Editorial Submission for CSM on NCLB

[Rich Gibson <rgibson@pipeline.com>]

Regarding
?Next round begins for No Child Left Behind? CSM January 8 2007

Inside a nation promising perpetual war to the world, it is a silly mistake 
to believe elites who back the NCLB, a clear effort to regiment what youth 
know, and how they come to know it, have good motives about kids who are 
?left behind,? (by the unmentionable: racism and exploitation) or that 
somehow those children are better served by the NCLB project of curricula 
regimentation and high-stakes exams.

It is, after all, the same people who gain from booming inequality and 
imperial adventures that are promoting NCLB.

Really, NCLB has done nothing but use bogus claims to ?science,? while 
deepening the segregation of public schools, and the ignorance that guides 
the nation.

High-stakes exams are the cornerstone of the NCLB, and are too often placed 
beyond criticism. Here is a list of objections:

 High_stakes standardized tests, an international phenomenon, represent a 
powerful intrusion into classrooms, often taking up as much as 40% of 
teacher time,

The tests pretend that one standard fits all, when one standard does not 
fit all,

These tests measure, for the most part, parental income and race, and are 
therefore instruments which build racism and anti_working class 
sentiment__against the interest of most teachers and their students,

These tests deepen the segregation of children within and between school 
systems, a move that is not in the interests of most people throughout the 
world,

Inner_city families and poor families are promised tests as an avenue to 
escape the ghetto and poverty, when the tests are designed to fail their 
children, boosting dropouts, leaving more children trapped in the ghetto 
and poverty, deepening inequality and all forms of injustice,

The tests set up a false employer_employees relationship between teachers 
and students which damages honest exchanges in the classroom,

I have seen repeatedly that the exams are unprofessionally scored, for 
example in New York in 2000 when thousands of students were unnecessarily 
ordered to summer school on the grounds of incorrect test results,

The tests create an atmosphere that pits students against students and 
teachers against teachers and school systems against school systems in a 
mad scramble for financial rewards, and to avoid financial retribution,

The tests have been used to unjustly fire and discipline educators 
throughout the country,



The exams represent an assault on academic freedom by forcing their way 
into the classroom in an attempt to regulate knowledge, what is known and 
how people come to know it,

The tests foment an atmosphere of greed, fear, and hysteria, none of which 
contributes to learning,

The tests destroy inclusion and inquiry_based education,

The high_stakes test pretend to neutrality but are deeply partisan in 
content, reflecting the needs of elites in a world becoming more 
inequitable, less democratic, promising the youth of the world perpetual war,

The tests become commodities for opportunists whose interests are profits, 
not the best interests of children,

I support the rising tide of education worker resistance to the high_stakes 
exams, as well as student and educator boycotts.

Parents and students have a legal right to opt out of the exams, which are 
little more than child abuse made respectable.

I hope test boycotts spread and I am quite sure they will?which is the best 
answer to the NCLB.


? Rich Gibson, San Diego State University College of Education,
619 287 2322