MCLB Chapter 5 Summary

MCLB, Chapter 5: NCLB and the Effort to Privatize Public Education
--Alfie Kohn

No Child Left Behind keeps local communities from being able to choose their own educational policies and programs; it makes teachers choose between real learning and test scores; and it punishes the children on the other side of the racial / socioeconomic gap. The entire initiative is endorsed by people who are opposed to the idea of public education. Is NCLB a political tool of those who wish to privatize education?

When large numbers of students reach proficiency on standardized tests, officials raise the cut scores. The call for “high standards” (code for high-stakes testing) and “freedom of choice” (code for voucher programs) comes from the very people who would benefit most from the inevitable perceived failure of public schools under NCLB’s mandates—businesses and corporate interests. Desperate and “failing” schools use federal funds to buy curricula designed by private firms while panicked parents send their kids to Sylvan, Kaplan, or Princeton Review for (pricey) test tutoring.

It is not enough to say that NCLB needs to be reformed; “instead of scrambling to comply with the provisions of NCLB, our obligation is to figure out how best to resist.” (p. 96) Teachers—indeed, all citizens—should reject NCLB as a step towards the privatization (and de-democratization) of education.

Many Children Left Behind: Chapter 2 Summary

"A View from the Field: NCLB’s Effects on Classrooms and Schools"
--George Wood
Summary

With NCLB and the pressures of high-stakes, severe sanction testing, “We have embarked on one of the greatest social engineering experiments ever to be conducted on our children.” (44) The most devastating effects of this “blame-and-shame” experiment are found in classrooms today.

Negative effects include a rise in pushouts, dropouts, and retention; less fulfilling classroom practices including joyless worksheets, drill-and-kill, and a focus on easy-to-test facts rather than complex thinking; and a narrowing of the school experience through elimination of “extras” like naptime, recess, art, music, shop, and computer class. Schools that serve economically disadvantaged or minority populations are most negatively affected by NCLB; conversely, “Blue Ribbon” schools are ones that are already better funded and serve a less diverse population than state average.

Test scores are the driving force behind NCLB, but as the author says, “the only evidence that things are improving as a result of testing is that test scores are gradually going up.” (35) Science has so far shown no correlation between increasing test scores and turning students into better citizens, neighbors, employees, or college students. The current test rush ignores what we know about how children learn. Nevertheless, schools are punished for failing to meet testing criteria. As a result, they are sometimes forced to choose between the school and the child, as the examples of Angelica and Perla show.

In order to fix the imbalances that NCLB creates, the author offers three suggestions. First, we should call a moratorium on testing until we can figure out what the scores DO predict. Second, we should institute more complex models of school health to evaluate our schools. Third, we should target intervention funds and support to the schools that are farthest behind—those that serve large minority and economically disadvantaged populations.