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21st January 2006

Confusing educational means and ends

posted in edtech, leadership, politics |

Have you read the “Executive Summary of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001?” In the section subtitled, “Greater Flexibility for States, School Districts, and Schools,” the following ridiculous assertion is made:

One important goal of No Child Left Behind was to breathe new life into the “flexibility for accountability” bargain with States first struck by President George H.W. Bush during his historic 1989 education summit with the Nation’s Governors at Charlottesville, Virginia. Prior flexibility efforts have focused on the waiver of program requirements; the NCLB Act moves beyond this limited approach to give States and school districts unprecedented flexibility in the use of Federal education funds in exchange for strong accountability for results.

NCLB means a lot of things to a lot of people, but more than anything else I think it has resulted in LESS curricular autonomy for teachers and students. “Greater” flexibility? I don’t think so. The key words in the above paragraph are “IN EXCHANGE.” This refers to the situation of blackmail in-reverse which NCLB imposes on school districts. If you don’t do what the Feds (the Bush administration) demands, then the government won’t give districts their federal education dollars. For many school districts, especially large ones with high numbers of socio-economically disadvantaged students, this is a non-choice. They cannot educate their students without federal financial support. More flexibility with NCLB? No. Make no mistake. This legislation was founded on the principles that schools and teachers cannot be trusted to carry out the educational enterprise without stringent requirements and heavy-handed oversight. The goal was never “greater flexibility.” NCLB is all about limiting curricular autonomy and freedom. NCLB is about sticks and punishment, not carrots and flexibility.

I wholeheartedly agree with the goal of raising expectations for student learning, achievement, and performance. The problem is that a HUGE contradiction exists between the legislative advancement of accountability through high stakes testing, and the 21st century literacy skills our students need to acquire and refine. One does not lead to the other.

Many business leaders and legislators seem immovably committed to emphasizing test scores and test performance as the benchmarks of educational excellence. Yet our classrooms (at least in most public schools here in Texas) are a far cry from the creative, empowering, innovative spaces of teaching and learning they need to be to equip students with the skills they need to think critically, problem solve, collaborate and communicate today and tomorrow.

If NCLB was really about “greater flexibility,” it would involve FEWER mandates rather than more for schools, teachers and students.

How many federal and state level legislators have their own children and grandchildren in private schools or home school settings, rather than public schools? I wager the percentage is quite high. If public schools are not “good enough” for many or most of them, why should we buy the lie that NCLB regulated and creatively-stifled schools are good enough for the rest of us who are “normal” citizens?

We shouldn’t. And I don’t.

On this day..

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 21st, 2006 at 3:33 pm and is filed under edtech, leadership, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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