What's Wrong with NCLB

If you’re not convinced that No Child Left Behind is a disaster, here’s enough information to persuade anyone.

FairTest, our parent organzation, has an extensive set of materials on NCLB.

This is the famous Nov. 1992 "Dear Hillary" letter which some claim is the education plan the feds have followed ever since.

Kozol's 12/07 letter to Kennedy, in which he lays out his arguments against NCLB, referring back to his Savage Inequalities, and pleads for "reconception of this law".

Hursh on Assessing No Child Left Behind and the Rise of Neoliberal Education Policies, 6/07

Emery on Origins and Purpose of "No Child Left Behind", a summary of her thesis, which is expanded in her book with Susan Ohanian, Why is Corporate America Bashing our Public Schools?

Henry, Case Against Standardized Testing

Rothstein on NCLB's mandated "'Proficiency for All'—An Oxymoron," and why it's impossible for all to be proficient.

Many Children Left Behind is a 2004 book on the dangers of NCLB by Meier, Kohn, Darling-Hammond, Sizer, Karp, Neill and Wood. For reviews, go here, here, here, here and here.

Rothstein asserts that, since the current NCLB is doomed, the next president has a chance to do it right.

(Thanks to Jack Gerson, Oakland, for this link.) An Education Week blogger has researched the interconnections linking the big education "philanthropeneur" foundations and the objective-posing education policy think tanks. She found the web of interconnections to be thicker than a spider's web.

If you liked that, you'll love her latest posting, "Funding Frenzy," where she provides a link to an online spreadsheet that she's created detailing the grants awarded by the mega-funders: the Broad, Gates and Walton Foundations.

Poverty

The real problem with our schools is poverty. This is the elephant in the school reform/NCLB room. There is a huge body of eloquent research and documentation on the connections between poverty and education, including the effects of lead poisoning and other health issues on learning, and the “savage inequalities” (the name of Kozol’s book) between rich schools and poor schools.

Contact us if you’d like more information, and here is a small sample:

Berliner on NCLB & poverty

Anyon and Greene, 2007, ask Is education the route out of poverty?

Haberman on Pedagogy of Poverty, 1991

Ladson-Billings on Achievement Gap vs. Education Debt, 2006

Rothstein on Reforms that could Narrow the Achievement Gap, 2006

Gibson and Ross track the line from rising inequality to the international war of the rich on the poor to the demands made on schools to support this war: regimented curricula, high stakes exams, and aggressive military recruiting.