MCLB Chapter 4 Summary

MCLB Chapter 4: NCLB and Democracy
--Deborah Meier

“The very definition of what constitutes an educated person is now dictated by federal legislation. A well-educated person is one who scores high on standardized math and reading tests. And ergo a good school is one that either has very high test scores or is moving toward them at a prescribed rate of improvement. Period.” (p. 67)

People nowadays have been distanced from educational governance. The “cure” for this that NCLB offers is to increase that distance, taking decision-making out of the hands of local school boards and handing down requirements from large test publishers, federal education consultants, and politicians. Consolidation of schools has seriously endangered students’ feelings of community; NCLB locks this divide into place. The implication is that children, families, teachers, and communities don't have sufficient judgement to make sound educational decisions for themselves. Trust in the multiage community is undermined.

Democracy, messy and time-consuming as it may be, is the real solution to these problems. Schools must “build a community-wide consensus about the essential purposes of schools,” decide what to do about minority / dissenting viewpoints, choose their own educational leaders, and find a way to ensure that rich and poor students are allocated equal resources. Returning decisions about promotion standards and real accountability to the local level won’t solve all of education’s problems —but it’s a start.