Fwd: Carlos Ovando: 11 Reasons Why NCLB Could Be Considered a Fraud

[Susan Harman <susanharman@igc.org>]

This is a terrific list. I esp like "a mandate that is placed on no other social
institution". Imagine if county emergency rooms were expected to have the same
survival rate as elective plastic surgery units.

Susan

Begin forwarded message:

  From: "Luis O. Reyes" <Luisoreyes@AOL.COM>

  Date: Sun Apr 15, 2007 10:46:40 AM US/Pacific

  To: ELLADVOC@asu.edu

  Subject: Carlos Ovando: 11 Reasons Why NCLB Could Be Considered a Fraud

  Reply-To: Luisoreyes@AOL.COM

  0000,0000,0000This list by Carlos J. Ovando from Winter 2005 is prophetic!

  Carlos J. Ovando (Ph.D., Indiana University) is Professor of Curriculum and
  Instruction and Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Arizona State
  University.

  Eleven Reasons Why NCLB Could Be Considered a Fraud

  Carlos Ovando

  [This list appears in No Child Left Behind: A Brainchild of Neoliberalism and
  American Politics by Carlos Alberto Torres in New Politics, Vol X No 2.,
  0000,0000,0000Winter 2005, Whole No. 38]

  0000,0000,00001. The massive increase in testing that NCLB will impose on
  schools will hurt their educational performance, not improve it;

  2. The funding for NCLB does not come anywhere near the levels that would be
  needed to reach even the narrow and dubious goals of producing 100 percent
  passing rates on state tests for all students by 2014;

  3. The mandate that NCLB imposes on schools to eliminate inequality in test
  scores among all students within 12 years is a mandate that is placed on no
  other social institution, and reflects the hypocrisy of the law;

  4. The sanctions that NCLB impose on schools that don't meet its test score
  targets will hurt poor schools and poor communities most;

  5. The transfer and choice provision will creat chaos and produce greater
  inequality within the public system without increasing the capacity of
  receiving schools to deliver better educational services;

  6. These same transfer and choice provisions will not give low-income parents
  any more control over school bureaucracies than food stamps give them over
  the supermarkets;

  7. These provisions about using scientifically based instructional practices
  are neither scientifically valid nor educationally sound and will harmfully
  impact classrooms in what may be the single most important instructional
  area, the teaching of reading;

  8. The supplemental tutorial provisions of NCLB will channel public funds to
  private companies for ideological and political reasons (similar to debates
  about vouchers), not sound educational ones;

  9. NCLB is part of a larger political and ideological effort to privatize
  social programs, reduce the public sector, and ultimately replace local
  control of institutions like schools with marketplace reforms that substitute
  commercial relations between customers for democratic relations between
  citizens;

  10. NCLB moves control over curriculum and instructional issues away from
  teachers, classrooms, schools and local districts where it should be, and
  puts it in the hands of state and federal educational bureaucracies and
  politicians. It represents the single biggest assault on local control of
  schools in the history of federal education policy;

  11. NCLB includes provisions that try to push prayer, military recruiters,
  and homophobia into schools while pushing multiculturalism, teacher
  innovation, and creative curriculum reform out.

  **************************************

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