A Petition Calling For the Dismantling of the No Child Left Behind Act

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>]

This petition now has more than 27,000 
signatures, and is growing daily. Please consider 
signing and joining in the struggle to save our 
children.  Go to this site to sign and write a comment.

<https://outlook.utpa.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.educatorroundtable.org/>http://www.educatorroundtable.org/


UPDATES: (1) You may not agree with every point 
on this document, written trying to take into 
consideration as many complaints as possible. If 
you agree with one, you should sign, and then 
spread the word. (2) Conservatives and Liberals 
wrote this legislation; we need both to help us 
end it. (3) We are NOT associated with the NEA, 
whose leadership has misrepresented our 
organization and our movement. In place of NCLB 
we offer federally supported, EDUCATOR-led 
reform, something NEA leadership should support. 
(4) Teachers have written us asking if they can 
be fired for signing. This is, the last time we 
checked, still the U.S.A., and teachers are 
entitled to voice their opinions?just do it from 
your home! If you are a teacher, please identify 
yourself as such when you sign. (5) Want to do 
more than sign a petition? Switch your email 
address to ?public? AND WE WILL ADD YOU TO OUR 
MAILING LIST, or register at www.educatorroundtable.org.

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To:  U.S. Congress

We, the educators, parents, and concerned 
citizens whose names appear below, reject the 
misnamed No Child Left Behind Act and call for 
legislators to vote against its reauthorization. 
We do so not because we resist accountability, 
but because the law's simplistic approach to 
education reform wastes student potential, 
undermines public education, and threatens the future of our democracy.

Below, briefly stated, are some of the reasons we 
consider the law too destructive to salvage. In 
its place we call for formal, state-level 
dialogues led by working educators rather than by 
politicians, ideology-bound "think tank" members, 
or leaders of business and industry who have 
little or no direct experience in the field of education.

THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT:

1. Misdiagnoses the causes of poor educational 
development, blaming teachers and students for 
problems over which they have no control.

2. Assumes that competition is the primary 
motivator of human behavior and that market 
forces can cure all educational ills.

3. Mandates data driven instruction based on 
gamesmanship to undermine public confidence in our schools.

4. Uses pseudo science and media manipulation to 
justify pro-corporate policies and programs, 
including diverting taxes away from communities and into corporate coffers.

5. Ignores the proven inadequacies, 
inefficiencies, and problems associated with centralized, "top-down" control.

6. Places control of what is taught in corporate 
hands many times removed from students, teachers, 
parents, local school boards, and communities.

7. Requires the use of materials and procedures 
more likely to produce a passive, compliant 
workforce than creative, resilient, inquiring, 
critical, compassionate, engaged members of our democracy.

8. Reflects and perpetuates massive distrust of 
the skill and professionalism of educators.

9. Allows life-changing, institution-shaping 
decisions to hinge on single measures of performance.

10. Emphasizes minimum content standards rather 
than maximum development of human potential.

11. Neglects the teaching of higher order 
thinking skills which cannot be evaluated by machines.

12. Applies standards to discrete subjects rather 
than to larger goals such as insightful children, 
vibrant communities, and a healthy democracy.

13. Forces schools to adhere to a testing regime, 
with no provision for innovating, adapting to 
social change, encouraging creativity, or 
respecting student and community individuality, nuance, and difference.

14. Drives art, music, foreign language, career 
and technical education, physical education, 
geography, history, civics and other non-tested 
subjects out of the curriculum, especially in low-income neighborhoods.

15. Produces multiple, unintended consequences 
for students, teachers, and communities, 
including undermining neighborhood schools and 
blurring the line between church and state.

16. Rates and ranks public schools using 
procedures that will gradually label them all 
"failures," so when they fail to make Adequate 
Yearly Progress, as all schools eventually will, 
they can be ?saved? by vouchers, charters, or privatization.

While any one of these issues is serious enough 
to warrant discarding No Child Left Behind, the 
law suffers from all of them. The number of 
signatures on this petition should be a clear 
indicator to state and national policy makers 
that it is time to move beyond this harmful, highly restrictive law.

Sincerely,

<https://outlook.utpa.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.PetitionOnline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?1teacher>The 
Undersigned