State Representative David Bly, MN District 25B

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. ” -Upton Sinclair

I think what bothers me so much about the President’s No Child Left Behind initiative is that it establishes a system for education that is so far removed from the system I envision and to which I have devoted my career. NCLB looks at a student as a product, or ‘widget’ if you will, that can be acted upon and fashioned to ‘perfection’, according to their idea of perfection and standards. I believe that education is about creating environments and experiences so that each student can, relying upon their innate skills, traits, character, and personality, develop in the direction those skills and their interest will take them. NCLB follows a corporate model that needs to create a functional unit to fit in to its preordained cog. I believe destiny depends not on our predetermining what each person is meant for but rather depends on each person’s independent journey toward self-actualization. To do that, we create the best possible experiences for all students to learn the subjects we put before them, whether it is learning to read and write or to do algebra. We have ways of evaluating and making sure that the methods we use are effective, but I don’t think prescriptive standards and exit exams are the best way to do that evaluation. But don’t take my word for it — here are some others who have thought hard about these issues:

Bush Flunks Schools by SUSAN OHANIAN: [from the Nation, December 1, 2003 issue]

The ESEA [No Child Left Behind Act] is like a Russian novel. That’s because it’s long, it’s complicated, and in the end, everybody gets killed. –Scott Howard, former superintendent, Perry, Ohio,

At first, many people liked the sound of “No Child Left Behind,” President Bush’s education plan. Who could object? The press and the public responded positively to the sentiment–until the failure-to-measure-up labels started rolling in. But now, New York Times education columnist Michael Winerip says NCLB (pronounced “nicklebee”) “may go down in history as the most unpopular piece of education legislation ever created.”

Across the country, thousands of federal scarlet letters have been posted on schoolhouse doors.
According to a Machiavellian federal formula, many schools well respected in their communities didn’t make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). In Florida, only 22 percent of the schools earning A’s under the state’s ranking system received the NCLB imprimatur; overall, 87 percent of Florida’s public schools were judged inadequate. NCLB wonks are quick to point out that nowhere in the law is the word failure used. True. But everybody reads the “in need of improvement” tag as a euphemism for failure. And schools “in need of improvement” are penalized, so the distinction is a sham. Click here to read more.

Other Ohanian articles:
June 2003: Capitalism, Calculus, and Conscience

DECEMBER 2002 * Volume 84 * Number 4: MISGUIDED POLICIES
In a time when “statistical abstractions” drive education, Susan Ohanian and Dave Posner wonder where education is headed.
“Is Satire Possible?”, by Susan Ohanian
“Education for the 21st Century”, by Dave Posner

News from the Resistance Trail.
Is That Penguin Stuffed or Real.
Some Are More Equal Than Others
Goals 2000:What’s in a Name?

“For many families, home is where the school is. Ranks of home-schooled double in a decade”
Jane Gross, New York Times
Friday, November 14, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

New York — In Penny Kjellberg’s modest living room in Manhattan, one of her 11- year-old twins conjugates French verbs while cuddling a kitten. The book shelves sag with “The Encyclopedia of the Ancient World,” “The Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Einstein” and Ken Burns’ videos about the Civil War. Kjellberg’s other daughter devours a book about Ulysses with periodic romps outdoors when she gets antsy.

The Kjellberg twins, Caroline and Jessica, were in a highly regarded public school until two years ago. But they were bullied, their mother said, miserable, and referred to psychiatrists when they misbehaved in class. So Kjellberg, neither a hippie nor a fundamentalist, decided to educate them at home.

“I was always too afraid to take that giant step outside the mainstream,” she said. “But now that
circumstances have forced us out, our experience here on the sidelines is so good that I find it harder and harder to imagine going back.”

The Kjellbergs’ choice is being made by an increasing number of American families — at least 850,000 children nationwide, up from 360,000 a decade ago, according the Education Department.

Newcomers to home schooling seem a different breed from the religious right and libertarian left who dominated the movement for decades, according to those who study the practice.

They come to home schooling fed up with the shortcomings of public education and the exorbitant cost of private schools. Add to that the new nationwide standards — uniform curriculum and more testing — which some educators say penalize children with special needs, whether they are gifted, learning disabled or merely eccentric.

THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT, A PLAN FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF PUBLIC EDUCATION: JUST SAY NO by Gerald W. Bracey
Education Disinformation Detection and Reporting Agency (EDDRA)

(Gerald W. Bracey is an Associate of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation and an Associate Professor at George Mason University. His most recent books are The War on America’s Public Schools (Allyn & Bacon, 2002) and Put to the Test: An Educator’s and Consumer’s Guide to Standardized Testing (Revised edition, Phi Delta Kappa International, 2002). The opinions are his own.)

The No Child Left Behind Act is a trap. It is the grand scheme of the school privatizers. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) sets up public schools for the final knock down.

Paranoia? Hardly. Consider that the Bush administration is de-regulating every pollution
producing industry in sight while cutting Super fund cleanup money. It has rolled back regulations on power plants and snowmobiles and wants to take protection away from 20,000,000 acres of wetlands (20% of the total). President Bush’s response to global
warming: “Deal with it!” by which he means, adjust to it while we make the world safe for SUVs. The president wants to outsource hundreds of thousands of government jobs to private corporations. He wants, in other words, to get the government out of government.

Would an administration with such an anti-regulatory, pro-private sector policy perspective turn around and impose harsh, straitjacket requirements on schools, demands that would bankrupt any business? Of course not. Unless it had an ulterior purpose.

Leaving Children Behind: How NCLB Will Fail Our Children (in PDF)

Monty Neill, published in November 2003 Phi Delta Kappan.

The National Center for Fair & Open Testing is an advocacy organization working to end the abuses, misuses and flaws of standardized testing and ensure that evaluation of students and workers is fair, open, and educationally sound.

We place special emphasis on eliminating the racial, class, gender, and cultural barriers to equal
opportunity posed by standardized tests, and preventing their damage to the quality of education.
Based on four Goals and Principles, we provide information, technical assistance and advocacy on a broad range of testing concerns, focusing on three areas: K-12, university admissions, and employment tests.
For more about us and our mission click here.

Senator Wellstone was outspoken in his comments about the unfairness of NCLB and its model of single measures for success here are his comments from a March 2000 speech.