NCLB: No, It Didn't Really Happen That Way

A couple of things about NCLB, in order to avoid repeating mistakes or being misguided by slanted information:

First and foremost, no matter how many times people say it, NCLB didn't label struggling schools "failing."  Do you really think they were idiots just because they didn't have iPhones yet?  

Second, while there's much to admire in Kevin Carey's "requiem" for NCLB, the relentless campaign against the law by the teachers unions -- remember the lawsuits? -- and shameless Democratic flip-flop against the law  -- ostensibly to help John Kerry get elected in 2004 -- must be emphasized in any assessment of the law's political and media misfortunes.  

Last but not least, the newer generation of reform groups and funders -- TFA, KIPP, Gates, and Broad -- are and have always been ambivalent at best about the law, even though it matched them rhetorically and generated the annual test scores and scrutiny for district schools upon which many reform ideas rely.  They didn't help write it, fight for it, or defend it, and remain generally focused on innovation rather than accountability. Freeloaders!

Comments

[Sherman]

As a first cut on the term "failing school"/"failed school", ...

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=failing+school%2Cfailed+school&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=5&smoothing=3

[Alexander Russo]

sort of misleading to present it that way --
looks much smoother this way

http://ow.ly/cBy4l

also -- my point still stands about what the law says and doesn't say. books or media -- how the law was interpreted -- are another matter.

[John Thompson]

NCLB would have had a redeeming feature if they had paid people to dig holes and bury the billions of dollars that were wasted - and that damaged schools further.

NCLB only looks good in comparison to the even worse "reforms" that it spawned. The only way to save Duncan's versions of the worst of NCLB on steroids would be to take half of his billions and pay standardized testing companies to NOT make or grade tests and to pay consultants to stay out of the schools. For instance, the best way to make Common Core work is to pay providers to NOT make assessments. In an age of "reform," the only other way to make standardized assessments not destructive is to pay students to NOT take them.

[Sarah]

Agreed with Thompson. My issue with the standardized test culture brought on my NCLB is not so much how it labels schools, but just that: the notion that tests of such a nature are the most effective way to measure intellect.