Re: on privatization and accountability

[aburke5054@aol.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Hays <shays@ccwebster.net>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Thu, 18 May 2006 08:01:54 -0700
Subject: Re: [arn-l] on privatization and accountability

...
 I don't think there is a person on this list who would disagree that 
schools were in need of fundamental change prior to NCLB. Most of the 
people who contribute to this discussion wore hip-waders in the sea of 
school change ... and know first hand the resistance arising from the 
stone wall of institutional inertia. Maybe, after November, we can 
begin to erode the noncritical support NCLB is given by the majority 
party and tweak those elements of the measure that make it an oxymoron 
-- namely, that to use a single measure to assess success in meeting 
impossibly constructed standards can only be successful when children 
(possibly lots of children) get left behind, and that the threat of 
increasingly stringent punishments is not the most productive method 
for achieving systemic change.
_______________________________________________________________
All people on this list agreed that schools were in need of fundamental 
change before NCLB? I don't think so.  Remember, "it's all a 
manufactured crisis?" In any event, NCLB says that states should 
improve their schools until all their children reach high levels of 
achievement. You think NCLB is a Republican thing?  The NAACP is 
arguing in federal court that CT should meet its responsibilities under 
NCLB.  Is the NAACP a front for the Republican party? Do you think 
NAACP would be arguing that way if NCLB were wreaking genocide against 
minority children and if it were NCLB, and not state inaction and 
evasion, that were hurting schools?  That people have morphed NCLB into 
a conspiracy (pardon me, a plan) to privatize public education is one 
of the more bizarre things in the history of American political life - 
it ranks right up there with the "black helicopter" crowd and with 
those who claim that fluoridating the public drinking supply is a 
conspiracy (pardon me, a plan) of the new world order.

If you have a better measure of success than all kids reaching high 
standards, let's hear it. If you think that NCLB is "punishing" 
schools, what would you do differently?  What fundamental changes would 
you make?

Art