Educators trying to reach the goal of No Child Left Behind educational program – “by 2014, every child will be at or above grade level” – are doomed to failure, a nationally recognized educator said Wednesday.

“It’s impossible,” Dr. James A. Tucker, holder of the McKee Chair of Excellence in Learn at UTC, told members of the Midtown Council of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce.
Schools want a whole lot of learning for a whole lot of kids, and they want it accomplished quickly, Dr. Tucker said. In other words, they’re concerned with three issues: time, quality and quantity.

The problem, he said, is that in order to achieve two of those goals, the third must be adjusted.

Quality of education cannot be sacrified, he said. For example, children need to learn all 26 letters of the alphabet, not just a portion of them.

Likewise, all children must be educated, not just some of them, so quantity is fixed.

The factor that can be adjusted, he said, is time.

“If one kid in the class is way behind, what does he need more than anything?” he asked rhetorically. “Time.”

It is perfectly normal for children who are the same age to achieve at different levels on standardized tests, he said. The normal range of achievement for 68 percent of nine-year-old fourth graders, for example, ranges from grade one level to grade seven level.

Therefore, demanding that 100 percent of those students achieve on at least a grade four level is unrealistic.

In order to learn, he said, students must be presented with information that makes sense to them – prior knowledge is an important part of learning.

A student presented with an essay in which he or she knows fewer than 93 percent of the words probably will not be able to make sense of it, Dr. Tucker said. “That’s the cutting off point.”

However, it is not necessary to know every word, he added, noting that when people read a book they have no trouble following the plot even though they usually know only about 98 percent of the words it contains.

The most effective way to teach is to start at the lowest level, and then increase incrementally. Then the new information must be repeated again and again.

“It requires an average of 35 successful repetitions for information to be retained permanently,” Dr. Tucker said. “If you make a mistake, you have to start over . . . (and) practice until it becomes auromatic.”