Many Children Left Behind: Preamble Summary

Many Children Left Behind Preamble
“A Reminder for Americans”
--Theodore R. Sizer

Summary

We are long on rhetoric about public schools, and short on action. We cannot just continue at our comfort level; we must endure some discomfort for the sake of helping the materially insecure. Free public education has long been the “primary engine for social and economic health and for individual social mobility” in our society, and as such it is our responsibility to deal with the threats to it.

These threats include the following: poorly funded and equipped schools; poor communities whose taxes cover needed expenses, and state / federal funding which does not equalize the deficit; detailed state and federal direction of school routines; de facto segregation by social class in neighborhood schools; and the narrowing of teacher and principal authority. All of these are made worse by the demands of NCLB.

The original ESEA (1965) gave state and local authorities federal funds to be used creatively as they saw fit to improve local education; NCLB’s 2002 reauthorization instead centralizes, depriving LEAs of local authority—and giving insufficient funding to accomplish its demands. Obsessive focus on test scores distorts the problem and ignores many reasons for school and student failure.