Rarely will I keep an opinion to myself when I have one, and when it comes to the "No Child Left Behind" Act, my experience gives me plenty of opportunity to form a few opinions.
I began writing this post originally as a response to a request by a reader (thank you Ali) to share my thinking about the NCLB legislation. It was going to stay in the "comments" section, but as I wrote, my frustrations got the better of me, and I decided to publish my thoughts here instead.
It is insidious
My own gut-reaction to NCLB is that it is, indeed, a stealth piece of Republican legislation which will result in the destruction of the public school systems in large urban areas, and render the powerful (mostly Democratic) teacher's unions in those regions ineffective.
One aspect of No Child Left Behind mandates that any school which cannot meet NCLB standards loses some federal funding and may be reconstituted or taken over by a charter school or a private for-profit education company.
It will be interesting to see what happens to the schools in Cleveland, our nation's poorest city, that fail to measure up to NCLB. Several have been classified as failing schools, and the probationary period is almost up. I shall be most curious as to how NCLB will move to rescue the kids in these schools.
Who will be tapped to play the hero?
My money is on Republican businessman David Brennan's White Hat Management company.
I wonder how many Cleveland Municipal Schools will become for-profit Hope Academies.
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2 comments:
I had the opportunity last March to go to a youth program in Washington D.C. Among many distinguished speakers including President Bush, we heard from Secretary of Education Rod Paige. We, a group of high school students (2 from each state), confronted him about NCLB.
I personally asked him about the logic of a school voucher program like that in Cleveland where the voucher doesn't cover the entire cost of private education, leaving the poorest of the poor behind.
He responded by saying we shouldn't see this large gap between public and private education. He seemed to have no problem with public dollars going to private schools. He seemed to support privatizing schools because it would force public schools to compete. The logic of all this escapes me.
Thank you Tim for you thought-filled comments. I wish to respond to some of your assumptions that I, in turn, disagree with. Because there may be more than a few others who share your point of view, I will use your comments as the prompt for my next post. I truly enjoy a good discussion. Thank you again.
mb
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