The rumblings about the “real” motive of President Bush’s major education intitiative “No Child Left Behind” or NCLB have never really died down. The feeling among critics is by forcing students no matter their educational or emotional or mental development to impossibly march in lockstep or their school would be labeled a “failure” (just as the students would also) was merely an underhanded attempt to obliterate public education as we know it today. Some saw it as a conservative push for school vouchers.
Now this today from Time:
Susan Neuman, a professor of education at the University Michigan who served as Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education during George W. Bush’s first term, was and still is a fervent believer in the goals of NCLB. And she says the President and then Secretary of Education Rod Paige were too. But there were others in the department, according to Neuman, who saw NCLB as a Trojan horse for the choice agenda — a way to expose the failure of public education and “blow it up a bit,” she says. “There were a number of people pushing hard for market forces and privatization.”
NCLB with few exceptions drew the loudest and longest cheers during Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s primary fight in Pennsylvania back in April. This was particularly true during town hall meetings in high schools and colleges, and the upswell of support for repealing NCLB wasn’t generated by teachers, parents or school administrators. It came from the students themselves. The young adults in college now are part of the NCLB generation, among the first NCLB Heads to enter college where they are encouraged to think on their own, think outside the box, explore their individualism, which must seem like a radical change from the “teaching to the test” mentality of schools these days. I talked to a few who felt cheated out of their high school experience because they were under such immense pressure to perform on mandatory tests.
I wonder if NCLB isn’t on its last lifeline, depending of course on the results of the Fall election. While I don’t expect a full repeal, major reforms are likely to happen.
