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September 1, 2006
Soap spin
Ivory soap, No Child Left Behind—see the similarities? BoardBuzz didn't either, but that's the latest spin of Margaret Spellings in her praise of the law. This one goes even beyond the "go slow" approach we mentioned here.
The Washington Post quoted Spellings as saying, "I like to talk about No Child Left Behind as Ivory soap. It's 99.9 percent pure. There's not much needed in the way of changes... . As much grist as there was for the mill five years ago on various fronts ... we've come a long way in a short time in a big system affecting 50 million kids."
Sure, that makes sense if you choose to overlook the flaws of NCLB's accountability system in measuring school performance and educators who are forced to narrow the curriculum at the expense of other learning.
Another point of interest is that more than 80 organizations have signed a statement urging fundamental changes in areas such as how student progress is measured and how schools are penalized when they fall short. Yeah, that sounds near-perfect to us. And as BoardBuzz has reported previously, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) introduced the No Child Left Behind Improvements Act of 2006, H.R. 5709, which is consistent with NSBA's recommendations for improving NCLB.
And never mind that the recent PDK/Gallup poll found that six in 10 Americans who are familiar with NCLB believe it has had no effect on schools or has actually harmed them. Plus two-thirds of poll respondents oppose measuring school success by the percentage of students passing a single statewide test, while 81 percent prefer measuring the improvement that students make during the year.
All of this sure amounts to one heck of a whopping .1 percent. Yeah, NCLB is 99.9 percent perfect ... kinda like Iraq.
Posted September 1, 2006 2:14 PM |
No Child Left Behind
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