Most readers don’t know this but one of the first tasks the new Congress will take on is the renewal of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Not only would I bet that you didn’t know this, but I’ll go even further to say I doubt you knew how the person you are planning to vote for stands on NCLB. This is important because it was Democrats who helped to pass NCLB. Like the Iraq War resolution it was one of those laws they voted for out of fear of what the voters might do than out of any deep sense of commitment.
I will bet you know how your candidates stand on Iraq, the budget, tax cuts, health care and other issues, but you do not have a clue about what plans those people have for educating your children. Think about that for a minute: your candidate has told you all about Baghdad but nothing about their plans for your local elementary or secondary school. In fact, education may get the award for the most ignored issue of this campaign by candidates, blogs and the media alike.
There’s an old line about you get the government you deserve. If we keep ignoring education we may very well get the country we deserve and we aren’t going to like it. For educators, schools, students and parents NCLB has been an unmitigated disaster. With NCLB, the Counterrevolution has largely succeeded in reframing the debate about education funding much as it reframed debates about taxes. Resource poor schools where the toilets work intermittently, the textbooks have pages missing, and teachers must buy their own classroom supplies also tend to have large numbers of students not performing well on the standardized tests at the heart of NCLB. For these schools, the GOP moved the debate from lack of resources to lack of performance in a way that would earn the admiration of the most sophisticated river boat gambler. Schools with inadequate resources and low test scores get grilled about low test scores, not whether lack of resources contributes to them. NCLB even goes further, taking resources away from resource poor schools with low test scores.
Educators have no problem with accountability, after all locally-controlled public schools help insure it. What they do question are what they term “unfunded mandates,” for like the much-discussed federal requirement to provide special education services, NCLB does not provide funds to raise achievement. In fact it does not even provide some districts with adequate funds to administer the tests! This became the basis for a lawsuit filed by the state of Connecticut in 2005. The GOP tactic of starving public schools to save them sounds suspiciously like the strategy of saving the lower and middle classes by giving tax cuts to the wealthy.
Behind all the cries about unfunded mandates and dumbed-down tests, NCLB signifies an unprecedented attack on the fundamental principles of public education. Instead of government leveling the education playing field–assuring that a child born in Watts shall have the same resources as one born in Shaker Heights–it slaps that responsibility rudely in the face, turns on its heels and coolly walks away as if nothing had happened.
In the end we all know the real reason for NCLB: it opens the door wide for one of the GOP and religious right’s most coveted agenda items–vouchers. A study by People for the American Way reported that the GOP Department of Education granted up to $75 million in NCLB funds between 2001 and 2003 to groups who favor private, for-profit and religious schools.People For the American Way President Ralph G. Neas stated, �This administration is sending millions of taxpayer dollars to groups that have been built by an interconnected network of right-wing foundations dedicated to privatizing education in America.� This past summer Republican senators and representatives including former Education Secretary and now Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander introduced legislation to establish a national voucher program that was linked to NCLB. It would have authorized vouchers worth up to $4,000 per student for students in public schools identified for “restructuring” because of not making “Adequate Yearly Progress” in NCLB.
Luckily the measure did not pass, but Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), who chairs the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said that that “proponents are looking ahead to NCLB’s reauthorization, scheduled for next year.” What McKeon, of course, meant was that if the GOP wins the election they may be able to force this change through next term. If they succeed it will open the door wide for government funding of our own “Ayatollah Academies”–ideological and religious schools run by the likes of Jerry Falwell. And the much-vaunted American public education system will become a mere memory.
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