I think
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should be the role of VE in the development of knowledge among k-12 public school
students. I also further discuss the place of social epistemology in a philosophical
analysis of the effects of NCLB on the development of knowledge among elementary
school students.23
Why Social Epistemology and Virtue Epistemology
SE is an appropriate theoretical framework for this dissertation because my focus
here is on the study of knowledge as a social phenomenon, with the intent of
investigating the effects of NCLB on knowledge formation and development among
students. As stated previously, the majority of epistemologists are engaged in studies of
traditional, Cartesian epistemology, favoring a type of study of knowledge more focused
on an individual versus a communal understanding of belief and justification. Although
social epistemologists choose to focus on an understanding of knowledge as being
collectively instead of individually formed, it is important to state that social
epistemology does not entail an automatic rejection of traditional epistemology. What the
majority of epistemologists interested in the collective form of knowledge formation
argue is that SE is a good analogue for traditional epistemology. One does not necessarily
exclude the other, but instead works nicely to expand the types of question that
epistemologists can, and should, ask about justification, truth, and belief. In other words,
traditional and social epistemology are not in tension. One can have an individualistic
account of knowledge that does not involve other people, and at the same time, one may
expand the sorts of questions asked of an epistemologist to include such questions as:
23 In the Nichomachean Aristotle designates ethics, wisdom, intelligence, and prudence as primary intellectual virtues
(Book I, chapter 13).
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what is the best way to promote knowledge?; what is the best way to support structures
that are conducive to people coming to know?; and more specifically, following Goldman
(1999), what is the best practice for a courtroom where a very high premium is put on
truth and a very negative value on having a false belief? Are there rules that one might
rationally employ as a way of accomplishing that end or that goal?
As a theoretical framework, SE also applies directly to the project proposed in this
dissertation because inherent to the theory is the question of the sense in which one relies
on the testimony of others to supplement their stored knowledge of things in the world.
This is, in fact, the question I seek to answer, that is, what is the best way to educate
students in a way that will allow them to maximize their gains in knowledge attainment,
and at the same time allow them to expand on their intellectual virtues? As discussed
earlier in this chapter, Goldman (1999) presents the issue regarding the way society
rewards people who are the first to know something, or the first to discover something
new. We can think of several examples to this, perhaps the most prominent being the
very prestigious Nobel prizes, often times given, at least in the hard sciences, to people
who were the first to find some new formula to solve a problem, the cure for a disease,
etc. Although such original findings are indeed laudable, they are also problematic
because of all one loses in the race to be the first to know something. Similarly, NCLB
also puts a very high premium on being quick, on being not only a good tester but
someone who can finish the test quickly. But NCLB puts very little emphasis on knowing
how to do things, knowing how to find the answer to a problem, or knowing how to be a
lifelong learner.
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Given these circumstances, one may ask: what is it to know something, and in
what sense does one rely on others and their testimony in supplementing their stored
knowledge? How can we structure society in such a way as to encourage the right sort of
way for people to learn, for people to come to know? Is there reason to worry that we
reward so much for being the first to know something? Don‘t we want to learn things
quickly, don‘t we want to be the first to find things out? So giving a prize for someone
who‘s the first to discover something, why wouldn‘t it be a good way to incentivize
behavior we want to occur? The worry, of course, is that if someone spent enormous
amounts of time and enormous resources researching something because they took
shortcuts, perhaps they would have found not only what they were searching, but several
other truths as well, had they been more careful. In this sense, it would allegedly be better
to be slower and methodical than to have the wild race where one person crosses the
finish line and other people waste a lot of money that could have been used to research a
number of other important things, finding many other truths in the process.
VE goes along with SE in my project because, in as much as SE is directly
concerned with institutions, policies, and the social development of knowledge, VE is
concerned with individuals and the intellectual virtues they possess. In this dissertation, I
relate the two and argue that the educational institutions in America―in particular public
schools―and educational policies such as NCLB, have certain negative implications for
the acquisition of knowledge and for learning in general. In other words, both SE and VE
are tools I apply in an assessment of teacher responses to the development of knowledge
among public school students who are being educated under the requirements of NCLB.
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One of the problems that a study such as the one I am conducting might face is
the difficulty in establishing a connection between the more theoretical framework I am
using, epistemology, and the issue at hand, the effects of NCLB on knowledge
development. The gap between the abstractness of theory, on the one hand, and the
concreteness of reality, on the other, is daunting, with the connection between the two a
considerable challenge. A question arises: how could there be a link between
epistemology and the effects of educational policy on knowledge? In the epistemological
analysis of NCLB I propose, VE has the potential to function as a bridge between the
more theoretical nature of epistemology as a philosophical theory and the applied nature
of educational issues. Because of said potential, in this study I apply SE to analyze the
effects of NCLB on knowledge, and I use VE to argue that education has been taken in
the wrong direction for not valuing, in fact for devaluing, intellectual virtue character
traits such as attentiveness, thoughtfulness, critical thinking, open-mindedness, patience
and resilience, carefulness, imaginativeness, fair-mindedness, and being thorough in
analysis, among many others. For this reason, I follow Baehr (2011) and focus on the
weak version of the conservative approach to virtue epistemology as it applies directly to
the scope of this dissertation. Baehr (2013) discusses the role that reflection on
intellectual virtues should play in epistemology. He claims that although it is not possible
for the concept of an intellectual virtue to form the basis of epistemological inquiry, it
does merit a secondary, or at least a background role, in both evidentialist and reliabilist
accounts of knowledge.24 While I follow Baehr and also consider the role of intellectual
24 Reliabilism is an approach to epistemology in which a person S knows a preposition p if S believes p, p is true, and the
process of truth-conduciveness is reliable. In other words, the epistemic agent has justified true belief that she obtained through a
reliable process. Philosopher often disagree on what may serve as a reliable process for justification. For further reading on reliabilism, see Goldman, 1994; Goldman & Olsson, 2009; Conee & Feldman, 1998; and Greco, 1999.
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virtues in epistemology, I take a step further and in another direction to argue the role of
intellectual virtues in the educational context of public schooling in the United States,
particularly under NCLB.
Baehr‘s weak version of the conservative approach is a good fit for my project
because, like Baehr, I believe that VE does not have to be in conflict with more
traditional (Cartesian) discussions of epistemology. Unlike some epistemologists
(Kvanvig, 1992), I don‘t think VE is incompatible, let alone that it should replace,
traditional epistemology. I agree with Baehr that intellectual virtues are interesting and
significant, that they are important to have and to nurture, and that we don‘t have to settle
exactly how it relates to the traditional debate in epistemology as there is no need for the
replacement for one by the other.
I do, however, argue that VE should receive prominent space in educational
policy and should be one of the guiding principles in the education of children.
Intellectual virtues should form the basis of the educational enterprise because they
constitute the basis of inquiry, the search for knowledge and understanding, and permit
for the formation of life-long learners. Inquiry requires the individual to have a series of
specific cognitive skills―which I argue are the intellectual virtues―coupled with
procedural knowledge (discussed in the SE section of this chapter). Given the present
state of affairs of educational policy in America, teachers spend the majority of their time
preparing students to do well on standardized tests instead of fostering in them the
intellectual virtues of thoughtfulness, perseverance, critical thinking, clarity, curiosity,
etc. I believe teachers understand the perils of preparing their students for tests when they
should be preparing them to be intellectually virtuous, but they have no choice. NCLB
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forces them to teach to the test because if the students do poorly on these tests, and
therefore do not show adequate yearly progress, the consequences are dire. Even if a
student has very good intellectual virtues—i.e., she is careful in her considerations,
attentive to detail, open-minded to different perspectives of the issues she faces, and is
resilient when it comes to increasing her knowledge base—but does not do well on
standardized testing, she will not be a successful student, because success, under NCLB,
is measured by testing scores. This accountability model also leads to the neglecting of
procedural knowledge, simply because skills related to knowing how are not a part of the
NCLB Act. Nowhere in the accountability process is procedural knowledge
accommodated, as if knowledge of how to do important things, such as learning how to
find the answer to a problem on one‘s own, were not important.
As an illustration of what it might be to have VE as a guiding principle of public
education, I would like to present a few scenarios. Through these scenarios I hope to
make clear how VE may work as a tool for the development of the intellectual
characteristics scholars, parents, and educators seem to agree students should be exposed
to in their formation years. But before I do that, those who are familiar with the reality of
schooling know that the most essential part of a functioning and healthy school is a
faculty that has agreed to come together on a project. A successful school will most
certainly have excellent administrators, staff, and counselors, just as well as a school
board that is competent in the decision-making process it is involved. My claim, though,
is that nothing is as important as teachers who are on board and who believe in what they
are doing. And in order for that to be the case with the VE project, the first step would be
for a school to invest in educating their teachers in VE. One way to make it happen is to
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use teachers‘ professional development time to educate the staff in the intellectual virtues
and their importance for a well-rounded education, learning ways through which it can be
taught to the students.
For the first scenario, we could imagine a school where intellectual virtues are the
final objective of education, or the ―end-in-view.‖25 At this school, the curriculum has
been designed not only by administrators, as it is often the case—or a bureaucrat sitting
in his office completely disconnected from the reality of the classroom—but also by the
teachers, who are direct stakeholders in the teaching-learning process. And, as Dewey
(1902) argued, while students are generally not capable of assessing what and how they
learn, the curriculum should still be created in a way that takes into account their actual
experiences and psychology. One effective way to accomplish this, I argue, is to develop
a curriculum that reflects the themes of VE, that is, educating students to be creative,
evaluative, imaginative, attentive, thoughtful, and educated into citizens who can look at
the world in a way that is critical. An active part of the curriculum from the onset, the
students who attend this school are not the recipients of knowledge that the teacher pours
onto them, but are instead active participants in the learning process (Freire, 2000). That
means they understand the importance of learning the information to which they have
access, because before passing on content, the teachers will teach students the most
important of lessons, that of being a lifelong learner: that life is ever evolving, and with
it, the possibility of acquiring knowledge about new and old things in the world.
The second scenario is that in which not only is the school responsible for
nurturing intellectual virtues in the students, but where the entire school community
25 ―The end-in-view is formed and projected as that which, if acted on, will supply the existing need or lack and resolve
the existing conflict‖ (Dewey, 1939).
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comes together to work towards fostering said skills. The most important feature of this
communal collaboration is that the work towards the development of intellectual virtues
does not end when the school day is over. Instead, what the students have been doing at
school continues at home, and just like the teachers, the parents are also involved in the
intellectual virtue education of their children. The parents, who have also understood the
importance of raising their children to be competent cognitive agents, know that
education is not only the responsibility of the school but theirs as well. Because of this
understanding, they are invested in helping their children develop the life of the mind as
fully as they can. The parents have reached this understanding through efforts put
together by the school community, which has educated them in VE, and they now know
what the intellectual virtues amount to and how important they are. They have an
awareness of the central role of VE in education, and they have learned to cherish them
as essential to the well-being of the cognitive character of their children.26
Summary
I have presented an overview of the different approaches to knowledge and belief
justification, from Plato's Meno to more recent discussions in the field of epistemology.
In this dissertation, I am especially interested in the question of to what extent the
problem of putting too much emphasis on standardized testing is making teachers just get
their students true belief and not to get everything else that is required in order to have
knowledge. I argue that knowledge requires true beliefs that results from intellectual
26 Baher (2013) warns that one has to be careful not to trivialize the intellectual virtues ―to the sorts of posters, pencils,
slogans, t-shirts, bracelets, and other trinkets that have found their way into some character education curricula.‖ Moreover, I reject the idea that the way to nurture intellectual character growth is through repeated exhortations to ―try to be curious‖ or ―to show open-
mindedness.‖ As noted in the previous section, intellectual virtues come about through active engagement with ideas, claims,
problems, narratives, arguments, and the like. These things—not the broader goal of becoming intellectually virtuous—are more likely to occupy the immediate focus of teachers and students operating within an intellectual virtues framework.
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virtues, and that educators will have to develop those virtues in their students to get them
to have knowledge.
If knowledge is true belief supported by evidence, it‘s not enough to give people
true beliefs to get them knowledge, you have to get them to understand the evidence
which supports their belief. In epistemological circles, every single account of knowledge
agrees with Plato, which is why Plato is the starting point in this dissertation. Plato
claimed that there is more to knowledge than true belief, and nowadays, almost every
epistemologist agrees that there has to be something more to true belief in order to get
knowledge. The question is, are we doing that in education? As we teach our kids, are we
giving them not just true beliefs, but are we giving them knowledge? And maybe more
importantly, are we creating techniques which will allow them to gather knowledge not
only on a significant subject matter that one is teaching, but that will carry over into other
fields of investigation to acquire more and more knowledge? That is a question that social
epistemology can answer, and in the following chapter, data analysis, I look at the
perspective of the teachers I interviewed and attempt to establish the relationship between
NCLB and the development of knowledge among public school students (Goldman,
2015).
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CHAPTER 4:
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Introduction
A thorough review of the literature revealed that there is no epistemological study
of the effects of NCLB on learning among elementary school students. This lack of
research made the development of a design for the study more challenging, as there was
no frame of reference to guide the study. Following the methodologies of recent
qualitative studies, I determined that a content analysis and analytic induction study
(Merriam, 2009) of how NCLB changed the way teachers teach and students learn would
lead to a better understanding of the implications and consequences of this federal
educational policy (Cohen, Michelli, & Pickeral, 2009). I employed an interview-study
design to collect data from school teachers who have vast experience before and after
NCLB, so that they could offer a comparison and share what changed after the
implementation of NCLB.
Restatement of the Problem and Research Questions
This dissertation is an attempt to offer an analysis of teacher perspective of the
effects of NCLB on knowledge development (as defined in Chapter 3) among elementary
school children in two school districts of a Midwestern state of the US. Educational
policy changes the way education is conducted, as policy in the educational arena is
normative in which it is developed primarily to guide practice. The case of NCLB is not
different; it is not clear, however, whether or how students learn differently now in
comparison to how they learned before NCLB was enacted. What is also not very clear is
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whether it has impacted their thinking abilities.27 The purpose of this study is to shine
light on this very problem, namely, what NCLB has done to knowledge development of
American elementary students. In order to do that, this study employed social
epistemology and virtue epistemology as a theoretical framework, using these two
subfields within philosophy as the basis for analysis of the epistemological implications
of the NCLB Act. In addition, I interviewed elementary school teachers to learn how they
teach and how students learn differently as an effect of NCLB. It is notable that
educational policymaking in the United States rarely includes the participation of school
teachers (Armstrong, 2008; Sawchuck, 2010). This is often times the reason for failure to
implement it in the schools, or for the failure of a policy after it is implemented. Teachers
not only have essential knowledge of the operation of the educational system as it
happens in schools, but they also often know beforehand what is viable and what is not
when it comes to educational policy. They know the reality and the needs of their school,
so listening to teacher perspective is indispensable. With that in mind, this study gives
centrality to the experience and opinion of teachers on the effects of NCLB regarding the
development of knowledge.
Analysis of the data collected from participant interviews demonstrated the
impact of NCLB on the education of elementary school students. The present study
questions are:
1) According to the teachers interviewed, how do students learn/gain knowledge
differently because of NCLB?
27 Or whether they are better or worse regarding the intellectual virtues discussed in chapter 3, such as thoughtfulness,
imaginativeness, open-mindedness, attentiveness, patience, resilience, etc.
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-Did NCLB institute new practices among teachers and students or did it
accelerate existing practices?
-Are these the best practices that there could be for the development of knowledge
in the students?
-Does NCLB contribute for all students to gain knowledge on an equal basis, as it
purports to do?
2) What do the teachers think NCLB did to the soft skills of intellectual virtues? Are
students more or less critical because of the changes brought about by NCLB?
-Do the intellectual virtues have any space in the curriculum followed by schools
under NCLB?
-Are the students receiving any help to gain the intellectual virtues so important
for the development of knowledge?
3) Are the standardized testing requirements mandated by NCLB undermining the
development of critical thinking abilities in students, according to the teachers?
-What are teacher‘s perceptions of the testing requirements imposed by NCLB?
-Do teachers sacrifice teaching what they might deem as important information
for their students because of the testing requirements of NCLB?
-How much time does the accountability part of NCLB require of teachers and
students?
4) Is there a noticeable change in how thoughtful, imaginative, creative, etc. students
are as a result of the policies enacted with NCLB?
5) Does NCLB prepare students to be lifelong learners? In other words, are students
learning the tools they will need to continue learning after they leave school?
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The research questions have been carefully considered throughout the study and have
been analyzed through qualitative research methods.
Appropriateness of Qualitative Research for this Study
When determining the methodology for a study, I considered the research
questions to establish what the most suitable methodology is to answer those questions.
As the intention with this study is to understand how students now learn differently as a
consequence of NCLB, an interview-based study was the most appropriate format to
obtain teacher responses. Some practitioners of traditional research methodologies might
question whether more overarching, comprehensive methods such as a survey design
would not permit the inclusion of a much larger pool of participants, yielding more
generalizable results. Although these critics would be correct in their assumptions
regarding the number of participants for which a survey design would involve, such
design would not take into account an important aspect indispensable for this study: the
detail needed to answer the research questions. ―Qualitative researchers focus on depth
rather than breadth, they care less about finding averages and more about specific
situations, individuals, groups, or moments in time that are important or revealing‖
(Rubin & Rubin, 2011). In this project, I was able to focus on depth by using qualitative
methods of research.
Guba & Lincoln (1985) argue that in the conventional research paradigm
(quantitative methodologies), inquirers have relied on four criteria for judging research:
internal validity, external validity, reliability, and objectivity. But since ―criteria defined
from one perspective may not be appropriate for judging action taken from another
perspective,‖ Guba & Lincoln (1985) propose the following alternative criteria for
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judging qualitative research: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability.
The credibility criteria involves creating results that are believable from the perspective
of the subjects in the research. From the credibility viewpoint, the objective of qualitative
research is to describe a given occurrence or experience from the subject‘s perspective,
that is, only the subjects are validated to judge the credibility of the results.
Transferability refers to the possibility of generalizing the results of the research to other
contexts. According to Guba & Lincoln (1985), the primary responsibility for the
generalization of results lies with the one doing the generalization. Although the
qualitative researcher can strengthen transferability by characterizing the context and
discussing the assumptions central to the research project, the person who wants to
transfer the results is responsible for making judgments concerning the character of the
generalization. The idea of dependability refers to an examination of the process of
inquiry: if the process is acceptable, then it is deemed dependable. Acceptability comes
through an examination of the data, the findings, the interpretations and also the
recommendations. If all of these are internally coherent, then the process is confirmed,
and therefore dependable. Lastly, confirmability concerns the degree of which the
research can be either confirmed or corroborated by other researchers.
Guba & Lincoln (1985) propose a few strategies to enhance confirmability: the
researcher can document the procedures used for checking and rechecking the data
through the study. In addition, the researcher can take an active approach and search for
negative instances that would contradict prior observation. After the study is completed,
the researcher may decide to inspect the data collection and analysis method to determine
the potential for bias or distortion. Concerning this audit, Guba & Lincoln (1985) suggest
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that the researcher attempt to verify if the findings are actually grounded in the data. This
can be achieved by tracing a sampling of the findings to the raw data (which for this
project would be the interview notes and transcription), upon which the findings are
based. With that the investigator seeks to reach ―a judgment about whether inferences
based on the data are logical, looking carefully at analytic techniques used,
appropriateness of category labels, quality of interpretations, and the possibility of
equally attractive alternatives‖ (Guba & Lincoln, 1985). The current research project
involved interviewing participants, who were invited to answer the questions freely and
to elaborate on their own answers. In order to strengthen the reliability of the interview
questions, this project involved a pilot study with two teachers.
I accounted for credibility by performing a member check with the subjects to
determine whether the findings were credible from the perspective of the participants,
who legitimated the study. As stated before, transferability in qualitative research is
primarily the responsibility of the person making the generalization. However, I
enhanced transferability by offering a description of the assumptions central to the
research project (see chapter 4). Dependability came through a review of the data
collected from the participants, the analysis of such data, the interpretation, and the
recommendations made for improving the NCLB act. Finally, I accounted for
confirmability by documenting every procedure undergone through the study. This
documentation allowed for the checking and rechecking of the data from the beginning to
the end of the study. In addition, I conducted a data audit, examining the data collection
and analysis procedures in order to locate any bias or distortion.
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As the author of this study, I acknowledge my own bias against NCLB. I believe
the NCLB act has a negative impact on the development of intellectual virtues among
elementary school students by placing too much emphasis on testing while failing to
account for individual differences in the learning process. I controlled for this bias by
asking questions that allowed the participants to answer in accordance to their beliefs of
NCLB. When interviewing teachers, I made sure to always add the words ―positive,
negative, or neutral‖ to the questions I asked. For instance, the first question the
participants were invited to answer was, ―In general terms, if you were to compare
teaching before and after NCLB, what do you think has changed for you and your
teaching practice? Was the change positive, negative, maybe neither, and why?‖ In the
absence of ―positive, negative, or neutral,‖ I controlled for bias by adding ―what are your
thoughts on?‖ or ―did you notice a change in the degree of complexity of thinking?‖ to
the questions, hence avoiding the use of leading questions. Finally, I controlled for bias
by being open to the idea that the changes brought about by NCLB might actually be
positive or at least neutral when it comes to learning (in spite of the study hypothesis that
NCLB is detrimental to the intellectual development of elementary school students).
Participation in this study was voluntary. I sought the approval of school
administration prior to reaching out to potential participants, whose names and the
schools where they work are not mentioned in the study for the purpose of
confidentiality. I assumed participant input in the form of answers to the interview
questions to be truthful and genuine, and I could not predict a reason why participants
would feel an urge to not be sincere in answering the questions. But there was concern to
make sure that the interpretation of the answers participants gave was correctly done. To
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further increase the validity of the study, at the end of every interview I asked the
participants if I could contact them for any clarifications, were they needed during the
data analysis process. Having spoken with the participants a second time would have
increased the validity of the study. However, because the answers to the interview
questions were very clear, and because most of the teachers interviewed for this project
had very tight schedules that made it difficult for them to speak with me even for the
initial interview, a follow-up conversation to confirm the results was not included in the
design of this study.
The Qualitative Researcher
Qualitative research is complex, as it does not intend to follow set patterns
common in traditional research. Because the researcher himself is the primary instrument
of both data collection and analysis, reflexivity is indispensable (Glesne, 1999; Holloway
& Francis, 2011; Russel & Kelly, 2002). Reflexivity allows the researcher to be careful
when it comes to his or her own assumptions, which may influence inquiry. In order to
control for such influence, Watt (2007) suggests that the researcher keeps a research
journal, using it as a stimulus to reflect and to increase the understanding of the research
project. Maxwell (2005) claims that writing down ideas when they occur during the
research project marks the actual beginning of the process of analysis because, by writing
it down, one discovers things that were present in his head but unknown to him. I decided
to keep a journal for this project from the designing of the study all the way to the data
analysis, which allowed for reflection of the entire process and to see patterns and
relations that would have been difficult to realize without the use of a journal.
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In the process of conducting research, the qualitative researcher deals directly
with either the interviewees of the study or those who are present in the study site.
Because of this proximity to people, especially to those who are participants in an
interview, the qualitative researcher should keep an open mind when interacting with the
subjects, being careful to build rapport with them (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998). The
objective is to gain understanding of the participants‘ thoughts; open-ended questions, as
well as attention to what the interviewee is sharing, provided rich qualitative data. It is
also important to show respect to the subjects by acknowledging that they are experts in
their fields, and that their ideas correspond to the realities they experience (Dickson-
Swift, James, Kippen, & Liamputtong, 2007; Rubin & Rubin, 2011). This idea was
especially important for this project because the teacher is indeed an expert in her field,
namely, teaching, and it is too often the case that teachers are not consulted during the
process of educational policymaking. Arguably, teachers should be the first to be
involved in any type of policymaking that involves schooling or education in general.
Teachers are aware of this problem in America, and they were often vocal about it during
the interviews. They were also glad to speak about educational policy, and appeared to be
satisfied someone had decided to ask their opinion on NCLB, and to listen carefully to it.
Research Design
Qualitative research aims to locate the observer, or researcher, in a given reality.
To achieve that, it uses an interpretive and naturalistic attitude to approach things in the
world. Researchers who employ qualitative methods construe phenomena in terms of the
meaning people bring to them (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011). Denzin & Lincoln (2011) state
the following about qualitative studies: ―Qualitative research is an interdisciplinary,
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transdisciplinary, and sometimes counterdisciplinary field. Qualitative research is […]
multiparadigmatic in focus. Its practitioners are sensitive to the value of the multimethod
approach [;] they are committed to the naturalistic perspective and to the interpretive
understanding of human experience.‖ The interdisciplinary and the multimethod
approach of the qualitative design made it possible to apply epistemology as a theoretical
framework guiding this study. Having epistemology as a theoretical framework, this
study uses a multi-case, exploratory case study as a guiding methodology to collect and
analyze the data.
According to Yin (2013), case study as a research method is preferred when a
study attempts to answer ―how‖ or ―why‖ questions, when a researcher manipulates the
behavior of the participants, and when a study aims to analyze and interpret a
phenomenon that is contemporary. Yin (2013) continues by stating that case studies
examine contemporary phenomenon in its real-world context, especially when the
boundaries between the phenomenon and context may not be clearly evident. NCLB is a
phenomenon that matches the definition given by Yin (2013). It is contemporary and
placed in a real world context, namely, schooling and education, and the boundaries
between the phenomenon (NCLB) and the context (schooling/education) are blurred. In
addition, Yin (2013) states that case studies can be useful for a study that sets to evaluate
a program, which makes case study methodology a good fit for this project.
There are five important components of a case study research design: 1) the units
of analysis; 2) the questions guiding the study; 3) its propositions, or purpose, in the case
of an exploratory case study; 4) the logic that connects the data and the propositions; 5)
and the criteria for the interpretation of the findings (Yin, 2013). Determining the
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case/unit of analysis is an important and indispensable step in developing a case study
methodology. Miles and Huberman (1994) define the case as ―a phenomenon of some
sort occurring in a bounded context, [in which the case is], in effect, your unit of
analysis.‖ A case might be an individual, a program, an implementation process, an
organization, or a combination of these. For this study, the unit of analysis is teacher
perspective of a program, NCLB, and the question driving the case study is, how does
NCLB affect knowledge development among elementary school students according to the
opinion of experienced school teachers? Does NCLB improve, hinder, or have no effect
on the learning process as teachers and students experience it? The study questions
follow an exploratory design perspective, which aims to ―investigate little-understood
phenomena, to identify/discover important variables, and to generate hypothesis for
further research‖ (Marshall & Rossman, 1999).
The proposition guiding this case study is that while policymakers devised NCLB
to improve the quality of education by leveling off public school students in the United
States, in actuality the policy has affected negatively the educational attainment of the
students, particularly when it comes to the development of knowledge and the formation
of the lifelong learner. This is an exploratory case study, and the purpose of this project is
twofold: on the one hand, the researcher hopes to learn from experienced school teachers
what, in their opinion, the effects of NCLB on knowledge attainment has been. On the
other, it has the purpose of using epistemology as a theoretical framework guiding the
overall process of analysis. Finally, the criteria for the interpretation of the findings of
this study relies on the theoretical propositions that led to the case study design, namely,
social epistemology and virtue epistemology.
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Scholars of qualitative methodology suggest that one of the drawbacks associated
with case studies is the tendency for the researcher to hope to answer a question that is
too broad in scope (Baxter & Jack, 2008). One way to avoid this problem is to bind the
study with methodological boundaries on a case. The boundaries work to ensure that the
case is reasonable in scope, and that the phenomenon (the effects of NCLB on
knowledge) is distinguished from the context (schooling). The boundaries binding this
case study are the following: the NCLB act; two school districts in Iowa; eight
experienced school teachers located in these school districts (including two retired
teachers).
Site Selection and Participants
Two school districts in a Midwest state were selected for this study. Mont High
Community School District is located in a fairly small community (thirty-six thousand
residents), and Center City Community School District is located in a mid-size
community (seventy-one thousand residents).28 The selection of these two cites happened
primarily because I knew teachers in these districts who offered to help find participants
for the study.
Both school districts have seen a demographic change in recent years. While in
the past the great majority of public school students in these districts were white middle
class children, there has been an increase in the number of ESL students and students
from lower social-economic background. Mont High Community School District has
seen an increase in the number of ESL students due to the establishment of factories that
employ immigrant workers in the region, and Center City Community School District has
28 School districts were renamed with fictitious names to protect the identity of the participants.
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seen an increase in the number of lower class students as residents of a large nearby city
have moved into town.
The prospective participants in this study included both active and recently retired
elementary school teachers in grade levels, k-8. A determination of teaching experience
was established prior to the selection of participants for the interview. Because this study
compared the differences in teaching and learning before and after the onset of NCLB,
the inclusion criteria was elementary school teachers who were teaching since at least
1999, a couple of years before NCLB was enacted. In addition, teachers who have
recently retired (in the last couple of years), but who taught from at least 1999 onwards,
were also included in the pool of potential participants. The exclusion criteria was
teachers who have not been at a public school since 2001.
Invitation to participate in the study came in the form of an email that was sent to
teachers who were acquaintances of the researcher (see Appendix A for the email). These
teachers knew other school teachers in the Mont High Community School District and
Center City Community School District who could be potential participants in the study.
The teachers then forwarded the invitation email I sent them, asking those who were
interested in participating to contact the name and number on the invitation email in order
to confirm their willingness to be in the study. Nine teachers replied to this initial email
stating their interest in being interviewed for the project.
In the data analysis chapter, I decided to refer to the participants in non-
specifically for confidentiality issues. Because the study involved data collected from
only eight teachers from two school districts, it could be the case that the teachers would
be recognized if I gave more information on them, such as ―an experienced math
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teacher,‖ or ―a third grade teacher with a master‘s degree in Science Education.‖ Instead,
I decided to introduce all the quotes I used by saying ―one participant said,‖ or ―a teacher
reported,‖ or even ―many teachers said.‖
Data Collection
This is a naturalistic study, and by definition a naturalistic inquiry must involve
the adoption of the axioms of the naturalistic paradigm (Guba & Lincoln, 1985).
Accordingly, four items require the early attention of the naturalistic inquirer when
conducting a research project: 1) making initial contact and gaining entry to the site; 2)
negotiating consent; 3) building and maintaining trust; 4) and identifying and using
informants‖ (Guba & Lincoln , 1985). I followed these four steps in sequential order. A
detailed description of each item follows.
This study was conducted with eight school teachers recruited through snowball
sampling. Initial contact took place via an email sent to some acquaintances, school
teachers working in either one of the two school districts involved in the study. The initial
email contained a brief explanation of the study and how the interviews were to happen,
as well as two attachments: an invitation to participate and the consent document (see
appendix C for the consent letter). I instructed them to forward the email to the potential
participants, who would then contact me if they had an interest in participating in the
study. After these teachers reached out to those they thought would be a good fit for the
study, I heard back from nine teachers who stated their interest in being interviewed for
the project. I proceeded by contacting each participant via email to schedule a time and
place for the interview. Eight of the nine people who replied to the initial email were
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interviewed. One person could not be contacted as she did not reply to emails asking to
set a time for the interviews, and she provided no phone number.
On the practical side of data collection, gaining access to the participants hinged
on the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and the Community School District central
administration offices. Prior to giving permission for data collection, the IRB required a
research request form (see Appendix B for the request form) proving that the researcher
received permission to enter the site and interview the teachers. The researcher contacted
the official in charge at the two school district administration offices in early December
2014, who readily approved the project and granted access to the sites. They also
informed the school principals that a researcher would be approaching their teachers
about a study regarding NCLB. IRB approval was granted in January 2015, and data
collection took place in January and February 2015.
Interviews
An interview is an effective way to obtain large amounts of data fast, but the
pertinence of the information can only be determined if the researcher has built
meaningful, thought-provoking questions (Erlander, Harris, Skipper, & Allen, 1993;
Marshall & Rossman, 1999). Yin (1998) identified five researcher skills associated with
conducting good interviews. They are: 1) an inquiring mind; 2) the ability to listen, to
include observation and sensing in general, and to assimilate large amounts of new
information without bias; 3) adaptability and flexibility to handle unanticipated events
and to change data-collection strategies if they do not seem to be functioning effectively,
using instead alternative sources of data that may be more fruitful; 4) a thorough
understanding of the issues being studied in order to not merely record data but to
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interpret and react to the data once collected (the researcher must be able to determine if
different sources of data are adequate or if additional sources are required); and 5)
unbiased interpretation of the data.
During the entire process of designing the research, collecting the data, and
analyzing it, I strove to maintain an inquiring, open mind. Although my hypothesis was
well-defined, I was open to findings that disqualified it. For that purpose, I was a careful
listener, and showed the participants that I was very interested in their opinion on the
effects of NCLB on knowledge development. I also kept in mind that I should remain
flexible and adaptable during the data collection phase, in case the strategy I was using
proved to be ineffective. Furthermore, I acquired wide-understanding of NCLB, social
epistemology and virtue epistemology, which allowed me to interpret and react to the
data I collected. Finally, Yin suggests that a good test for bias is the degree to which the
researcher is open to contradictory findings. He recommends reporting preliminary
findings to colleagues, who may offer alternative explanations that would require further
investigation (Berg & Lune, 2014).
The primary form of data collection was the individual interview of the eight
teachers.29 The research interview ―is an inter-view, where knowledge is constructed in
the inter-action between the interviewer and the interviewee. An interview is literally an
inter-view, an inter-change of views between two persons conversing about a theme of
mutual interest‖ (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). Given the fact that this project investigated
the subjective experiences of teachers, the researcher chose to employ semi-structured
interviews. On this type of interview, Drever (1995) states the following:
29 In ―How many interviews are enough? An experiment with data saturation and variability‖ Guest, Bunce, & Johnson
(2006) argue that saturation is reached with six participants.
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The interviewer sets up a general structure by deciding in advance the ground to
be covered and the main questions to be asked. The detailed structure is left to be
worked out during the interview, and the person being interviewed has a fair
degree of freedom in what to talk about, how much to say, and how to express it.
Semi-structured interviewing is a very flexible technique for small-scale research.
It is not suitable for studies involving large numbers of people, but is most helpful
in mini-studies and case studies.
Giving teachers freedom to express their views of NCLB and to choose the aspects of the
act they wanted to expand upon was a central component of this project and the main
reason behind the use of semi-structured interviews. In addition, this was a small-scale
research with only eight participants, which made of semi-structured interviews a good fit
for this project.
Prior to approaching the participants, the two dissertation supervisors revised the
interview questions, and I pilot tested with two teachers before interviewing the
participants. The pilot interviews took place via the telephone using Skype phone service.
For the actual interviews, some of them took place via phone, others happened in-person.
The in-person interviews took place either at the school where the teachers worked or at a
coffee shop in town, at a time that the interviewee chose. The interviews ranged in time
from twenty-eight minutes to fifty-five minutes.
With the verbal consent of the participants, I voice-recorded both telephone and
in-person interviews for the purpose of transcription and accuracy. For the recording, I
used a Sony ICD-UX70 Stereo IC digital audio recorder with two gigabytes of memory,
built-in microphone, built-in USB port and MP3 stereo recording. As a backup method
for the interview data collection, in case the digital voice-recorder failed, I double
recorded the interview using a Voice Memos App on an iPhone 5. The digital voice-
recorded worked reliably, and the interviews were downloaded onto a computer for safe-
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keeping and transcription. Immediately after data collection the data was transcribed
using Express Scribe, typing the interview into Microsoft Word. During the transcription
process, I partially coded the interview data with memo notes added for the initial
categorization of patterns.30
The interview started with asking the participant if there were any questions on
the informed consent document they had received via email prior to the interview. The
first part of the interview focused on ―the experiences of participants and the meaning
they make of that experience‖ (Seidman, 2013). I took some time to build rapport with
participants and asking some background information, obtained through the following
questions: ―How long have you been a teacher?‖ and ―What subjects and what grade
levels have you taught?‖ The second part focused on ―understand[ing] a person‘s
experience from their point of view (Seidman, 2013). Part two aimed to learn the
subjective understanding of participants, that is, their conception of how NCLB changed
teaching and learning in general. Finally, part three focused on the reconstruction of the
participants' lived experiences, with an emphasis on meaning and meaning in context, an
approach that makes possible for participants to bring the past lived experience into the
present (Seidman, 2013).
The actual interview consisted of five questions, with every participant answering
the same five questions:
1) In general terms, if you were to compare teaching before and after NCLB, what
do you think has changed for you and your teaching practice?
30 I refrained from taking notes during the interview in order to give participants my full attention. In addition, the
recording of the interviews allowed me to focus on the interviewee and the process of asking questions without having to jot down notes as the participants spoke.
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- Was the change positive, negative, maybe neither, and why?
2) Do you think students learn differently now than they did before NCLB? Did you
notice a change in the degree of complexity in terms of the answers students give
to the questions you ask? Any change in things like thoughtfulness, open-
mindedness, imaginativeness, positive or negative, that you would attribute to
NCLB?
3) NCLB increased standardized testing requirements for students. What are your
thoughts on the testing required by the act, and what do you think are the
consequences, positive or negative, of the testing?
4) What do you think other teachers think of NCLB? Do you think most people
would agree with your assessment of the act, or is there diversity of opinion
among educators when it comes to NCLB?
5) Do you think the act could be improved by revising it, and if so, how?
Question number one was the first question I asked the participants, but the order of the
following questions depended on how the participants answered them. For instance, if an
interviewee mentioned the experience of his or her colleagues teaching under NCLB,
then the second question asked would be question number four. But if instead the
participants talked about the testing requirements, then we would proceed to question
number three, and so forth.
The interview process allowed for the probing into issues that emerged and gave
teachers the chance to reflect on their own experiences. The interviews also helped to
establish credibility. By interviewing the teachers individually, I was able to link their
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experiences and contrast the reflections of one participant against the other. Additionally,
the interviews provided the teachers an opportunity to better understand NCLB.
Pilot
As mentioned before, prior to interviewing the participants, and in order to
increase the reliability of the interview questions, the dissertation committee supervisor
reviewed the questions before the pilot study was conducted. The reviewers suggested a
few modifications to the initial questions: that a question be added asking participants if
they thought the NCLB act could be modified, and if so, how; and they made suggestions
on the wording of some of the questions to adjust for questions that could be leading.
After these modifications to the questions I pilot-tested the interview with two
school teachers, who were interviewed via telephone calls. I used my office computer to
call the participants via Skype, and the phone conversation was recorded using the digital
voice recorder. The pilot-testing of the interview questions served to, first, increase
validity, and second, as a metric on whether the questions were clear and punctual. I fully
transcribed the pilot interviews immediately after the conversation with the teachers to
get a big picture of the process. As a result of the pilot study, I added, changed, or
removed interview questions. The first pilot interview resulted in the following
modifications to the questions: rewording of all the questions, making them shorter and to
the point, and a change to the order of the questions, making the interview more fluent.
The second pilot interview also resulted in changes to the interview questions: I still
thought they were not as clear, and adjusted for that. For example, the researcher
reworded question two to make it more direct. Instead of reading, ―In your opinion, do
students learn …?‖ it now read, ―Do you think students learn…?‖ In addition, I put
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questions two and five together into the same question, as it didn‘t make sense, and it was
too repetitive, to ask them separately. Finally, the second pilot interview resulted in the
removal of two questions.
I decided to remove these questions because they were somewhat repetitive as the
teachers would answer them when asked about standardized testing. The first question
removed was, ―In terms of the standardized testing, how much did that affect your
teaching in terms of, let‘s say, did you often have to take time to prepare your students
for the test, or did you have to take a lot of time to proctor tests, how did that go?‖ And
the second question removed was, ―Did NCLB cause you, or teachers that you know, to
change the material that was taught in order to prepare students more specifically for the
tests? Perhaps in detriment to other subjects that were taught before and now no longer
receive much attention because they are not counted for AYP under NCLB?‖A second
reason for removing these questions was the fact that they made the interview too long,
and in the invitation email sent to the teachers, the researcher proposed interviews that
should last around thirty minutes. The decision to propose shorter interviews came after I
spoke with one of the teachers with whom I am acquainted, who said that teachers are so
busy that if they are asked for more than half an hour they are likely to be unwilling to
participate.
After these refinements, I interviewed the other subjects of the study. Some of the
questions underwent slight modification after the interview with the first participant to
further improve clarity, and some reordering within each question also took place.
Depending on how the interviewee replied to the questions, I changed the order of the
question asked to improve the flow of the interview.
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Data Analysis and Coding
The transcription of the interviews occurred usually immediately after I met with
a participant. I used a journal to ensure that reflections remained fresh and perceptive,
and to sharpen the impressions gathered during the interview (Halcomb & Davidson,
2006). Similarly, the data analysis process did not start at the end of the data collection
process; it was rather a constant throughout the project. At the beginning of the study, I
was interested in learning how NCLB affected the development of knowledge among
elementary school students, and I was curious to know what school teachers thought of
NCLB and its effect on student knowledge development. As I started to hear what the
teachers had to say, I gained a better understanding of how NCLB worked in the
classrooms and how it shaped the schooling experience, and I was able to modify some of
the questions, fine-tuning the focus of the inquiry.
I chose to manually analyze the data instead of using qualitative data analysis
software (―Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software,‖ or CAQDAS), which
are now widely available. Since the amount of data collected for the study was
manageable, the help of a software package was unnecessary. This initial
experimentation with the data was instrumental in putting the evidence into different
categories (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Yin (2009) states that it is essential to have a
general analytic strategy as a guide to craft the story the data has to tell. The strategy will
make it possible for the researcher to treat the evidence fairly, produce compelling
analytic conclusions, and rule out alternative interpretations. Furthermore, ―the strategy
will help you to use tools and make manipulations more effectively and efficiently‖ (Yin,
2009). As stated, the proposition guiding this case study was that NCLB hinders the
cognitive development of elementary school children by placing heavy focus and demand
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on testing and patronization while neglecting the nurturing of the intellectual virtues. This
proposition provides direction for the case study analysis; however, one still needs to
have a technique to analyze the data and to deal with problems of internal and external
validity (Yin, 2009).
In a qualitative methodological study, reporting has two major purposes: raising
understanding and maintaining continuity (Guba & Lincoln, 1985). First, it is important
to advance the level of understanding of the contents of the report, in this case the effects
of an educational policy. According to Guba & Lincoln (1985), case study analysis is the
appropriate methodology for reporting:
Case studies, as Stake reminds us, ‗achieve this purpose best because they may be
epistemologically in harmony with the reader‘s experience,‘ because they permit
the reader to build on his or her own tacit knowledge in ways that foster empathy
and assess intentionality, because they enable the reader to achieve personal
understandings in the form of naturalistic generalizations, and because they
enable detailed probing of an instance in questions rather than mere surface
descriptions of a multitude of cases.
With this case study, I hope to add to the scholarship on the effects of NCLB by placing
it in harmony with the experience of the reader (maintaining continuity). I believe that if
the reader has the chance to make meaning of something that is in consonance with her
reality, she will achieve a superior level of understanding. The hope is that the reader is
able to make sense of the cognitive development of school children in the United States,
especially when it comes to the relationship between the demands of NCLB and the state
of intellectual virtue development among students. Although there are not many
epistemological studies of NCLB, there is a large number of studies that attempt to
evaluate the Act. This dissertation takes these studies into account and aims to add to that
body of literature.
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Coding
There are several types of coding, and coding is undertaken in qualitative research
for a variety of purposes, given the fact that ―there is no single best way to code data‖
(Berg & Lune, 2012). In this project, data analysis began with ―open coding‖ of the
interview transcriptions to create tentative labels that would later be turned into concepts.
Open coding is the process of sorting the data into categories known as units (Strauss &
Corbin, 1990). A unit should have two characteristics: ―it should be heuristic, that is,
aimed at some understanding or some action that the inquirer needs to have or to take,
[…] it must be the smallest piece of information about something that can stand by itself;
[…] and it must be interpretable in the absence of any additional information other than a
broad understanding of the context in which the inquiry is carried out‖ (Guba & Lincoln,
1985).
Prior to locating the units, I reread all the interview transcripts several times to
gain familiarity with the data. After I felt comfortable with the content of the interview
transcripts, I color-coded sentences and paragraphs while identifying and naming units.
Having located a unit, I described it in a way comprehensible to some person other than
the inquirer, erring on the side of overinclusion, as it is ―easier to reject what later appears
to be irrelevant material than to recapture information suddenly realized to be relevant
but discarded earlier‖ (Guba & Lincoln, 1985). The units were then typed into a separate
document for the purpose of copying and pasting parts of the transcript under different
categories. Categorizing is an important step of the coding process as it justifies the
organization of units into these larger categories, and it provides a basis for tests of
replicability. It also gives the category set internal consistency (Guba & Lincoln, 1985).
In order to categorize, I separated out words, sentences, and paragraphs into the different
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categories initially devised. This process underwent revision a few times, as subsequent
readings of the units resulted in changes to the placement under the categories (some of
them were not classified properly and adjusted for that accordingly).
Strauss (1987) suggests four basic guidelines when conducting open coding: 1)
apply specific and consistent questions to the data; 2) analyze the data meticulously; 3)
stop the coding intermittently to write theoretical memos; and 4) avoid assuming analytic
pertinence of any traditional variable, unless the data show it to be relevant. I followed
these four guidelines to open code the data set.
First, I started by consistently approaching the data set with the questions that
guided this study. In the process of open coding, at the forefront was the question of how
NCLB changed the educational experience of teachers and students, and whether it was a
positive or negative experience. The question regarding the development of intellectual
virtues was also central to the open coding analysis process.
Second, according to Berg & Lune (2012), the initial analysis of the data occurred
minutely because, in the beginning, more is better. They compare open coding to the
general principle of writing a paper: you start with a wide opening and then narrow the
statement in the body of the text while offering evidence of your claims. After that, the
investigator presents a refined conclusion at the end of the funnel. Translating that into
coding, the wide opening indicates the inclusion of several units, categories, notes, etc.
Next, a more systematic form of coding consistently brought together more specific units,
with categories coherently put together. The coding consisted of a significant number of
units and categories to make sure I took all aspects of the testimony given by teachers
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into account. As this process came to a point of saturation, I moved on to coding the data
into more specific categories.
On the third suggestion by Strauss (1987), to stop the coding frequently to add
theoretical notes so that the triggering of ideas may be started, and so that these important
ideas may not be forgotten, I added notes not only during coding but also during the
course of the interview transcription. Since I did all the transcribing myself, I often added
memos to the document, as several ideas connected to social epistemology and virtue
epistemology occurred as I heard the interview recordings and typed them into the
computer.31
Lastly, the fourth suggestion Strauss (1987) offers is to avoid assuming statistical
relevance of any traditional variable unless the data shows it to be of importance. The
social class of the student body was a potential variable confounding the findings of the
study, as students from better off families might be less impacted by the NCLB
requirements (because they have family support and are more likely to dwell in more
literate and intellectually stimulant environments). Likewise, gender was also of potential
importance, as research has indicated that girls tend to do better in school. However,
these variables were not assumed to be analytically relevant unless the data showed it to
be.
This initial interpretation of the data was an important part of the process because
―people act toward things based on the meaning those things have for them; and these
meanings are derived from social interaction and modified through interpretation‖
(Bulmer, 1969). The initial interpretation of the data allowed for the labeling of concepts
31 David Silverman (2011) claims that ―early data analysis tends to be associated with good qualitative analysis‖.
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and the development of categories, defining them based on their properties and
dimensions. In the initial examination of the transcripts, I broke the text down into pieces
and examined it closely, looking for relations, parallels, disparities, and any possible
discrepancies. Line-by-line coding was applied during this initial analysis of the text.
Subsequently, a broader scale took place with coding against sentences so that different
parts of the data could be marked by labels, with the intent of identifying them for further
analysis. An example of the ―open coding‖ phase of data analysis is displayed in
Appendix D.
After the initial coding of the data into units, I proceeded with the development of
concepts. I used constructed codes to label the concepts, grouping common properties of
the data under the same concepts. When necessary, I added memos to clarify concepts
that were emerging from the data set. After I could no longer find any more concepts,
line-by-line analysis gave place to the analysis being continued by grouping the concepts
into categories. Similarities among the codes were grouped into categories, and when
necessary, sub-categories were added to better express the scope of the category.
Importantly, I labeled the categories differently from the codes in order to break the data
into more detailed analysis. The following were the categories that surfaced from the
gathering of code themes and labels:
Loose curriculum Creativity
Prescribed curriculum Struggling kids
Teacher decision Smart kids
Testing Waste of time
Testing constantly Diversity
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Analyzing results Frustration
Multiple assessments Teacher‘s manual
Pre-test/post-test Fun out of teaching
Standardized testing Fast pace
Accountability Correlation with teaching
End of whole language Growth
Teach the same way Improving
Intervention Proof
Pressure Expectation
Teachers hate Informal assessment
Drilling
In the first attempt to identify units of the data, I created codes from the
information collected in the interviews. As the themes were still broad with general
categories (and no subcategories), I repeated the open coding process a second time,
resulting in the following themes:
Teacher decision More to get through
Change in teaching Common core testing
Teacher accountability Grade level reading
School accountability Diminished return with testing
District accountability Time takes to test
Report results Reporting minutes
Activities for when intervening and testing Reporting and paper work
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Smart kids Kids don‘t care
Increase diversity Day to day stress to take seriously
Change in demographics Higher/raised expectations
ESL students Maturity level
Teacher creativity Disadvantaged can make it
Extreme testing Standardize everything
Test once a week No more autonomy
Three weeks of testing Kids don‘t like testing
Test three times a year Look at school as whole
Teachers devise tests Failing cohort
Teachers hate Change
Take fun out of teaching Higher-order thinking skills
Background knowledge Teachers overwhelmed
Financial resources SINA schools
Ability One year‘s growth
Account for student growth Not catching up
Not attainable Hard for kids
Informal vs. standardized assessment If teacher frustrated, kids frustrated
Social studies Accountability w/o labeling
Rigid/ no flexibility Pressure on smart kids
Everybody the same Percentage too high
Teacher eval – student performance Comparing schools
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Tests correlate with teaching One year‘s growth from beginning
Mixed feelings No creativity because assess all the time
Students stressed Kids who can do deeper thinking
Comparing to previous class Struggle to read, struggle to test
Higher expectations
I gained more familiarity with the data by recoding it, placing units of the data in
more specific categories. But since a second attempt at open coding the text did not yield
subcategories, a third analysis during open coding resulted in the following revisions and
category placements:
NCLB and Pressure/Stress
Loose curriculum vs. prescribed curriculum (teacher decision)
Pressure leads to stressed staff and stress students
Teachers feel overwhelmed by all the requirements
Teachers feel a lack of autonomy/room for creativity/fun
NCLB requirements lead to teacher frustration
Very fast pace of instruction
Requirements taken to be unattainable
Complete standardization, including all procedures
NCLB and high-stakes testing
Informal assessment vs. standardized assessment
Testing all the time with multiple assessments
Teachers test, analyze, intervene, report – pre-test/post-test
Teachers devising their own tests now
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A large amount of paperwork (time consuming)
Teachers hate the testing
Time it takes to do all the testing (three weeks, three times a year).
One year‘s growth
Testing for smart kids vs. testing for kids who struggle – kids don‘t like testing,
although some do
Common core testing
NCLB and teacher accountability
NCLB: teacher, school, district accountable
There must be teacher accountability
A change in demographics affecting the conditions of schooling – more ESL
students
Background knowledge, ability, financial resources and family support for
education
Accountable for student growth
Problem with the rigidity/lack of flexibility of the act, as kids are not all the same,
as they have differing maturity levels
Problems with connecting teacher evaluation to student performance
Problems of comparing students to previous class – different class every year.
Unfair school comparisons between disadvantaged and upper class students
NCLB doesn‘t take into account student reality
Lower class students just don‘t care about taking the tests
NCLB and higher-order thinking:
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Higher expectations: could be a very good thing but also a very bad thing
Higher order for good students, those who can do it
Higher order for upper class students/schools in good neighborhoods
No room for creativity because having to assess all the time
Smart kids feel pressure to do well on tests
Improving NCLB: teacher perspective
Labeling is a very bad thing for a variety of reasons:
Need for accountability but without all the labeling
Focus on having one year‘s growth from the beginning
Reduce the amount of testing because more testing is not better.
After open coding the data three times, I had generated enough categories and
subcategories to categorize the data consistently and appropriately, accurately describing
the perspective and opinion of the participants.
Summary
This chapter details the methodology for the present study. I have
followed the suggestions of qualitative methodologists in order to arrive at credible and
dependable findings, with case study proving to be the most appropriate methodology for
an investigation of the effects of NCLB on knowledge development among elementary
school students. Since I reached out to school teachers to hear their perspective and learn
their experience teaching prior to and during NCLB, a case study research design was the
best methods for the study. It allowed the participants to express their understanding of
what NCLB has been doing to their teaching practice and the educational experience of
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their students. In the following chapter, I analyze teacher interviews with the methods
outlined in this chapter.
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CHAPTER 5:
DATA ANALYSIS
Introduction
Data collected through qualitative methods need to be carefully organized and
managed (Bryman & Burgess, 1994). This is particularly important because qualitative
data are in large part text based; in the case of this project it consists of verbatim
transcriptions of interviews only. Adding to the relatively unstructured nature of material
collected through the qualitative method of interviewing is the fact that participants do
not always answer the question directly. Sometimes they do not even answer the question
at all, deciding instead to take the conversation in a significantly different direction. The
task the qualitative researcher, thus, is to offer a coherent and structured account to this
disorganized data set while keeping the original accounts from which it was extracted
(Huberman & Miles, 2002). In other words, the goal of data analysis is to make sense of
the data by consolidating, reducing, and reinterpreting ―what people have said and what
the researcher has seen and read—it is the process of making meaning‖ (Merriam, 2009).
This meaning-making process is ultimately what the qualitative researcher does in the
analysis of the data: she distills the material gathered during the data collection process in
order to make sense of the different pieces of information. The qualitative researcher is
interested in using the data to answer the research question(s), which means that from the
design of the study to the findings and conclusion, the qualitative methodology applied in
the study will ultimately, if successful, allow for the telling of a coherent story (Patton,
2002).
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Qualitative data analysis is essentially about detection, and the tasks of defining,
categorizing, theorizing, explaining, exploring, and mapping are fundamental to the
analyst‘s role. The methods used for qualitative analysis need to facilitate such detection,
and to be of a form which allows certain functions to be performed (Huberman & Miles,
2002). Data analysis is a complex process; it means interpreting concrete parts of data
while at the same time dealing with abstract concepts; moving between inductive and
deductive reasoning, and dwelling in between description and interpretation. Ultimately,
these meanings, understandings, or insights constitute the findings of a study (Merriam,
2009).
In this chapter I present the data analysis, including the codes and patterns that
emerged from the data collected through interviews with the school teachers. I follow the
methodology laid out in the previous chapter to analyze the data, using social
epistemology and virtue epistemology as a theoretical framework that gives guidance to
the analytical process. Social epistemology is the theoretical framework for this project
because NCLB is an educational policy that is tangent on social issues, namely, the
education of school children in America. As the question guiding the project concerns the
effects of NCLB on the cognitive development of students, in particular the role of
intellectual virtues in said development, virtue epistemology gives guidance to this
specific facet of the investigation.
Social epistemologists study the dissemination of knowledge (or the lack thereof)
within a given social structure, claiming that knowledge is understood as justified true
belief with some form of Gettier proofing condition, and placed in social milieux.
Ubiquitous in the human experience, the search for knowledge fuels our desire for true
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belief, or knowledge in a weak sense. As I stated in chapter 3, Plato argued that there is
more to knowledge than true belief. I follow that idea and argue here that intellectual
virtues have the strong potential to work as the addition to the true belief conception of
knowledge. Moreover, I am particularly interested in Goldmans‘s (1999) epistemic
evaluation of social systems (SYSOR) theory, with the end goal of improving epistemic
practices of social institutions. This system of evaluation of social organization assesses
the prevailing practices of social institutions and questions whether the practices in order
are the best that can be devised for that particular organization and, consequently, what
the alternative practices would be (Goldman, 2009). This project is an attempt to study
NCLB as a practice devoted to epistemic ends, and I attempt to answer the following
questions: are the requirements NCLB impose upon educators and students the best that
could be devised for the end of epistemic development? If not, what alternative practices
could be required? These questions guide the social epistemic analysis of the data.
For virtue epistemologists, the intellectual virtues of thoughtfulness,
imaginativeness, resilience, attention, creativity, etc. have a central role in the
epistemology project. There are several approaches to virtue epistemology, but for this
project I follow Baehr (2013) and focus on the weak version of the conservative approach
(see chapter 3). Although virtue epistemology shall not form the basis of epistemological
inquiry, it may have a secondary role in the study of knowledge. As asserted previously, I
argue that virtue epistemology should be at the forefront of educational policy and it
should be one of the guiding principles in the education of children. That intellectual
virtues form the basis of the educational enterprise is imperative because these virtues are
the foundation of inquiry, that is, they are needed so that the search for knowledge and
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understanding can be carried out. The objective with virtue epistemology as a theoretical
framework for analysis is to realize whether NCLB has improved or hindered the
development of intellectual virtues, which are the skills we want to see developed in
students as they go through their schooling. If NCLB has hindered the development of
these skills because of the emphasis it puts on testing and the standardization of
education, then it will be fair to claim, I believe, that NCLB has been detrimental and that
it has actually left children behind.
Salient Themes that Emerged from the Data
In this chapter I provide a detailed analysis of the five themes that emerged from
the data with key supporting quotes from the teacher interviews. For this project, I sought
out teacher perception of mainly two things: 1) the impact of NCLB on their teaching,
and 2) the development of knowledge among students. I analyzed each theme emerging
from the data in light of the research questions that guided this study, and I worked from
the assumption that student intellectual virtues are decreasing as a result of NCLB. My
hypothesis is that the accountability requirements of NCLB harms the development of
intellectual virtues in students because the public system of education has become
obsessed with testing. This data analysis, therefore, presents 1) the opinion and insight of
teachers; and 2) a discussion of the literature on NCLB and social and virtue
epistemology in order to gain a better understanding of how NCLB and its requirements
interact with schools, teachers, and students to bring together the effects that it does.
NCLB and Stress/Pressure
Kruger, Wandle, and Struzziero (2007) argue that high-stakes testing has two
problems for high levels of teacher stress: first, it increases the level of stress in an
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occupation that is already stressful, since high-stakes testing brings to educators the threat
of being labeled an incompetent teacher, or one that works in a school that needs
improvement, or even the loss of one‘s job. Second, high-stakes accountability models
might be directly linked to a constraint of teacher autonomy, because with this kind of
model, instruction needs to be highly coupled with what is going to be in the test, which
explains why so many teachers feel compelled to teach to the test (Jones et al., 1999).32
Furthermore, increasing job stress diminishes teacher trust of students, coworkers, and
administrators, making the distrust cyclical (Dworkin & Tobe, 2015). This means that, in
a given situation (such as schools with a high level of student poverty), teachers and
administrators are less likely to put their faith in the hands of their students and their
students‘ parents. Instead, they adopt pedagogical styles that leave little to student
initiative, rejecting democratic schooling (Dworkin, Saha, & Hill, 2003).
The literature on NCLB requirements and teacher stress is abundant. Valli and
Buese (2007), for instance, point out that ―rapid-fire, high-stakes policy directs [teachers
to] experience high levels of stress.‖ The stress teachers have experienced is directly
linked to the overwhelming amount of new requirements and to student YAP, and it has
led to teacher turnover, even at very early stages of NCLB implementation (Hill & Barth,
2005, Johnson, 2005; Russell, Altmaier, Van Velzen, 1987; Kyriacou, 2001). Stringent
demands for highly-qualified teachers that the policy has instituted without addressing
other systematic problems faced by schools and districts (such as high levels of poverty
in the neighborhood the school serves) has done more to ―increase teachers‘, parents‘,
32 And a constraint of autonomy, according to Pearson & Moomaw (2005), is one of the principal moderating influences
on stress.
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and administrators‘ stress than to facilitate students‘ improved learning‖ (Simpson,
LaCava, & Graner, 2004).
Among the themes that emerged from the data, the pressure and stress resulting
from the NCLB requirements were the most frequently mentioned by the participants.
During the interviews, the words ―stress‖ and ―pressure‖ were mentioned fifteen and
nineteen times, respectively. One teacher said: ―the students learned before [NCLB] and
they learn now. Just that there was more stress on everybody trying to reach this goal.
And even though you still wanted students to achieve before, it was still the same goal,
they just put a lot more pressure on being able to have every school achieve this on a
certain level, and I think that‘s the difficulty.‖ Another teacher remarked, ―there is a lot
more stress, a lot more stress on everybody.‖ The teachers I interviewed were very vocal
about the pressure to get kids up to grade level and to cover an extensive amount of
material. In addition, the pressure teachers feel over the test results of their students was a
constant through the interviews: ―my frustration and that of teachers is this pressure to get
kids up to grade level, and we feel a lot of pressure on ourselves. It‘s more stressful than
it‘s worth it. It‘s not benefiting the kids,‖ one teacher remarked, showing his concern that
stress has become a pernicious part of school life not only for teachers and administrators
but for the students as well.
Standardization is another component of NCLB that has added to teacher stress.
One teacher stated that not only is assessment standardized now, but in fact all
procedures taking place in the school have to be standardized:
Now everything seems to have become standardized, everything. We have to be
on the same page. Not only are we teaching from the same book at the same time
but everything has to be in sync. I mean it‘s … it‘s almost gone from being …
each school had its own autonomy, but now everyone has to be on the same page.
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Not only just curriculum but a whole of other facets… Everything is standardized.
The school has to have the same approach … it could be a standardized approach
if there is a stranger on the premises, or a uniform approach across the board. Not
only are we teaching from the same book at the same time but everything has to
be in sync, I mean, it‘s almost gone from being… each school had its own
autonomy, but now everyone has to be on the same page.
This teacher‘s perspective brings to attention the fact that significantly diminished from
educational practice is teacher autonomy. NCLB did not initiate the lack of autonomy
that teachers voice in my study, but it seems to have accelerated the process quite
drastically. According to the perspective of the participants in this study, whereas before
NCLB teachers worked with a fairly loose curriculum that still allowed them to adjust
teaching to the needs and the reality of their students, they are now attached to a manual
they have to follow. Failing to do so carries the risk of falling behind in terms of the
content that needs to be covered for the NCLB mandated testing. If the students fail the
tests, serious consequences entail, such as school closure or job loss for teachers and
administrators. Needless to say, the pressure to follow strict rules and regulations,
coupled with the lack of autonomy to make important decisions for the reality of their
school and classroom, increases the levels of stress teachers face.
Indeed, one of the sources of stress the participants pointed out (some explicitly,
some more subtly) was the curriculum teachers had to follow. When asked about the
difference in teaching before and after NCLB, several participants drew a comparison
between the rather loose curriculum they had before NCLB and the tightly prescribed
curriculum they had to follow after NCLB came into effect: ―we went from having very
loose curricula… The older teachers, we made all of our materials [prior to NCLB]. Now
we have prescribed curricula, you have a teacher‘s manual and you follow it. I don‘t
think anyone was following a manual like that before.‖ This teacher also said it was a
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positive to have all teachers teaching the same thing, since she believes that before NCLB
too many teachers were only teaching the things they liked. It has gone too far, however,
with no room to deviate from this prescribed curriculum at all, she said. Another teacher
talked about having a more coordinated effort teaching before NCLB, in a way that was
mindful of her students‘ needs: ―before in our thematic units, if we were doing a unit on
fabric, we would be using trade books on fabric, lots and lots of trade books, we would be
using a {unintelligible} in math for counting, we‘d be using it for science experiments,
everything was coordinated, now it is not.‖ The lack of coordination between subjects or
activities and the lack of autonomy teachers feel because of the set curriculum adds to the
stress, as they feel like they can no longer cater to their students‘ needs. ―The older
teachers, we made all of our materials, we had our own activities on Australia, and now
we don‘t have time for that. Now there‘s a curriculum and we have to follow that
curriculum and we can‘t really divert from that,‖ one teacher said, confirming the idea
that teachers have no freedom when it comes to teaching anymore.
My data thus suggests that NCLB is adding to the stress levels of teachers. The
link between the requirements of NCLB and teacher stress is a strong one. What needs to
be discussed in more detail is whether, and if so, how, the stress teachers experience
affects the development of intellectual virtues in their students. This discussion is
important because it is likely that the stress teachers experience due to NCLB will
influence how they reach out to and invest in the development of the cognitive abilities of
their students. As discussed in chapter 3, for teachers to be able to nourish intellectual
virtues in their students, a number of conditionals need to be present. The first is that of
having the teacher as a role model of intellectual virtues, so that students can trust that the
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life of a virtuous mind is a lived experience of the one inviting them to it (Baehr, 2013). It
would make no sense, and have no effect, for teachers who do not have the intellectual
virtues of curiosity, attentiveness, creativity, and persistence, for example, to ask their
students to be curious, attentive, creative, and persistent. But how can the teacher foster
in himself these virtues if the conditions of his job lead to high levels of stress?33 It is
very unlikely that the teachers mentioned by Dworkin, Saha, and Hill (2003), and also
several of the teachers I interviewed, have been able to work on developing and
improving their own intellectual virtues, given the stress they have experienced since the
onset of NCLB. If they can‘t develop intellectual virtues on themselves, they are
probably unable, or do not have the time to work with their students on intellectual virtue
development.
Teachers were not the only group to feel the stress and pressure NCLB brought to
public schools in America. Students have also reported high levels of stress, especially
when it comes to testing. When speaking of the NCLB requirements, teachers often
offered a contrast between students who struggle versus what they referred to as ―smart
kids.‖ According to the participants, both groups of students experienced stress: good
students feel the pressure of doing well on the tests; struggling students have difficulty
taking the tests because they do not have the maturity level to take an exam, are not
academically prepared, or do not have family support. For example, one teacher said:
―There are some kids who like doing the Iowa Assessments. They‘re just good at taking
tests, they did well the previous year, and they don‘t mind doing the Iowa Assessments.
They don‘t mind sitting down for a week and doing a battery of tests. But you got other
33 I shall be explicit that I intend to steer clear of educational models that rely on teacher culpability.
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kids who it‘s just so hard because they got ADHD or they just struggle, even to fill out
the bubbles. It‘s just painful, absolutely painful for them.‖ Along the same line, a
participant reported: ―[…] the kids don‘t like the testing, they get stressed out. Not all
kids, but some kids do. ‗Oh, not another test. Not another writing test,‘ these students say
when it‘s time for yet another exam.‖ On the same issue, one teacher stated:
I think those kids for whom things come easy to, they‘re excited about it because
they‘re actually progressing faster. They have more materials available to them,
and we always try to increase the questioning… we ask them more open-minded
questions than we ask the kids who are struggling. But at the same time those kids
who are struggling, we still have to say, we‘re gonna go over this until you know
it. We‘re pulling them [out of class] two to three times a day, sometimes to three
different people and we‘re going over the same thing that, because they have to
know it. And there are some kids who aren‘t quite ready for that.
If a student is not ready for the level of academics at which he is expected to perform, yet
is forced to show he is making progress at that level, then most certainly the student will
experience feelings of anxiety, unworthiness, and the stress of being incapable of doing
something that is demanded of him (Jones et al., 1999; Mulvenon, Stegman, & Ritter,
2005). And if we take into consideration the fact that these students will repeat the battery
of tests about three times during the academic year, as the participants in the study
reported, then it becomes fairly evident that they will not have much time left for the
intellectual virtues. Furthermore, if taking tests is ―painful‖ for some students, and if they
have to do it with a relatively high frequency, sometimes with a very high frequency,
then we can postulate that these students will easily develop a negative attitude towards
learning and schooling, and consequently towards the intellectual virtues as well.
One teacher talked about the stress kids feel having to do so many things that are
not enjoyable to them. She brings up the question of the individuality of students in the
context of NCLB:
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But I think the kids feel the stress of having to do things that aren‘t necessarily
enjoyable for them, no matter what. You play the games, you do this and that but
they know when they don‘t get it right many times. They‘re making progress,
they have to, but some of them just are not quite making that, and I don‘t know if
they would‘ve before, but there wouldn‘t have been that stress on them or us. We
tell them, OK, next year you‘re going to have to be more independent, do things
more on your own, and have a little less support.
This teacher‘s perspective reveals one of the main problems associated with the design
and modus operandi of NCLB, namely, that it does not take into account different levels
of capacity that students have. NCLB requires that all students achieve the same level of
performance and achievement regardless of the neighborhood they come from, the level
of education of their parents, their own individual intellectual competence, and the
environment in which they are socially inserted. As it is well known, the quality of public
education in America is directly related to the quality of the neighborhood where the
school is located (Holmes, 2002; Aikens & Barbarin, 2008), and that some populations
have historically struggled to succeed educationally in the U.S. When an educational
policy is oblivious to these facts, as it is the case with NCLB, then we can expect, with a
fair amount of certainty, that students attending schools in not so well-to-do
neighborhoods will lag behind.
Similar to how teachers need to have a number of conditions available to them
before they can develop intellectual virtues, students are also dependent upon
conditionals to be able to cultivate the virtues. If they are stressed out and overwhelmed
with constant assessment and unreachable expectations, or if they feel they are being left
behind, they will not have the minimum dispositions to develop these virtues. And not
only will they not be intellectually virtuous, these students will face other serious issues.
Krueger et al. (2007) state that cumulative effect of multiple stressful events can
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predispose adolescents for maladjustment and add to shorter attentions spans and lower
academic motivation, which can affect performance. In other words, multiple stressful
life events predict later psychological problems in adolescents.
I would like to finish the section on NCLB and pressure with the comment of a
teacher regarding the state of affairs of kindergarten nowadays: ―It‘s taken a lot of fun out
of kindergarten. It‘s so academic, and there‘s so much we have to cover, and you get the
feeling you‘re always pushing, and pushing, and pushing, and you try to do it, and you try
to have some relaxing time, you try to have some fun time, but a lot less than it used to
be, and I think kids are coming out of kindergarten less excited than they used to be.‖ The
pressure and the stress has now reached an educational level as low as kindergarten; the
consequences for the development of intellectual virtues and the life of the mind of those
who should be educated as lifelong learners are increasingly larger.
NCLB and High-Stakes Testing
NCLB and the Improving America‘s School Act (IASA) that came before it both
intended to improve the condition of students attending Title I schools across the country
(NCLB, 2002; IASA, 1994). Because students in different parts of the country had access
to disparate levels of quality of education—some attending schools with a full range of
resources available to them and with highly qualified teachers, while others went to
schools that barely had enough classroom or teachers with much qualification—policy
makers thought there should be an effort to make public school access more egalitarian.
With the prerogative of turning education into a level playing field for all students,
NCLB made content standard a fundamental and central part of the educational system.
But in order to bring that to fruition policymakers sacrificed teacher freedom, choice, and
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creativity so that every student in a public school in America could have access to the
same level of education, being held accountable to the same standards nationwide.
Nichols and Berliner (2005) claim that using high-stakes tests to measure student
achievement has not worked to improve education so far, and there is no evidence it will
in the future. As a matter of fact, high-stakes testing as a metrics for education might
actually be harmful. Similarly, in Collateral Damage, Nel Noddings (2007) states: ―The
declared motivation for NCLB was to improve the academic achievement of poor and
minority students—that is, to eliminate or at least reduce the achievement gap between
whites and minorities. This is commendable, but there is actually mounting evidence that
our poor and minority students are actually being hurt by high-stakes testing.34‖ And
according to Salinger (2005), reading comprehension might actually be declining for
disadvantaged students, as NCLB testing focuses more on phonemic awareness and
phonics, but not on motivation to read.
Teachers bear the brunt this unsuccessful high-stakes testing model. In The Test:
Why our schools are obsessed with standardized testing, Anya Kamenetz (2015) states
that teacher anxiety is linked to the fact that sixty percent of teacher evaluation comes
from student scores on a combination of states and other standardized assessments.
School administrators are also anxious because if their school fails to make AYP, they
risk losing their jobs, or even school closure altogether. This seems to explain why
evaluation and test obsession was the most frequent and recurring theme that emerged in
the interview with the teachers, and for the fact that the participants mentioned the word
―test‖ more than 15 times throughout the interviews.
34 Noddings (2007) also states that in several cases, teachers have been corrupted, cheating on their students exams to raise
their test scores
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The participants in the study agreed that, initially, NCLB brought positive change
to the education of students, making teachers teach things that are important and that
perhaps many were not teaching their students. But very quickly the act made the
educational enterprise obsessed with assessment primarily through standardized testing,
and instead of having a secondary role to teaching, testing became the primary
component of public education. The amount of assessing, according to one teacher, is
―astronomical;‖ other teachers said that it takes them the entire three first weeks of the
school year to test their students, and then they have to repeat the testing three times
through the year.
There is a significant amount of pre-test, intervention, and post-test that happens
in schools as a result of the changes brought by NCLB. It has brought dissatisfaction
among the teachers, especially because this format increased the amount of time teachers
have to spend assessing their students, and consequently lowered the amount of teaching
time: ―with NCLB there is more accountability, there‘s more documentation, there are
more assessments that are expected of us to do. At times you feel like all you‘re doing is
assessing rather than teaching, in my opinion, or you‘re intervening.‖ Already
overwhelmed by all the requirements of NCLB, teachers now feel the added anxiety to
create their own evaluations, on top of the tests that are already in place. ―I say to my
colleagues, March is the best month, because I don‘t do any assessment. But now we‘re
going to be assessing all next year. And now we‘re meeting to identify a common core,
something that the kids should know and formulate a test for that.‖
Connected to excessive testing was an increase in paperwork duties teachers have
to perform because of NCLB. According to the participants, the paperwork was time
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consuming and often times nonsensical, unnecessarily adding to the already
overwhelming schedule of the teachers: ―in the last few years we had to report that we are
doing these many minutes in language arts, which is reading and writing. I‘d say there‘s a
lot more reporting now, a lot more paper work; there‘s writing assessments we didn‘t
have in the past.‖ We can imagine how teachers who used to have the freedom to choose
how they taught their classes now feel under such close supervision and scrutiny, with
very little room to develop projects of their own, or to deviate from the curriculum.
Prepared to be autonomous in the classroom, under NCLB teachers saw their autonomy
almost completely compromised (Schoen & Fusareli, 2008).
From the interview with the participants, one may draw the conclusion that NCLB
was not welcomed among educators. Although some pointed out good aspects of the law
(that it gave teachers a framework to do their jobs and that is held them accountable),
most people were very critical of the act, particularly of the assessment aspect of NCLB.
A participant stated: ―It seems right they‘ve taken it to the extreme, they do so much
testing so, really, the teachers hate it. The teachers hate all the testing.‖ Another one
talked about how overwhelming all the testing was for her students:
I think teachers are very overwhelmed by all the testing. Especially fourth grade.
The first two weeks of classes back in January we had to give them ten tests. This
is like, wow guys! This was tough. Every day the kids were taking a test and I
was like, on Wednesday I said, I‘m sorry we have two more to go. Different
subjects had to have their testing done. You had to do all the winter assessment in
reading, you had to do their DRAs, you had to do their DIBLES, we reassessed
phonics, we had to do the math in the unit, the math in the pre-unit, we had to do
the district winter two math assessments. It was just like crazy.
When asked about NCLB and the testing requirements, several participants drew a
comparison between the informal assessment prior to the 2001 law, the standardized
testing requirements that NCLB instituted, and how it changed teaching for them: ―We
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went from doing almost no assessment, reporting to the district how a child is doing
except for the fall, spring, and the year reports to doing multiple assessments through the
year.‖ Testing the students all the time, with multiple assessments (some of which are
now to be devised by the teacher) was a constant through the interviews. According to the
teachers, NCLB brought an assessment pattern to the schools: testing, analyzing,
intervening, and reporting: ―So now we have this laser test where we test them
constantly, and if they make mistakes, then we analyze the mistakes, and we might
realize, well, that student doesn‘t know the long ‗a‘ or the short ‗a‘ sound. We had to
think how to teach to that. So we‘d have an intervention, and we‘d teach that kid the long
‗a‘ or the short ‗a‘ sound.‖ This teacher does not see this process as very positive.
According to her, teachers now waste a lot of time testing and analyzing test results to
develop intervention procedures, which leads to more testing and more analyzing. More
often than not, the teacher claims, this process tends to be unnecessary, as the students
will learn a given sound when they are ready for it (later on first grade, for instance) if the
student simply has more time.
On the pre-testing and post-testing design of the assessment process, another
teacher stated: ―We look at the language arts unit and we have to devise our own mini
tests with several questions connected to the common core. We give them a pre-test, then
we give them a post-test to see if our instruction has yielded benefit. We have to do the
tests now, so it‘s yet another test we have to take on and we have to devise it now.‖
Evidently, teachers have a limited amount of time to allot to their work obligation, and
they must choose what they are going to do. And as the participants have reported, the
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extra testing requirement that now falls under the responsibility of the teacher comes in
detriment of other important activities, for example, teaching.
One of the participants has an insightful perspective on the way testing is being
used under NCLB. He states:
This is just my personal opinion, but this is what I call the diminished-returns
with the testing. A test will give you a lot of benefit, but it seems like, OK, this
was good, so let‘s do more of it. I think you reach a point of what I call
diminished returns because it‘s too much […].If a test yielded all these results,
then a lot of more testing might be even better! The law of diminishing returns
kicks in. Not only are we stressing the kids and the staff because we‘re having to
devise our own tests now, but at some point, really, we‘re just getting
overwhelmed with all these data and the amount of time we‘re putting in with this
data, it‘s more stressful than it‘s worth it. It‘s really not benefitting the kids.
This teacher‘s perspective is on par with what scholars have argued regarding the
exaggeration of testing brought to schools by NCLB. Importantly, neither teachers nor
scholars argue against testing. The issue instead is with the quantity and the frequency of
the testing, and the fact that it is taking the place of teaching and learning. In other words,
the NCLB high-stakes testing model switched the way education happens in public
schools in America: whereas before students arguably attended school to expand their
thinking capacity and their knowledge base, they now go to school to be tested, taught,
and then tested again. This pattern has direct implications to the development of
knowledge and the intellectual virtues in students.
For example, in an environment where high-stakes testing receives so much
prominence, such as public schools in America today, the intellectual virtues of
creativity, curiosity, intellectual honesty and inquisitiveness, among others, become
compromised for all stakeholders involved in the process of schooling. The teachers I
interviewed reported that, because of the demands of high-stakes testing, it is difficult for
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them to even have the time to engage their students in activities that will allow for the
development of creativity and curiosity. That is because the teachers are too busy going
over the material that will be in the tests. It is also challenging for teachers to foster
intellectual honesty, since often times they are not being honest themselves, as mounting
evidence shows that more and more teachers feel pressure to cheat on their student
assessments out of fear of the consequences of poor test scores (Ryan, 2004; Nichols &
Berliner, 2005). Inquisitiveness, one of the most important skills an educational system
could offer students (since an inquisitive individual is a lifelong learner who never stops
being open to learning new things as he goes about the world), is also jeopardized in the
high-stakes accountability system of NCLB. If teachers are bombarding the student with
test preparation, multiple tests and interventions through the school year, how are
students going to develop inquisitiveness?
Parents also have become entangled in the NCLB testing system. In ―Ethical
Parenting,‖ a New York Magazine article, Lisa Miller (2013) discusses whether it is
possible to be moral as a parent with the demands of NCLB. She discusses parental ethics
with the experience of sending her fourth grade daughter to school with lice so she could
take the state-mandated English exam, increasing her chance to get into competitive
middle schools. Kamenetz (2015) argues that the money parents have spent preparing
their kids for tests is astronomical. According to her, the total test preparation, tutoring,
and counseling market in the U.S. was estimated at $13.1 billion by 2015. The global
private tutoring market is expected to pass the $78.2 billion mark. That amount includes
companies like Kaplan and Princeton Review and chains like Kulmon and Sylvan
Learning that do pre-academic and after school drilling and prepping. ―What these dollar
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figures don‘t convey,‖ says Kamanetz (2015), ―is the time, anxiety, and opportunity cost
that come along with them. Instead of giving them time to pursue a creative passion, a
sport, play outside, or just be together as family, millions of parents are frog-marching
their kids through hours of the most boring kind of studying on top of the time they spend
at school‖. Instead of fostering the intellectual virtues that would prepare students to be
effective epistemic agents, schools focus on drilling and prepping for standardized
examination, which serves but one purpose: pass a test.
As Nichols and Berliner (2005) argue, there is no reason to continue the stressful
practice of high-stakes testing, especially because it leads to the unprofessional treatment
of teachers and corruption in the testing system where high-stakes testing is present.
Donald T. Campbell (1976) argues that "the more any quantitative social indicator (or
even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it
will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social
processes it is intended to monitor." Campbell‘s law, interpreted in the context of high-
stakes testing in American education, gives indication that the NCLB testing system is
flawed from the onset, as it may easily take the form of teaching to the test or just simply
cheating (Jonsson, 2011; Grow, 2004; Amrein-Beardsley et al, 2010).
NCLB and teacher accountability
Accountability is a big part of NCLB and, as expected, it was a central theme in
the interview with the teachers. Several of the participants said accountability is a
positive component of the educational system, and that before NCLB teachers worked in
an environment that was too loose and therefore largely unaccountable, which they
thought had a negative impact on the quality of education students were receiving. As
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stated previously in this chapter, without the accountability system, many teachers taught
only the things they liked teaching (some taught history all day, for example), but the
accountability component of NCLB made them start teaching important things like
reading and math, which they might have neglected before. This means that for some
teachers, NCLB accountability requirements were beneficial: ―so I think that for the
district it was really positive. I don‘t know if other teachers are going to agree with me,
because it held them accountable, it held the district accountable, and I think it was better
for the kids.‖ Although the teachers believe in the idea behind the accountability system
NCLB instituted, they also hold that something went astray quickly after the act was
implemented. Although it was initially welcomed by the teachers, the extreme character
NCLB accountability took became very negative, even harmful, according to some of the
participants. Some thought it was actually unfair:
One thing that affected us the most was that we had an influx of students for
whose English was the second language. Basically you have to have a certain
percentage in each of the different categories, or the students need to be tested to
see if that was a weak area. It was still difficult for the ESL students; they didn‘t
have the background knowledge, and there were students who economically
didn‘t have the resources or the ability to do things that other students could do.
And that affected the school and the results.
Not only for this teacher, but for several of the participants, this was one of the biggest
flaws of NCLB. Neglecting to take into account individual differences and the number of
resources the students have available to them, or the lack thereof, makes the policy
nonsensical and unattainable. If a student has capital, both human and non-human,
accessible to him either at school or after it, and another student does not have anything
but what is available at school (which, as we know, is often times not much), then how is
it that these two groups of students are held to the same level of achievement? Holding
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teachers and districts accountable to student progress without taking into consideration
these differences is one aspect of NCLB that seems to bewilder both teachers and
educational policy scholars (Darling‐Hammond, 2007; Fiscella & Kitzman, 2009; Gay,
2007).
―My school has a very unique demographics. Perhaps their home. I mean, for
parents to get their kids to come to school might be a huge deal. They want their kids at
school. But they might not know what to do beyond that, you know?‖ said one teacher on
the progress their students make, which she thinks is actually significant, but it is not
enough for the NCLB standards. She continues, ―I said to the students, what do you guys
think we can be? Fifty percent? Which is totally an F. And then they‘re like, oh yeah!‖
Similarly, another teacher talked about the proficiency requirements of NCLB, and what
it means for the reality of her class: ―Every year NCLB increased how many students
they want at the proficiency level, and they didn‘t always take into account that maybe
the student had a good growth. I think that needs to be improved, if the students did make
progress from the year before, they may not be as best as they wanted, but that progress
might mean the world for that student.‖ For these teachers, the problem is that they feel
as if they are in a catch-22 situation, that is, they know from the outset that the individual
conditions of their students (their home environment, the lack of family support, poor
previous academic preparation, etc.) will make it very hard for them to get these students
to make AYP, yet they will be held responsible for their students‘ progress. They may
work as hard as they possibly can, be as effective as a teacher can be, yet they will not be
able to have their students make the required AYP simply because educational progress
does not depend solely on the teacher but on a myriad of other factors, including but not
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limited to family support, school and community resources, individual intellectual
capacities, and a desire to learn (Zimiles & Lee, 1991; Rabash et al., 2010; Raundenbush,
Fotiu, & Cheong, 1998; Covington, 2000). This situation has led to teachers feeling
overwhelmed, as this teacher‘s perspective makes it clear:
Well, I think they [teachers] are overwhelmed, because if the administration hears
that your school is a SINA [School in Need of Assistance] school, and so then we
hear that as teachers we need to work harder, all these kids can learn, we can push
them and if everybody, if the whole school is suffering, then your whole group
instruction in your classroom is weak. Then we feel the pressure we really have to
help these kids, and then after seven or eight years in SINA, then all of a sudden
your school just needs to make one year‘s growth… and that‘s a big deal because
if my kids are testing at second grade and they are in fourth grade, next year in
fifth grade they just have to test third grade, which means they made one year‘s
growth. So for me I‘m frustrated because, really, my kids are going to be a year
behind always.
What this participant states is very representative of the victim-blaming that NCLB has
implemented. The idea that if students are failing it must be because the teachers are not
working hard enough, since every kid can learn, is pervasive throughout NCLB. And the
idea that students might be failing because they do not come from a literate culture or
have books available to them at home is not something with which NCLB is concerned.
Neither is the idea that these students are not surrounded by positive inputs regarding the
value of an education, or that the school they attended is underfunded, understaffed, and
located in a very rough neighborhood, which should be very important for the purpose of
NCLB accountability.
This teacher I quoted above mentions something else that educators and
educational policy scholars have had difficulty understanding: how is it that students can
make no progress for several years and then, if they make one year‘s progress, they have
met the requirements for progress-making under NCLB? According to NCLB, AYP is
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measured through the progress that students make in one school year. As this participant
points out, if students make no progress for five years, for instance, but on the sixth year
they manage to make progress, then the school has satisfied the criteria for making AYP
and is now fine. The problem is that the progress required of students is not related to the
grade they should be in, but the grade in which they last made progress. According to this
teacher, if a student tested at second grade for reading but is attending fourth grade, then
next year when this student attends fifth grade, all he will need to do is to be able to read
at third grade level. Even though these students are clearly behind, it will be considered
that they have made progress according to the rules and regulations of NCLB. And in the
meantime, what teachers consider progress for their students, such as when they go from
an F to a D and have indeed learned something, for NCLB this progress does not mean
anything: I was looking at one kid and she went up by more than 10 percentage points.
That‘s great! Way up! But look at where she still is… And still I‘m frustrated because
look at where they still are, though. They still learned. So they are learning, but we‘re
worried they are not going to catch up, and that‘s what we‘re nationally looked at. I
mean, how defeating is it that you are learning but it‘s not enough?‖ While making this
comment, the teacher showed me the grade book with her students‘ progress. Most
students were still below the sixty percent mark, but they had made an improvement if
you take into account where they started.
This improvement means little if anything for NCLB because NCLB doesn‘t take
into account differences among students: ―Every year NCLB increased how many
students they want at the proficiency level, and they didn‘t always take into account that
maybe the student had a good growth. I think that needs to be improved, if the students
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did make progress from the year before, they may not be as best they wanted, but for that
student, it might be a lot of progress.‖ If a student starts at 10% and ends the year at 50%,
as it was the case for many of the students in this teacher‘s class, why is it not considered
that the students made progress?35 Similarly, another participant said: ―The other problem
with NCLB is that you are not comparing the student to his or herself. One year you had
one class, and the next year you had a different group of students and they were held to
the standards of the previous class,‖ one teacher said when asked about the way NCLB
considers differences among students. She continues: ―And that doesn‘t work […] I know
from teaching that every class is different. Some years you mahave a great math class,
some years you have readers who are better, some years you got kids that just on the
whole aren‘t.‖ This teacher also refers to the fact that you should be comparing ―apples to
apples,‖ and that NCLB fails to do that because it chooses to compare this year‘s class to
last year‘s. As one of the participants pointed out, for a given fifth grade, for example,
NCLB does not take into account how the class did the previous year when the students
were in fourth grade. Instead, it compares this year‘s fifth grade to last year‘s fifth grade.
In other words, NCLB mandates that this year‘s fifth grade makes progress in the form of
AYP over last year‘s fifth grade, regardless of how the fifth graders performed in fourth
grade last year.
Not only is this system nonsensical because it compares two orders that are not
fairly comparable, but it is also too stringent, according to the participants: ―I just think
it‘s too rigid, it doesn‘t give you enough flexibility to expand in the way that you think
35 Especially given the fact that in order to comply with AYP regulations a student needs to make progress taking last
year‘s class into account, which makes much less sense than individual student progress (which goes from 10% to 50% in one school year).
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would benefit your student because everybody has to be the same. Not everybody teaches
the same, and that is kind of nice, because maybe the way you approach it is what the
kids need,‖ said one teacher, adding to this idea that standardizing the kids is detrimental
to the education of the children simply because they are not all the same.
Another teacher said, ―Because now teachers have to teach in many schools the
same way. Everyone has to teach the same thing at the same time. There is not enough
discretionary for the teacher to decide, OK, this group of students need this now and I can
advance it a little more.‖ This lack of flexibility and control contributes to frustration, as
teachers now have to teach the same way to all their students with no room to adjust the
teaching to the needs of their own students. Altogether with holding teachers accountable
for the progress of students without taking into account differences of student background
and resources available to them, the fact that NCLB uses the previous year‘s class as a
measure for this year‘s progress makes little, if any, sense.
Lastly, the problem of accountability and social class. The participants talked
about the interaction between testing and the social class of their students, drawing an
interesting comparison between upper class and lower class students, and how they
thought NCLB testing requirements affected these two groups. This is connected to the
issue of putting the guilt of the failing students on the teacher, that is, if the students are
failing, that means teachers are not working hard enough, their teaching is weak, and they
are not helping the kids as they should be. One teacher talked about her students coming
from families that cannot offer their children support, and how that affects their
performance at school. She says: ―The problem, it seems, is that if they are overwhelmed
by testing and if they don‘t care, then it doesn‘t matter how much you teach them or how
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much they can learn, it‘s never going to show on a test.‖ This is the same teacher who
said her students had to take ten tests in January, and that she had to apologize to them on
Wednesday of the testing week because they still had two more days of testing to go. If a
teacher feels she needs to tell her students she is sorry for all the testing they have to go
through, then it is clear that the students are overwhelmed by it. And if they are
overwhelmed and do not care, probably because they come from families in which a
literate culture is not present (books around the house, parents who read frequently, etc.),
then it will be difficult for them to see any sense in their schooling, or why they should
do well in the ―astronomical amount of testing they have to take,‖ as another participant
put it. If the students don‘t care about how they do in the test, and don‘t take the test
seriously, how can the teacher be held responsible for the result of these tests?
Regardless of competence and knowledge of best teaching practice, a teacher has
limited control over how much her students are able to learn, and how well they can do in
the tests. Research has long indicated that test results can only partly indicate whether
and how much a student has or has not learned, as there are so many other factors
involved in testing (Popham, 1999). One of the abilities test results often times indicate,
for instance, is how good or bad someone is at taking a test (Paulman & Kennelly, 1994;
Samson, 195). Anxiety, distraction, boredom, inability to comprehend the meaning of
assessment, among many others, are factors that fall out of what a teacher can control;
nonetheless, the teacher is held responsible for them under NCLB.
NCLB and higher-order thinking
For several of the participants interviewed, the exigencies of NCLB brought to
public education in America is detrimental to the development of for higher-order
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thinking. Some teachers pointed out that the changes of NCLB were good for struggling
students, since the ―smart kids [their terminology] would always figure it out anyway,
whether they were directly taught or not.‖ But in terms of higher-order thinking
development, this same teacher states that ―it doesn‘t seem that there is time to give the
kids time to think as much. Basically, we are drilling them on the basics, probably there
is not as much room for things like creativity and things like that that we used to give
them in the old days.‖ The teacher continues: ―the smart kids are probably still just the
same. But now I‘m noticing it‘s working [with struggling kids]. I was noticing some kids
who were struggling to read and it‘s working with them.‖ This teacher says that if the
goal of education is to have a literate population, then NCLB seems to be on the right
track, as it seems to her that students with learning difficulty are now learning to read.
However, this teacher states that ―smart kids probably enjoyed education better before
because smart kids can figure things out on their own.‖ This is very telling for several
reasons.
First, it indicates the teacher thinks that NCLB neglects the needs of students who
have potential to excel in order to cater to the needs of the struggling kids which, as
gifted education studies show (Colangelo, Assuline, & Gross, 2004), is very
counterproductive, not only for the good students but for the educational venture as a
whole. Second, the fact that teachers don‘t have as much time for activities that will make
students think or be creative indicates that the current educational system is creating
students who can read and do math but who may have trouble interpreting what they are
reading, as well as problems with thinking for themselves. One question educators and
educational policy scholars need to ask is whether we want to have a society in which
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people can read a text but can‘t necessarily read the world, or if we would rather strive to
have a literate and critical population. Importantly, one must inquire, can we have both or
do we need to choose between literacy and critical thinking? I believe we can have both if
the intellectual virtues receive prominent space in the educational system.
Not every gifted and talented student gets neglected because of NCLB, however.
Depending on the programs the school has available to the students, gifted children have
the opportunity to expand their skills. One teacher talks about higher-order thinking for
students who can do it: ―I mean, we do have the tag program for talented and gifted [at
the school I teach]. Some of the students do get pulled out and they are doing a little bit
more deeper thinking, those who can handle that.‖ This is interesting, as it might indicate
that deeper thinking is not a concern for all students under NCLB; perhaps it is not a
concern at all. As discussed previously, social class and public education go hand in hand
in America, as schools are locally funded primarily through property tax collected in the
neighborhood where the school is located. A few issues follow: first, in poor
neighborhoods where property is not worth very much, or where most of the families live
in government-subsidized housing, schools will be underfunded simply because there‘s
not enough tax revenue in that neighborhood. If they are underfunded, then they probably
do not have enough money for basic needs such as enough classrooms for their
students,36 much less will they be able to afford programs for talented and gifted
education. Second, if the parents in the neighborhood are poor and mostly uneducated,
then they will not be able to assess the situation, and even if they are, they may not feel
comfortable talking to the teacher or the school‘s administrator about the needs of their
36 As it was the case for one of the schools I visited, where students were place in temporary, mobile-home types of
classroom.
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children (Desforges & Abouchar, 2003; Bean, Bush, McKenry, & Wilson, 2003). As one
participant stated, often times the parents want their kids at school, and they know an
education is important for their future, but they can‘t offer much more than that because
they simply lack the capacity to do so. If deeper thinking is available only to some
students, then we could make the claim that NCLB doesn‘t necessarily provide the means
for students to develop higher-order thinking skills. If the student is upper class and/or
attends school in a good neighborhood, these deeper thinking skills will develop
regardless of NCLB or any other educational policy (unless it is a policy mandating the
decentralization of funding). However, in the absence of economic privilege or a quality
neighborhood school, NCLB will not provide students with the necessary opportunities to
develop these skills.
Creativity was another theme that emerged from the data concerning higher-order
thinking. According to several teachers, NCLB accelerated some long term processes
related to autonomy for creativity primarily due to two things: an even more tightly
prescribed curriculum, and the amount of content that needs to be covered. ―NCLB took a
lot of creativity out of teaching,‖ complained one teacher. ―You asked about the
creativity of the kids. I don‘t know if there is as much there because I think…I don‘t
think I‘m the only one that feels this way, you‘re constantly assessing, you‘re constantly
doing what needs to be done,‖ said another one. A third teacher added, ―It doesn‘t seem
that there is time to give the kids time to think as much. I‘m talking basically the younger
grades, because that‘s what I taught, first and second [grade]. Basically we are drilling
them on the basics, probably there is not as much room for things like creativity and
things like that that we used to give in the old days.‖ For these teachers, the creativity
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they were able to use for teaching, and by extension, the creativity they were able to
instill in their students in the past has been significantly diminished to give room to
teaching and testing, or teaching to the test and testing.
Importantly, creativity might be only one of the higher-order thinking skills that
is significantly excluded from the education of students in public schools, as the time it
takes to cover content and assess students leaves little room for other important aspects of
education, such as innate curiosity and joy. One is left to wonder what else has been
sacrificed in the name of standardization and accountability. With the demands of NCLB,
it is likely that other higher order thinking skills are excluded from education, since it is
nearly impossible to foster creativity given the parameters of NCLB. If we know this to
be the case with creativity, it is also likely that other higher-order thinking skills that
share many of the characteristics of creativity are also being marginalized.
The lack of space for higher-order thinking in education that we are seeing today
appears to be linked to a known problem in education: the transmission of content from
the sender (the teacher) to the recipient (the student) without accounting for critical
processing of the content. This is an old problem in education, and it has been critiqued
by prominent educators over the years. Two influential figures in educational theory and
thought that tackled the problem of content transmission are Paulo Freire and John
Dewey, and I juxtapose their ideas here as it very directly pertain to the issue. In
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2010), Paulo Freire argues that the relationship between
teachers and students reveals the non-dialogical, ―fundamentally narrative character‖ of
instruction. This relationship, Freire holds, ―involves a narration Subject (the teacher) and
patient, listening objects (the students). The contents, whether values or empirical
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dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and
petrified. Education is suffering from narration sickness.‖ Traditionally, Freire argues,
schooling has been based on an imposition of content from the part of the teacher, who
forces students to learn without any concern for whether or not students are even
interested in learning. Freire challenges this assumption in his critical pedagogy.
Dewey‘s critique of traditional education clearly resonates that of Freire‘s. In
Democracy and Education (2012), Dewey stated: ―Why is it, in spite of the fact that
teaching by pouring in, learning by a passive absorption, are universally condemned, that
they are still so entrenched in practice?‖ Dewey goes on to affirm that education is not a
practice of ―‗telling‘ and being told, but an active and constructive process‖ in which
teachers and students engage in communal activity with the end of constructing
knowledge through thinking critically. Why is the dialogical approach to education better
than the traditional? According to Dewey, the dialogical practice is most likely to lead to
critical thinking. And in my view, critical thinking is the catalyst for the development of
all the intellectual virtues I have mentioned in this study.
Improving NCLB: teacher perspective
The last theme that emerged from the data I will discuss in this chapter is
teachers‘ comments on how they think NCLB can be improved. When she told people
she was writing a book about educational accountability and standardized testing,
Kamenetz (2015) reports that she would hear, ―thank goodness. It‘s about time‖ again
and again. In the introduction of her book, Kamenetz (2015) states: ―That‘s the
conversation I‘ve been having again and again recently. As an education writer for the
past twelve years, and as a parent talking to other parents, I‘ve seen how high-stakes
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standardized tests are stunting children‘s spirits, adding stress to family life, demoralizing
teachers, undermining schools, paralyzing the education debate, and gutting our country‘s
future competitiveness‖ (Kamenetz, 2015). Similarly, several of the participants in the
study asked me if there was any chance policymakers and politicians in Des Moines were
going to have access to the results of this research project. Others said it is about time
someone criticized NCLB, given the amount of damage it has created. The worries
expressed by the participants of the present research project are very similar to those
presented by Kamenetz, which indicates this is a problem of national proportion.37
All the teachers that participated in this project agree that accountability is
important and necessary for the appropriate functioning of the educational enterprise. But
they thought the labeling that comes with NCLB accountability is negative for several
reasons. First, it is unfair, as it puts the blame on teachers and school administrators,
whether they are at fault or not. Second, it is detrimental to the morale of the teachers, the
school staff, and the students, because nobody wants to be in a school that is regarded as
failing. Third, it is negative for the local economy, as parents will not want to buy a house
in a location where they will have to send their students to a failing school. One teacher
expresses his dissatisfaction with labeling the following way:
What school wants to be known as a SINA school?38 What parent wants to send
his child to a school that‘s failing? Who will want to buy a house at that area? So
you get parents who value education choosing where to buy a home… So I just
don‘t like labels, schools that are labeled. The newspaper in town reports how
schools did in the Iowa Assessments. And a lot of people don‘t want to send their
kids to a school that is failing… In comparison to the free and reduced lunch, our
school is doing really well.
37 Kamenetz (2015) interviewed people from several states around the United States.
38 SINA is the Department of Education designated acronym for School in Need of Assistance.
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The comparison the teacher draws with free and reduced lunch is important to the
discussion of labeling. As in many other instances with NCLB, the law does not take into
account the socioeconomic reality of the school, that is, the community by which it is
surrounded, before labeling it as a failing school. As this teacher states, in comparison to
the number of free and reduced lunch students his school serves, it is actually doing very
well. But NCLB does not take this factor into account, because it looks at test result
numbers only, completely dismissing the reality of the students and of their community.
As this teacher comments, when NCLB labels a school as failing, it labels the
neighborhood and the community the school serves as failing, too. Because the results are
published in the town newspaper, the accountability results have a very strong impact on
the local economy: first, the housing market is devalued, as families with school-age
children will no longer want to buy houses in the neighborhood. Second, a downgrade of
the neighborhood consequently follows, with only very low-income families living there.
A full cycle is created: a school is labeled as failing, the housing market suffers the
effects of the labeling, a ―white flight‖ phenomenon takes place, and the only students
left to attend that school are those likely not to have family support (in terms of educated
parents who have the skills to help their kids with school work).
A second participant expressed a similar view on the unnecessary and detrimental
labeling of her school as a SINA school. She states an appreciation for the accountability
NCLB brought to the work of teacher and administrators, but complained of the way it is
done now:
I realize you have to hold everybody accountable somehow for making sure
they‘re teaching, and I think [NCLB] make a lot of people accountable for what
they are teaching. I don‘t think… would that have happened without having been
called a SINA school? Yes, it would. I‘m not sure that pressure needs to be there
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with the whole testing thing anymore. I think there needs to be a way for holding
teachers accountable for what they‘re teaching, though. Which I appreciate from
this, by the way. The whole SINA thing I just don‘t like.
The reason this teacher does not appreciate having her school labeled as a SINA school,
she then told me, is because it puts the blame on the teachers for not having worked hard
enough to teach their students. This assumption is unfair and it does little, if anything, to
change the situation. As a matter of fact, it might cause even more harm, as more and
more good teachers might feel inclined to leave the teaching profession, while others will
not want to go into it. ―I think it will drive some good people away,‖ said one participant
referring to the accountability process of NCLB. Although teachers believe in the
importance and necessity of an accountability system, they realize the one NCLB put in
place is bad and it does more damage than it helps the educational experience of teachers
and students.
When speaking of school labeling, the same teacher quoted above also stated that
the NCLB system of accountability doesn‘t make any sense because, as she puts it, ―if it
takes you seven, eight years when you can finally just be rated as making one year‘s
growth, why not just have year‘s growth from the beginning?‖ The teacher does not
understand the rationale behind AYP, which requires schools to show their students are
making progress every year; if they don‘t, sanctions are put in place. Ironically, if they
fail to make AYP for five years, for instance, but manage to make progress the sixth year,
they are in compliance again. ―The teachers didn‘t like it [NCLB] because it wasn‘t
evaluating properly in our opinion. It didn‘t take the child and measured that child‘s
growth. Because if it would‘ve done that and measured the growth of that student, I think
that would‘ve made more sense to people.‖ ―I think that I would want it to show the
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growth of the student so that you are measuring the students‘ learning growth,‖ said
another one. This process of AYP, together with testing and all the time it takes to
prepare the students for the tests, and subsequently all the time it takes to do the
intervention, and then testing again to see if the intervention yielded result, are the two
main problems teachers have with NCLB. ―[Testing] takes so much teaching time. We
might be focusing on teaching this kid something he naturally would learn,‖ states one
participant, in consonance with the teacher who talked about the law of diminished
returns with all the testing.
One does not have to investigate much to realize teachers are dissatisfied with
NCLB. In the opinion of the teachers I have interviewed, NCLB has accelerated some of
the worst parts of educational policy that were already in place before the act was signed
into law in 2001. It is well-known that teaching is one of the most stressful occupations,
and that levels of satisfaction with the profession are low among teachers (Johnson, 2005;
Russell, Altmaier, Van Velzen, 1987; Kyriacou, 2001); a high-stake policy such as
NCLB only adds to the stress and job dissatisfaction teachers experience. Teacher
turnover, stress of staff and students, deterioration of critical thinking and the intellectual
virtues in the students, lack of time and room for creativity and autonomy in the
classroom, among many others, are themes that quickly emerged from the conversation
with the teachers. It is easy to understand why they are so overwhelmed: an unrealistic
amount of ―busy work‖ added to an unfair amount of pressure and stress to have students
pass standardized exams without taking important aspects of social and economic context
into account. This combination of too much work and too much stress has led to a high
level of dissatisfaction among teachers. According to some participants, it has resulted in
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teachers leaving the profession, and it has prevented many good people from going into
teaching.
Summary
In this chapter I presented the analysis of the qualitative data collected through
interview with experienced school teachers. The objective was to obtain teacher
perspective on the implications of NCLB concerning the development of knowledge
among students going through elementary education in America. Five themes emerged
from the data collected from the teachers, and I discussed each theme in detail in this
chapter. Social epistemology and intellectual virtues served as the backbone of the
analysis, and I worked from the assumption that intellectual virtues are decreasing due to
the heavy emphasis NCLB puts on standardized testing.
I attempted to answer the research questions, namely, how do teachers teach and
students learn differently because of NCLB; and are students better or worse in terms of
the possession of intellectual virtues because of NCLB?, according to the perspective of
teachers. In the next chapter I present the findings and conclusions for this study. I
discuss in more detail whether the requirements of NCLB are the best that could be
implemented for the end of epistemic development, and if now, what the alternative
might be.
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CHAPTER 6:
FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION
Introduction
Philosophers have discussed conceptions of knowledge and belief justification for
millennia. Although there is little consensus on what knowledge is, most epistemologists
agree with Plato in which there is more to knowledge than true belief. Until the 1950s,
when Edmund Gettier wrote ―Is Justified True Belief Knowledge,‖ the great majority of
epistemologists believed that knowledge is justified true belief. Gettier complicated that
notion of justified true belief with cases showing that one may be justified in believing
something that is in fact true, but only because of the element of luck that is involved.
Nowadays it is difficult to find epistemologists talking about knowledge as justified true
belief without also involving some sort of Gettier proofing condition.
In this dissertation, I argued that if knowledge is true belief supported by evidence
(and Gettier proofing), then it is not enough to give people true beliefs to get them
knowledge. One has to get people to understand the evidence that supports their belief. In
order for people to achieve this understanding, they will need the intellectual virtues. In
other words, I argued that knowledge requires justified true beliefs that are mainly the
result of intellectual virtues. The question I attempted to answer in this study is weather
the students have access to intellectual virtues in their educational experience after
NCLB, and what the implications of the access—or the lack thereof— might be. In order
to achieve that I used social epistemology, the study of the social dimensions of
knowledge, and virtue epistemology, the study of intellectual (epistemic) virtues, as the
theoretical framework to investigate the epistemic effects of NCLB.
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Among other things, social epistemology investigates how social systems (such as
the educational system) improve or impair epistemic outcomes for individual members or
the system as a whole. In the previous chapter, I offered some insights on how NCLB
affects the development of knowledge among students. In this chapter, I return to the
research questions and offer a more in-depth discussion on the findings of this study, as
well as the literature on the field. I conclude the chapter by addressing the implications of
this dissertation for subsequent studies in social epistemology and virtue epistemology.
These concluding remarks might also help to inform educational policymaking.
Changes Brought by NCLB and the Implications for
Knowledge Development
Goldman (1999) developed the systems-oriented variety of social epistemology
(SYSOR) as a means to analyze knowledge as it is conceived, understood, and utilized in
various social systems. He gives the example of the adjudication system in law and the
rewarding system in the sciences as an example of how the SYSOR variety of social
epistemology might work. He also offers some examples of how SYSOR might be used
to evaluate knowledge in education. Based on Goldman‘s system, in this dissertation I
offered an analysis of the relationship between what teachers think of educational policy
and their perspective on its effects on the development of knowledge among their
students. NCLB, and all the educational policies that preceded it since the ESEA of 1965,
were put in place with the objective of leveling the playing field for students across the
nation, so that no one American child of school age would receive a poor education, even
if she was born and grew up in poverty. The reality students face in American classrooms
today is a far cry from the intent that has been put on paper by the policies. The data in
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this dissertation indicate that schools across the country—sometimes across a single
school district—are not a level playing field but often times places where social
stratification is reinforced through disparity in the quality of education that students
receive.
Scholars argue that under NCLB, knowledge development, the main question in
this project, is connected to social class and the school one attends. The data in this study
show that, for the schools where the participants work, there is enough evidence to
believe that neighborhood schools will offer different levels of academic development
depending on the resources that are available, the preparation of the staff, and the
background condition of the students who attend the school. If the students are capable of
higher-order thinking, for example, and if the school has the resources to offer them
opportunities for advanced thinking skills, they will have a chance to develop the
intellectual virtues. But if it is the case that they are deemed incapable of doing critical
thinking, or if their school lacks the resources, these students will lag behind.
The SYSOR method of social epistemology allowed for the analysis of NCLB as
a system with practices for the development of knowledge in students. Are the practices
implemented by NCLB the best that could be devised for the improvement of knowledge
in the students? Are these practices effective? Do they lead to the advancement of
educational conditions regarding knowledge? Is the epistemic agent better off because of
the given practices? The answer to these questions is multi-fold.
In this dissertation I argue that, first, schooling in the U.S. is a complex system
with wide variations among states. With states operating fairly autonomously from the
federal government, and given the history of state control of local education, politicians
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know that any policy geared towards the control of schooling needs to be so designed
with local control as a part of it. This was the case with NCLB, as states were allowed to
set their own content and achievement standards and decide what tools to use for
assessment. The autonomy to make such decisions has led to discrepancies so wide it
would be difficult for anyone to claim today that NCLB has brought the equality it
promised to public education in America.
Second, I claim that NCLB itself is a very complex piece of legislation that
encompasses more than six hundred pages of detailed rules, regulations, and orientation
of how education is supposed to happen. In my interviews with the teachers, it is clear
that even though they have been following the precepts of NCLB since 2001, it is still not
very clear to them what it all means. They lack a clear understanding of the requirements,
of how the different stages were supposed to be met over the implementation years, and
they are unsure what the percentage of student groups achieving proficiency is. And for
the things that they understand, such as AYP, they do not see any sense in it.
Third, NCLB is limited to the three subjects it requires students to be assessed:
reading, mathematics, and science. This complicates matters for an epistemological study
of the policy, as the full development of knowledge in students requires more than the
three disciplines contemplated by NCLB. In order for students to acquire the intellectual
virtues, they need to understand the evidence for their true beliefs, or knowledge. They
need to have an education that is global and not crippled by the emphasis put on a few
subjects in detriment of all the others.
In this sense, the development of knowledge requires access to a wide range of
information and an education that is broad in nature. Arguably, a person cannot be
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considered knowledgeable if she only has had access to knowledge of a few subjects,
such as reading and mathematics. It is the case that reading opens the doors to practically
any form of theoretical, and a vast number of non-theoretical, knowledge present in the
world.39 But it is also true that NCLB often puts emphasis on reading fluency, not reading
comprehension. As the participants in this study indicated, much of the reading tests
assess reading speed and fluency, not the understanding of the text. This emphasis on
reading under NCLB does not necessarily, even though it my, take students very far in
terms of knowledge development. Similarly, mathematics is a vital and fundamental
subject, without which many other subjects may not be learned, such as chemistry,
physics and logic. Together with language, mathematics forms the base of knowledge
construction, but it does not guarantee the full development of knowledge.
The latest results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP),
also known as the Nation‘s Report Card, offers evidence of the negative effects that the
restriction NCLB imposed on the teaching of only two subjects has for U.S. students. The
results of NAEP show that only eighteen percent of students are at or above proficiency
in U.S. History, one of the disciplines covered in the exam (NAEP, 2014). The test also
shows stark results, such as that eighty percent of eighth graders think Canada is a
dictatorship (NAEP, 2014).That is very strong evidence that the neglect of other subjects
that are not tested under NCLB (such as U.S. History), and that have been left aside so
that reading and math may receive as much classroom time as possible, has negative
consequences for the development of knowledge in the students. Some teachers said that
the amount of classroom time devoted to reading and math has more than doubled from
39 One may be able to learn some forms of technical knowledge from reading about it. For example, it may be possible to
learn some things about car mechanics from Car Mechanics Magazine.
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the time they started teaching twenty or thirty years ago. The number of hours students
spend in the classroom has not changed over the last thirty years, which means that for
there to be more reading and math instruction time, the teaching of other subjects had to
either be dropped or significantly reduced. The conclusion is that the practices of NCLB
as a social system that contributes to the betterment of knowledge are not good and
effective because they lead more towards lack of knowledge than the development of
knowledge.
Fourth, I argue that in the analysis of the practices of NCLB as a social system,
variation in school resources and student preparedness/home environment should receive
prominence in the systems-oriented social epistemological analysis of knowledge
development among students. As it is well known, American public schools are mainly
funded by local property tax. This means that schools located in middle-class and upper-
class neighborhoods are well-funded and are able to afford a variety of resources needed
for the provision of a well-rounded education. Schools that serve neighborhoods with low
socio-economic indexes do not have enough income to provide their students with an
education of quality. They cannot afford to pay the staff, build the needed buildings, and
purchase material, such as computers and the lab equipment that would make possible for
the students to have the chance of a well-rounded education. Yet, students attending
school in well-to-do neighborhoods and students going to school in poor neighborhoods
are held to the same standards in the NCLB accountability system. They have to make
AYP whether or not their school offers them the educational tools needed to pass the
standardized tests. Similarly, the accountability system of NCLB makes no distinction or
accommodation between students who come from home environments fostering
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education from those coming from families that are illiterate or where education has a
place. I argue that neglecting to take into account these important differences is the most
ineffective practice of NCLB as a social system designed to improve the condition of the
epistemic agent. As a matter of fact, this is not only ineffective but detrimental to the
development of knowledge among students. Instead of contributing to the educational
experience of students, it generates an even larger educational gap between the haves and
have-nots in America.
Overall, when it comes to accountability, the participants in this study mentioned
they believe it to be a necessary component of any educational system, but that the
accountability brought by NCLB is nonsensical, unfair, and counterproductive. It puts the
focus on testing rather than teaching; it unnecessarily adds stress to the faculty and the
students; AYP, the main indicator of progress, makes little educational sense, punishing
students, teachers, and administrators for things over which they have no control. In other
words, it puts emphasis on the wrong educational elements, making of NCLB a bad
practice.
Finally, the data in this study indicate that NCLB is directly responsible for less
teaching time because of assessment duties. As previously discussed, it is not the case
that NCLB instituted standardized testing into public education. But it is the case that
NCLB accelerated the process, significantly increasing the quantity of assessment the
students are to be subjected. And this increase in assessment has led to a reduction in
teaching time. The participants mentioned that they sometimes felt that instead of
teaching the students, all they were doing was testing, analyzing test results, developing
intervention, testing again, and reporting the results. They complained of all the
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paperwork that came with the accountability system of NCLB, which has created added
stress to a profession that is already stressful and overwhelming. The pressure NCLB put
on teachers to have their students achieve proficiency on standardized testing is very
high, and so are the stakes. If students‘ test results show students are not at or above
proficiency level, teachers and administrators run the risk of losing their jobs, and schools
might be closed or taken over by outside administration bodies.40
The conclusion from the analysis of the data, therefore, is that the practices
enacted by NCLB are not the best that there could be for the advancement of knowledge
of all students. It might be for some students, particularly those who have access to extra
resources, either at home or in the school they attend. But for the majority of students
attending a public school in America, there is reason to believe NCLB is detrimental to
the development of knowledge, especially when it comes to higher instances of it, such as
critical thinking abilities. As the interview with the participants revealed, this happens
because, whereas NCLB contributed to the improvement of reading ability (more
students can now read at grade level), it appears to do less for reading comprehension.
NCLB also increased significantly the number of assessments and reporting of test
scores, which resulted in teachers being very busy with administrative work, and less
available to work with their students on more soft skills that would lead to effective
knowledge development. Furthermore, teachers reported having less autonomy in the
classroom, and less room for things like creativity and critical thinking, which they
reported having before.
40 It is actually the case that several schools have been closed across the country, and many teachers have indeed lost their
jobs.
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Improving education with intellectual virtues
A good education needs to be rigorous and demanding, given that gaining
knowledge is a challenging process that requires persistence and hard work. After all,
deep understanding—the aim of intellectual virtues—is a significantly demanding task.
In order for the epistemic agent to engage in deeply understanding something, the object
of his cognitive quest must have a certain level of complexity, as there would not be a
need to deeply understand something that is easily or logically graspable without any
effort. Even a fool knows that gasoline is flammable, for example, and he does not need
to think much to realize that if he puts a spark in gasoline, a fire will light. It does not
require an intellectual virtue to know that. But if the epistemic agent wants to achieve
deep understanding of the chemical structure of gasoline, she will need to use the
intellectual skills of patience, persistence, attentiveness, carefulness, etc. before she can
claim to know how the chemical properties come together to form gasoline.
On the other hand, a demanding and rigorous education can also be dangerously
excessive and can kill the interest in the advancement of the life of the mind. That is why
an educational approach based on the intellectual virtues is a response to finding balance
in education and thus avoiding these types of excess. It needs to be ―attentive to and
demonstrate who students are (e.g. their fundamental beliefs and values) and the persons
they are becoming‖ (Baehr, 2013). While holding high expectations for the students, the
teacher who basis his pedagogical practice in the intellectual virtues approach will be
attentive to the development of the intellectual virtues in his students, making sure they
are making the necessary progress towards becoming lifelong learners. An intellectual
virtues approach is thus both rigorous and personal.
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An education via the intellectual virtues approach brings a series of indelible
qualities to the students undergoing it. The first, and perhaps the most important, is the
ability to think rationally, critically, and effectively. It would be difficult to dispute how
these are desirable qualities for any epistemic agent to possess. Second, as Baehr (2013)
argues, ―good thinking is often a precondition for morally responsible action, which in
turn is critical to living well or flourishing as a human being.‖ Acting as a responsible
individual requires active deliberation, Baehr continues, ―it requires thinking carefully
and thoroughly, evaluating options in an open and honest way, and maintaining the
courage of one‘s conviction. In other words, it requires thinking in a manner
characteristic of many intellectual virtues. While the ability to deliberate well is not
sufficient for acting well, it is one essential ingredient‖ (Baehr, 2013). Being capable of
skillful deliberation for morally responsible action and the disposition to think
intelligently and effectively are only two examples of the benefits of an intellectual
virtues approach to education. We could talk about several other qualities students could
acquire through such an education, and about the positive impact teachers could have on
the formation of their students. We could also talk about how educators could equip their
students with abilities and qualities that would benefit them substantially in their lives as
epistemic agents who live in a complex world. But perhaps it is more important to ask,
can educators implement the intellectual virtues approach under the reality of NCLB?
Like the majority of educational policy scholars today, I believe NCLB may work
to bring positive change to education if it is modified to attend to the specific realities of
students across the nation. As it is the case with the intellectual virtues approach,
educational policy can be rigorous and personable, holding high expectations for all
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students while making their education caring and personal. In order for that to happen,
the accountability part of NCLB needs to be revised, because as it stands now it is
impersonal and uncaring. Supporters of NCLB argue that it is not possible to hold states
accountable without the standardized testing system of accountability currently in place,
as only by subjecting people to the same standards and the same objective tests will it be
possible to guarantee that all students have access to the same level of quality of
education. Others beg to differ: they argue for the law to be revised so that individual
differences and the socioeconomic realities of the schools be taken into consideration for
accountability purpose. I argue that this could be accomplished by developing a system of
accountability in which important variables are considered when educational progress is
calculated. School resources, neighborhood socioeconomic status, parent involvement,
and pretest scores should all be factored in the guidelines for AYP. Of course, this is not
a simple task. It would require heavy investment of time, money, and resources to
develop a system that would be very complex. All of this is possible, however, because if
the focus on standardized testing is shifted to rigorous and personal education, all the
billions of dollars spent on testing can be directed towards an education that will take into
account their individual needs.
Concluding Remarks
In this dissertation, virtue epistemology served as the theoretical framework for
the study of knowledge development. In the epistemology chapter, I defined knowledge
as more than justified true belief, with intellectual virtues offering the ―more‖ that is
needed for the epistemic agent to acquire knowledge. The question this study intended to
answer was whether the practices brought about by NCLB lead to the development of
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knowledge and, concomitantly, to the development of the intellectual virtues, necessary
for knowledge. The findings of this study show that students have little chance of
developing intellectual virtues through their experience as an elementary school student.
The development of intellectual virtues is mainly neglected to give space and prominence
to standardized testing. The teachers revealed that, because they were so busy pre-testing,
intervening, testing, and reporting test results, they had little time to work with their
students on things like creativity and critical thinking. The testing requirements also left
the students overwhelmed, and possibly with a negative attitude towards education. The
tightly prescribed curriculum removed creativity, focusing on the teaching of content
instead of teaching students skills that would allow them to continuously learn on their
own. Finally, the findings of this study indicate that, at least for the students involved,
their school experience does not necessarily helps them develop the skills necessary to
become lifelong learners.
It is important to restate here that NCLB did not necessarily start most of the
issues discussed in this study, but it accelerated some of the components that were
already in place. As previously stated, one teacher claimed that he went from having
almost no curriculum (twenty five years ago, when he started teaching) to having
basically no autonomy in his classroom now. Although he thought it was difficult to say
that the tightly-prescribed curriculum is a result of NCLB alone, his opinion was that
NCLB brought a quick change to what and how educators must now teach. Other
participants shared similar experiences, stating that teacher creativity had significantly
diminished due to the closed character of the curriculum. The teachers feel they no longer
have time to be creative with their lessons, or to do activities that develop creativity and
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other intellectual virtues because of the amount of content they have to cover for the
prescribed NCLB testing. A few questions arise: is it possible for the students to develop
inquisitiveness and curiosity if their education is focused on what is needed to know for
the high-stakes, mandatory tests? Is it possible for the students to even have knowledge,
under the circumstances? I believe they might have knowledge if knowledge is
understood as justified true belief. But they won‘t have knowledge as defined in this
study, that is, justified true belief by virtue of the intellectual virtues. Since the teachers
are forced to teach basically nothing else but the content that the students will need to
pass the tests, it is evident that most students are not going to have access, at least not
through their schooling, to the intellectual virtues. They will be too busy learning content.
The high-stakes nature of accountability also made it difficult for teachers to offer
their students opportunities to develop intellectual virtues. There is no time for that,
unless the student is capable, and the school has some form of a gifted and talented
program for which the student can be pulled out of class to attend. If the student goes to a
poor school in a poor neighborhood, then the likelihood that she will not have access to
higher-order thinking is very high. This means that the chance for this student to have
access to a broader variety of the intellectual virtues needed for knowledge is probably
very small. She will leave school with information she learned through the teaching of
content, but I don‘t believe it may be stated that she will leave school with the knowledge
necessary for her to carry on her life as a competent epistemic agent in the world.
The stress that the students and the staff experience because of the emphasis on
high-stakes testing is also believed to be detrimental to the development of the
intellectual virtues. The teachers reported feeling overwhelmed with all the assessment
167
and the paperwork of the NCLB mandated testing. In regards to the stress of the staff, we
could easily imagine how a legislator might propose that not only there is no such thing
as a stress-free job, but that stress is an important part of someone‘s job. In the
workplace, the legislator might argue, stress functions as a motivator, a competitive
catalyst in place to keep the worker moving forward, attentive to deadlines and goals, and
accountable to the duties and obligations of his job. They might also argue that NCLB
made it easier for teachers, since they now do not have to come up with their own
curriculum; they have one ready for them, and all they have to do is follow it. But the
legislator who proposes these arguments fails to realize a number of things. First,
whereas it might be the case that some level of stress is positive for the productivity of
workers, the level of stress the participants in my study indicated they undergo is very
high, to the point that it makes them frustrated and ineffective. Second, the new
curriculum brought by NCLB did not make things easier for most teachers. It might have
for those who work in good schools attended by strong students, but for the teachers
working with students who might struggle to learn, the prescribed curriculum makes it
much more difficult to teach. That happens because they have to pass content for which
their students might not be ready (academically or maturely), or they might not be able to
cater the lesson to their students‘ needs or realities. And perhaps most importantly, if
teachers are stressed out and frustrated with their jobs, not only will they not perform as
well as they could in their job as teachers, but they will transmit that stress and frustration
to their students. If the students sense the negative quality of their teachers‘ experience
they, too, will probably be stressed and frustrated.
168
But even if teachers manage not to transmit the stress and frustration they have
experienced with NCLB testing, the students are already stressed out. It is important to
state that I‘m not advocating for an easy, stress-free education. As it is the case with
stress in the workplace, I believe that some stress may be positive in the educational
world, too. But the level of stress teachers have reported their students are experiencing is
significantly beyond the healthy level expected for an elementary school student. No one
third grader should have to worry so much about testing as the students in this study and
in the NCLB literature seem to be worrying. As discussed in the data analysis chapter,
teachers report that students are under a high amount of stress, primarily due to the large
number of testing they go through during the school year. The fact that students are
overwhelmed by the pressure of being constantly assessed is worrisome, as it might lead
to a negative attitude towards learning.
A negative attitude in the educational experience of a child has direct implications
to the development of intellectual virtues: if a student starts to associate school and
learning with negative experiences such as overwhelming pressure, stress, and an overall
feeling of dissatisfaction with her education, how will she be able to be a virtuous
epistemic agent? Instead of developing intellectual virtues, students who associate their
school experience with negative feelings probably will not be as interested in acquiring
the virtues of the mind. And an interest in the intellectual virtues is paramount to having
them, because if the epistemic agent is not directly invested in working towards the
nurturing of the virtues in herself, how will she ever be intellectually virtuous? In other
words, in order to be intellectually virtuous, one needs to have the desire to work towards
developing the virtues, because they will most likely not happen on their own.
169
Obviously, desire itself is not enough. Just as the person who desires to be a
doctor will not become one unless he works towards gaining admission to medical
school, and subsequently works to successfully complete the requirements to be a
medical doctor, the epistemic agent will not be intellectually virtuous without working
towards the development of the virtues. But neither doctor nor epistemic agent will
achieve their respective ends without first desiring it. That is why a negative experience
in education could be so detrimental to the development of the intellectual virtues.
In addition to desiring and working towards it, one still needs to have a clear
understanding of what the intellectual virtues are. Arguably, before teachers can teach the
intellectual virtues to their students, they have to understand it themselves. Although
everyone knows what the intellectual virtues of attentiveness, thoughtfulness, critical
thinking, open-mindedness, patience and resilience, carefulness, imaginativeness, fair-
mindedness, and being thorough in analysis are, it does not mean that the teachers have a
deep understanding of the intellectual virtues, much less of how to implement it in their
teaching routine. The intellectual virtues is not part of most teacher training programs in
the United States, neither does it to have a place in educational policy guiding elementary
education. Moreover, it is possible that teachers see little value in the development of
intellectual virtues, or even if they see value, they might not have enough knowledge of
the virtues to foster them in their students. One way to educate teachers in the intellectual
virtues would be to make use of professional development time to study virtue
epistemology and pedagogical ways of inserting the intellectual virtues into education.
The intellectual virtues are essential for knowledge development and paramount
to the formation of the student into the lifelong learner, the epistemic agent aware that the
170
school is just the first step in the learning process, a process without an end. Inquisitive,
the lifelong learner navigates the world with curiosity, strongly committed to the life of
the mind and to learning new things, with an open mind that considers alternative
standpoints to the issues in the world. ―A curious person is quick to wonder and ask why-
questions out of a desire to understand the world around her. Furthermore, the lifelong
learner is determined and courageous to continue in the pursuit of information even in the
face of opposition, and she knows that doing so is helpful for a well-rounded
understanding of the world‖ (Baehr, 2013).
The lifelong learner also understands that the process of knowledge development
does not involve only the gathering of bits of data he comes across during his life
experience, but that the critical activity of processing the information, idiosyncratically
making sense of it, is as important. She does not necessarily accepts the facts of the world
as truths, but instead triangulates them with other information available, and when the
information is not available, she searches for it. In order to be able to process information
competently, though, the lifelong learner needs to be intelligent and skilled, both of
which come through the possession of various intellectual virtues, the personal qualities
or character traits of a lifelong learner. Although it is still possible to develop the virtues
on one‘s own, the school is arguably the best place for it, when the kids are still very
young, open, and malleable. This is the reason why Baehr (2013) argues for the centrality
of in intellectual virtues as an educational aim. He offers arguments for the fostering of
intellectual character virtues like curiosity, open-mindedness, intellectual courage, and
intellectual honesty in education.
171
Future research
Future research is needed to investigate more deeply how NCLB may be revised
before it returns to the floor of congress for reauthorization. I have argued here that as it
stands, NCLB harms the development of knowledge in students by giving centrality to
testing instead of the development of the student into the lifelong learner. I have also
argued that the intellectual virtues should be given centrality to the American educational
system. Future research may suggest more concretely how these changes can be brought
about in education.
Furthermore, virtue epistemology is a well-established field in philosophical
circles. More research is needed to link the scholarship on intellectual virtues to the
education of school children, making of the virtues a central and intrinsic part of the
educational effort. Future research may also investigate what teachers think of the
intellectual virtues, how much value they ascribe to it, and what needs to be done so that
teachers can prepare their students to be intellectually virtuous.
172
APPENDIX A
Hello,
This email is to invite you to participate in a study about the perceptions of the No Child
Left Behind Act among public school teachers. With this study the investigator hopes to
learn whether NCLB facilitates or hinders the process of knowledge development in
students, and whether it has been a positive or a negative act for the educational
experience of students and teachers.
You have been selected for the study because you may have taught in a public school in
the United States since at least 1999, two years prior to the enactment of NCLB. The
investigator is interested in your input on how NCLB has changed your work as a
teacher, and how it has affected the learning process for students.
Participation in this study is voluntary. If you accept to participate, you will be asked for
a thirty-minute interview in which you will be asked to share your perspective on NCLB
and its effects on education. Your identity will be protected, and your name, the school
where you work, and the city where it is located will be omitted from any results of the
study.
Attached to this email you will find a Consent Document with more detailed information.
If you have any questions, you can reply to this email or call me at (319) 296-8362. In
addition, please reply to this email to schedule an interview or be dropped from further
contact.
I will be in contact again soon about scheduling an interview at your convenience.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Sincerely,
Gleidson Gouveia
Ph.D. Candidate, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
The University of Iowa, College of Education
Phone: (319) 296-8362
Email: [email protected]
http://www.education.uiowa.edu/epls
FOR IRB USE ONLY $STAMP_IRB $STAMP_IRB_ID $STAMP_APPRV_DT
173
APPENDIX B
PROJECT APPROVAL/DENIAL FORM
The Cedar Falls Community School District
will
will not (please explain below)
participate in the research project entitled "Philosophy and No Child Left
Behind: A Social Epistemological Analysis of the Effects of Educational
Policy on Learning And Knowledge.” This project will be conducted by
Gleidson Gouveia under the supervision of Dr. David Bills from the
Department of Educational Policy and Leadership Studies at the University
of Iowa.
Signature Date
Name (printed) Title
Comments:
PLEASE RETURN THIS FORM TO:
Gleidson Gouveia
College of Education – The University of Iowa
N459 Lindquist Center
Iowa City, IA - 52242
174
APPENDIX C
Date
Inside Address
Dear :
You are invited to participate in a research study. The purpose of the study is to
investigate the effects of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on knowledge development and
learning of students.
We are inviting you to be in this study because you might have been teaching since at
least 2 years before NCLB was implemented in 2001. We obtained your name and
address through a teacher who works at a public school in Iowa. Approximately 8-10
people will take part in this study at the University of Iowa.
If you agree to participate, the researcher will ask for your input on how education
changed after NCLB, and whether you think the changes are good or bad for the process
of learning. The interview will take about one hour. You might be contacted again for a
follow-up interview, but the researcher does not anticipate it will be needed. You are free
not to take part in the study and/or not to answer any questions that you prefer not to
answer.
The researcher will keep the information you provide confidential. However federal
regulatory agencies and the University of Iowa Institutional Review Board (a committee
that reviews and approves research studies) may inspect and copy records pertaining to
this research. If we write a report about this study we will do so in such a way that you
and your school cannot be identified.
There are no known risks from being in this study, and you will not benefit personally.
However we hope that others may benefit in the future from what we learn as a result of
this study.
You will not have any costs for being in this research study.
You will not be paid for being in this research study.
Taking part in this research study is completely voluntary. If you decide not to be in this
study, or if you stop participating at any time, you won‘t be penalized or lose any benefits
for which you otherwise qualify.
FOR IRB USE ONLY $STAMP_IRB $STAMP_IRB_ID $STAMP_APPRV_DT
175
If you have any questions about the research study itself, please contact Gleidson
Gouveia, N 467 Lindquist Center, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA – 52242, (319) 296-
8362. If you have questions about the rights of research subjects, please contact the
Human Subjects Office, 105 Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, 600 Newton Rd,
The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1098, (319) 335-6564, or e-mail
[email protected]. To offer input about your experiences as a research subject or to speak to
someone other than the research staff, call the Human Subjects Office at the number
above.
Thank you very much for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Gleidson Gouveia
Principal Investigator
176
APPENDIX D
CODING
Open coding: (1st)
Loose
curriculum
Prescribed
curriculum
Teacher decision
Testing
Testing
constantly
Analyzing
results
Multiple
assessments
Pre-test/post-test
Standardized
testing
Informal
assessment
Accountability
End of whole
language
Teach the same
way
Intervention
Pressure
Teachers hate
Drilling
Creativity
Struggling kids
Smart kids
Waste of time
Diversity
Frustration
Teacher‘s
manual
Fun out of
teaching
Fast pace
Correlation with
teaching
Growth
Improving
Proof
Expectation
Open coding: (2nd
)
Teacher decision
Change in
teaching
Teacher
accountability
School
accountability
District
accountability
Report results
Activities for
when intervening
and testing
Smart kids
Increase
diversity
Change in
demographics
ESL students
Teacher
creativity
Extreme testing
Test once a week
Three weeks of
testing
Test three times
a year
Teachers devise
tests
Teachers hate
Take fun out of
teaching
Background
knowledge
Financial
resources
Ability
Account for
student growth
Not attainable
Informal vs.
standardized
assessment
Social studies
Rigid/ no
flexibility
Everybody the
same
Teacher eval –
student
performance
Tests correlate
with teaching
Mixed feelings
177
Students stressed
Comparing to
previous class
Higher
expectations
More to get
through
Common core
testing
Grade level
reading
Diminished
return with
testing
Time takes to
test
Reporting
minutes
Reporting and
paper work
Kids don‘t care
Day to day stress
to take seriously
Higher/raised
expectations
Maturity level
Disadvantaged
can make it
Standardize
everything
No more
autonomy
Kids don‘t like
testing
Look at school
as whole
Labels
Failing cohort
Change
Higher-order
thinking skills
Teachers
overwhelmed
Sinus school
One year‘s
growth
Not catching up
Hard for kids
If teacher
frustrated, kids
frustrated
Accountability
w/o labeling
Pressure on
smart kids
Percentage too
high
Comparing
schools
One year‘s
growth from
beginning
No creativity
because assess
all the time
Kids who can do
deeper thinking
Struggle to read,
struggle to test
Open coding (3rd
)
NCLB requirements and Pressure/Stress
Loose curriculum vs. prescribed curriculum (teacher decision)
Pressure leads to stressed staff and stress students
Teachers feel overwhelmed by all the requirements
Teachers feel a lack of autonomy/room for creativity/fun
NCLB requirements lead to teacher frustration
Very fast pace of instruction
Requirements taken to be unattainable
Complete standardization, including all procedures
NCLB and testing
Informal assessment vs. standardized assessment
Testing all the time with multiple assessments
Teachers test, analyze, intervene, report – pre-test/post-test
Teachers devising their own tests now
A large amount of paperwork (time consuming)
178
Teachers hate the testing
Time it takes to do all the testing (three weeks, three times a year).
One year‘s growth
Testing for smart kids vs. testing for kids who struggle – kids don‘t like testing,
although some do
Common core testing
NCLB and teacher accountability
NCLB: teacher, school, district accountable
There must be teacher accountability
A change in demographics affecting the conditions of schooling – more ESL
students
Background knowledge, ability, financial resources and family support for
education
Accountable for student growth
Problem with the rigidity/lack of flexibility of the act, as kids are not all the same,
as they have differing maturity levels
Problems with connecting teacher evaluation to student performance
Problems of comparing students to previous class – different class every year.
Unfair school comparisons between disadvantaged and upper class students
NCLB doesn‘t take into account student reality
Lower class students just don‘t care about taking the tests
NCLB and higher-order thinking:
Higher expectations: could be a very good thing but also a very bad thing
Higher order for good students, those who can do it
Higher order for upper class students/schools in good neighborhoods
No room for creativity because having to assess all the time
Smart kids feel pressure to do well on tests
Improving NCLB : teacher perspective
Labeling is a very bad thing for a variety of reasons:
Need for accountability but without all the labeling
Focus on having one year‘s growth from the beginning
Reduce the amount of testing because more testing is not better.
179
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