GOP turns against No Child Left Behind

Republicans in Congress want to repeal high-stakes testing provisions in the No Child Left Behind program.  I think this is a good thing overall, not a bad thing.

Proposed by the George W. Bush administration and enacted with bipartisan support, the NCLB program measured teacher and school performance by means of achievement tests.  The idea supposedly was to highlight how schools are failing poor and minority students, but the only remedy is punishment of teachers and schools for low test scores.

The result was to scapegoat teachers, schools and, by implication, public education itself.   All this was called school “reform,” although to reform something means to correct its defects and make it better, which is exactly the point at issue.

I think we the people should watch the details of what is being proposed—specifically in regard to provisions regarding charter schools and privatization of public schools.  But in general I think the push-back against NCLB reflects the experience and justified opposition of parents and teachers.

My e-mail pen pal Bill Harvey, who sent me a link to a Politico article reporting the Republican plan to overhaul NCLB, also sent me a link to a Truthout review of Educating for Insurgency: The Roles of Young People in Schools of Poverty by Jay Gillen, a Baltimore public school teacher and mentor for the Baltimore Algebra Project, which began as an after-school mathematics tutoring program, but evolved into something much more powerful.

If somebody in authority wanted to improve education, especially for poor and minority students, they would talk to people such as Gillen and the other teachers who’ve risked their careers to resist meaningless tests.

∞∞∞

The plot to overhaul No Child Left Behind by Maggie Severn for Politico.  [Bill Harvey]

Flipping the Script: Pedagogy, Theater and Radical Organizing in Schools of Poverty by John Duda for Truthout.  [Bill Harvey]

Top Ten Acts of Test Resistance in 2014: the greatest year of revolt against high-stakes testing in U.S. history by Jesse Hagopian for I Am An Educator. [Bill Harvey]

Tags: Baltimore Algebra Project, NCLB, No Child Left Behind, Public Schools