By PATRICIA DONOVAN
Contributing Editor

A UB education scholar has blasted the "test and punish" education plan put forth by President George Bush in the White House report "No Child Left Behind."

Jeremy Finn, professor of counseling, school and educational psychology in the Graduate School of Education, says that in his eagerness to restructure funding priorities, Bush has ignored the importance of the one strategy that empirical studies have consistently proven to optimize student learning in virtually all educational settings—small classes in the elementary grades.

He has replaced it, Finn maintains, with an intrusive "test and punish" system that is inconsistent with any established educational principle.

"It's ironic, if not surprising," Finn points out, "that all the funds allocated by Bush to expand state and national assessments—i.e., tests—will not go to schoolchildren who need help, but into the pockets of adults involved in the testing industry."

A widely published education scholar, Finn's most recent work is "The Enduring Effects of Small Classes," a report published in the prestigious journal Teachers College Record. He is the editor of "How Small Classes Help Students Do Their Best," a collection of major, previously published class-size studies in several states conducted by educational researchers.

"The Bush plan," Finn says, "ignores the fact that small class size has been scientifically proven to offer most widespread benefits of any intervention known to educators today.

"The White House plan would divert funds from programs with demonstrated effectiveness into what it calls 'performance-based grants to states and localities.' In other words, school funding would be awarded on the basis of achievement-test results.

"Test, test, test is the theme of 'No Child Left Behind," according to Finn.

"Ask any teacher and he or she will tell you that American students are already tested to death. They say sarcastically, 'We don't need more tests to tell us how 'badly' we're doing.'"

Nor, says Finn, has increased achievement testing been shown to improve performance, even when test results are tied to funding.

Nevertheless, under the Bush plan, states that don't show improved test scores will risk a reduction in federal funds, he says, "and schools whose students 'perform poorly' will lose resources instead of receiving badly needed funding for things that would actually improve both learning and test scores.

"Not only does the White House plan not put money into programs like class-size reduction," Finn says, "but its funding priorities are based on assumptions for which there is little or no scientific basis."

The Bush plan is flawed in other areas as well, he notes.

"It insists, for instance, that 'states will be held accountable for improving the quality of their teachers,'" Finn says.

"Certainly we would all like for teachers to have the best possible, but even in this instance, 'No Child Left Behind' provides no direction for improving teacher preparation and no mechanism or spending priorities that would help states attain that goal."