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"Beauty is about the improbable coming true suddenly." - Charles Simic

Many Children Left Behind

The Public Education Network Weekly NewsBlast ([email protected]), for September 24, 2004, offers this summary of a recent release on the No Child Left Behind Act:

"The No Child Left Behind Act was born in bipartisan spirit to do something positive in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  Why is it that only two years later educators, legislators, and even entire states are in open revolt over NCLB?  Much of the initial opposition to the legislation, says George Wood, co-founder and director of the new non-profit Forum for Education and Democracy, has focused on technical issues -- including underfunding and too limited definitions of teacher proficiency.  But Wood, along with other prominent educators and researchers including Deborah Meier, Theodore R. Sizer, Linda Darling-Hammond, Alfie Kohn, Wendy Puriefoy, and John Goodlad, were convinced that the case against NCLB goes much deeper.  They volunteered their time and founded the Forum, with an initial goal of making the case to the wider public against NCLB and arguing for an alternative.  

'Fundamentally, the original bipartisan promise of the legislation -- namely, that it would improve education for poor and minority children in this country -- is a false one,' writes Wood.  'NCLB is dramatically damaging the education of poor and minority children, and others, and this news needs to get out.'  In a new citizen's guide to NCLB called 'Many Children Left Behind,' some Forum members make the case that 'even if the technical problems are fixed, NCLB cannot, will not, and perhaps was even not intended to deliver on its promises.'  They argue that the quality of schools will actually decline; that under NCLB the children of the poor will receive even more limited instruction, curriculum, and school experiences; and that NCLB will make public schools even less accountable to the publics they serve.

Writes Sizer: 'Thoughtful Americans are no less concerned today than forty years ago about the failure of many of our schools to provide for their students a powerful and relevant education.... We agree on most of the ends. Where we disagree is on many of the means ... embedded in NCLB. Some of us believe that these not only dodge today's major problems of educational excellence and democratic fairness, but, perversely, make them worse."

The report is contained in the book, Many Children Left Behind:  How No Child Left Behind Act Is Damaging Our Children and Our Schools by Deborah Meier and George Wood, (2004:  Beacon Press.  www.beacon.org/k-12/list.html).

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