File under: Well, Duh!
No Child Left Behind: Doomed to Fail?
…Add to the mix the fact that much of the promised funding failed to materialize and many early critics insisted that No Child Left Behind was nothing more than a cynical plan to destroy American faith in public education and open the way to vouchers and school choice.
Now a former official in Bush’s Education department is giving at least some support to that notion. 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…”
June 20th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Speaking of ‘well duh’, The District of Columbia just released new three year data that shows parents whose children used vouchers rather than attend public school are fairing no better than they were in the public school system.
My opinion has always been that often the difference between a child doing well at a school and not doing well has a lot to do with expectation and follow through from parents as well as demand of excellence from teachers and school staff.
June 20th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Jonzee: I hadn’t heard about the DC findings; definitely not surprising. Vouchers are not the end-all, be-all some would have us believe. And I totally agree with your second paragraph. No “single bullet” solution to children’s educational failure will ever work.
June 22nd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
The thing about NCLB that gets me is the idea that one curriculum and one pedagogy will work for every child in every city in every state in our country. I find it rather alarming…
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Hi, Jenny…
Yeah, the one-size-fits-all approach just doesn’t work. It’ll be interesting to see what comes down the pike next, esp. if we get a Dem administration.