Monday’s Post had a good front page story detailing the what went wrong (or right to some of us :-) in the effort to reauthorize No Child Left Behind.
Basically, the misguided, “bipartisan”, and woefully underfunded effort to reform American education has now turned into a political rugby ball.
Ten months later, the optimism has vanished and the campaign to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind education law has bogged down. Not only has it not passed, but no formal legislation has even been introduced. In an interview last week, Kennedy said it will not happen this year after all. “It’s going to tip over to next year,” he said — right into the teeth of a presidential campaign with candidates on both sides denouncing the program.
It’s a long, sorry tale that has as it’s foundation a majority of the Congress buying into W’s propaganda that every single American school – and by extension every teacher – is a complete failure.
And continues with the infliction of a plan to federally homogenize all those classroom with a one-size-fits-all program of relentless testing and penalties that does little more than teach test taking skills.
Of course, there was no research to support the claims made by supporters, even as they filled the law with requirements to only use “researched-based” instructional programs.
However, all of that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t take a close reading of the Post article to understand that this issue has absolutely nothing to do with education.
The battle over NCLB is all about petty egos and political control. Which, sadly, is pretty much how our elected “leaders” seem to handle every important issue.