No Child Left Behind as an Anti-Poverty Measure

["Monty Neill" <monty@fairtest.org>]

Susan Ohanian posted this on her page - intro paras are below, as is link. Those going to the NDSG conference are asked to read Pedro Noguera's City Schools and the American Dream, which provides lots of context and detail on the relationship of education to class and race, focusing on the Bay area in Calif. And there is Richard Rothstein's book, books by Jonathan Kozol... 
Monty

http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=473
No Child Left Behind as an Anti-Poverty Measure
Publication Date: 2007-02-01 

  By Jean Anyon & Kiersten Greene 

This article appears in Teacher Education Quarterly, Spring 2007. 

Listen, the No Child Left Behind Act is really a jobs act when you think about it. 
-President George W. Bush, Oct. 13, 2004, Third Presidential Debate 


This article argues that, although No Child Left Behind is not presented as a jobs policy (Bush's slip during a Presidential Debate being the only place it is given such a moniker), the Act does function as a substitute for the creation of decently paying jobs for those who need them. Aimed particularly at the minority poor like its 1965 predecessor, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, NCLB acts as an anti-poverty program because it is based on an implicit assumption that increased educational achievement is the route out of poverty for low-income families and individuals. NCLB stands in the place of policies like job creation and significant raises in the minimum wage which-although considerably more expensive than standardized testing-would significantly decrease poverty in the United States. 

We demonstrate that there are significant economic realities, and existing public policies, that severely curtail the power of education to function as a route out of poverty for poor people. The weakened role of education in upward mobility, of course, vitiates any premise that better scores on achievement tests, and increased education, will secure for low-income folks the jobs and income they need. Let us make our case.
for the test, go to http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=473

Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Executive Director
FairTest
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monty@fairtest.org
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