Re: NCLB Reductio ad Absurdum

[aburke5054@aol.com]

-----Original Message-----
 From: gbracey1@verizon.net
 To: arn-l@interversity.org
 Sent: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 1:16 PM
 Subject: [arn-l] NCLB Reductio ad Absurdum
 
 ...
 Diane, by the way, was charged with summing up the day. Well, she said, choice isn't working, supplementary services isn't working and restructuring isn't working, at least not the way the framers hoped restructuring would work. So none of the tools in the NCLB toolkit are accomplishing anything. _ ____________________________________________________
 
 Paul Tough's article argues that the choice provisions have led to promising developments like charter schools and particularly KIPP schools. But the problem is not NcLB: The problem is that states are not falling all over themselves to make changes in their schools. They have plenty of perverse incentives for not doing so: they don't want to spend more money, they don't know what to do, they don't want to accept responsibility for the tough problems, and they don't want to rock the boats of educators who who fight changes if they think those changes help parents and kids at their expense. Poor children, minority children, children with disabilities, and children whose home language is other than English - the children NCLB is designed to help most - surely, as Rothstein argues, need society's support in many ways, but improving their schools is a worthy end in itself and that is why it is the central goal of NCLB. These children, their parents, and society would benefit, as the NAACP continues to argue in the CT case, if states would accept their responsibilities under NCLB and work energetically to improve their schools.
 
 One of the most unfortunate features of public discourse around NCLB is that its central purpose of improving schools is so rarely mentioned, or it is mentioned in oblique or misleading ways that focus on the "impossible" goal of proficiency for all children, or cast features like the AYP mechanisms as "punishing" schools, or argue that NCLB isn't working when it is the states that have fumbled the ball. (I won't mention the loony paranoia that claims that NCLB is a stealth tool to privatize public education). Some educators have fallen for these misrepresentations and some educators are the source of them. We should expect better.
 
 Art
    
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