Home > No Politician Left Behind
by DEBORAH MEIER
Education is always about politics—in the best and
worst senses. In the best sense what happens in our
schools is an expression of our beliefs and values,
what we want the next generation to be like. But
education is also political in the partisan sense—as
politicians of all stripes seek to rally their troops
around schooling practices, to tie other political
agendas into our agendas for schools. Social promotion,
bilingual education, phonics, "new math"—all are
issues that resonate with different audiences for
reasons other than those that directly concern
teachers, parents and kids. Phonics is seen as
"right-wing authoritarianism," social promotion as
"permissive liberalism" (and depicted as the scourge of
New York City schools, despite the fact that almost
half the city’s children have been entering high school
at least a year over-age for decades) and so forth.
Reality often gets lost, and kids suffer in ways
neither opponents nor proponents had in mind.
So along comes No Child Left Behind, and from right to
left, everyone climbs aboard. It was, after all, an
extension of a policy idea hatched under Bush Senior,
pursued under Clinton and replicated in many
states—the premise of which is that frequent testing
will solve educational problems. And in fact the focus
on "results," not "opportunities," echoes older
liberal, not conservative, themes. Yet had anyone read
the bill with care, it would have been hard not to
fault it on almost every ground, except perhaps the
high aspirations embedded in the title.
NCLB proposes to accomplish a statistical impossibility
(that all children score in the top twenty-fifth
percentile); it raises false expectations; it’s built
on an illusion that tests alone can—and
should—measure worthwhile standards; that schools can
do it all; that progress comes in steady increments;
that penalties will motivate children and teachers;
that lack of money is a mere excuse; that a single
nationwide system is part of the American dream; and,
finally, that schools can do it all. The law literally
dictates the books we are allowed to use on a national
basis, not to mention the pedagogy for teaching
literacy and, coming soon, math. Before long, until
eighth grade, little else will get taught at all.
Yet virtually no high-powered public figures, nor any
important leaders of either party (including John
Kerry), have done more than demur from this or that
aspect of this preposterous bill. Meanwhile, those
closest to the action (teachers, principals and
superintendents organizations, as well as local school
boards) are in almost unanimous opposition—but
quietly, as they are fearful of being seen as whiners,
a defensive coalition of self-interests.
What is inexcusable is not just the "achievement gap"
on tests but the gaps you can see with your own eyes:
the gaps in graduation rates, which have been disguised
for years by the very folks who support NCLB; the real
dropout rates; the attendance data; the condition of
buildings and playgrounds; and more. When we know of
solutions that are promising, we’re told: too
expensive; utopian. It’s easy for those with money to
say it doesn’t take money to educate all children
well—they can always fall back on
rich-family-sponsored education after school, on
weekends and during the summer, or choose to spend two
or three times as much just on the school day itself,
as wealthy communities do.
We are just plain lied to, and then shocked that our
education czar was the perpetrator of such lies. For
example, when Houston’s graduation and dropout
data—put forward when Education Secretary Rod Paige
was superintendent—was revealed to be blatantly false,
the myth of the "Texas miracle" should have been
forever put to rest, but the scandal disappeared from
the headlines within days and it remains alive and
well. We open two new schools in Boston under
conditions that defy all the literature on best
practice, on the grounds that what we know works we
can’t afford—like starting a new school a grade or two
at a time, keeping school size small. No one dares
insist that we create professional time for teachers
and parents to work together. Instead of improving the
education we provide teachers before and after they
enter the profession, we’ve decided that we can fill
the need by quick emergency routes. Teacher preparation
today is more and more a question of program-specific
training, often conducted by private vendors, who
implement their prescribed material in prescribed ways
to minimize costs. Moreover, the wisdom of teachers and
parents is disregarded—often by the very people who
loudly lament the erosion of adult authority in today’s
society.
To add insult to injury, we use as our only measure of
academic performance the one tool that most reliably
reflects family assets: standardized paper-and-pencil
tests. And the more we reduce taxes on the rich and
rely on local taxpayers to fund schools, the more
likely we are to have the cheapest and most unreliable
kinds of tests—which makes an even further mockery of
the idea of closing gaps. As Richard Rothstein reminds
us in his new book, Class and Schools: Using Social,
Economic and Educational Reform to Close the
Black-White Achievement Gap, if we truly wanted to
raise test scores, the route we’ve chosen is in the
long run the most utopian, meaning undoable. We spend
$50 billion a year on schooling K through 12 and three
times that this year alone on the Iraq war—and yet are
told we "can’t afford" what the experts say might make
a difference. In the end, standardized tests will
largely continue to measure the other gaps in life.
Does that mean we should excuse the poor performance of
so many schools? Not at all. I know schools can be
transformative—even for those at the bottom of the
ladder. But the transformation that counts is not going
to lead us to a world in which everyone is above
average, much less in the top quarter on any
standardized measuring rod. It will depend on building
the kinds of communities in which adults are expected
to exercise judgment in public and accountable ways,
and in which families, students and adults have
sufficient time to learn from each other what is needed
to educate all children well—and the resources
necessary to make this possible.
Meanwhile, pressure mounts to replace public schools
with the private marketplace. As we turn more and more
to private armies because we don’t want to face what it
would take to recruit public ones, so too with our
schools. The promotion of the idea that private is
better than public not only impoverishes our common
dreams—it is also clearly untrue. We encourage parents
(and kids) to distrust the people they most rely on,
under the assumption that they can’t be good enough if
they are public. We increasingly provide monies to
support the not-so-hidden dream of the right: to place
the education of our young into private, for-profit
hands.
Yes, the defeat of Bush is a necessity for the future
of public education, but it won’t rest easy in the
hands of a Kerry administration either. Better funding
for a host of bad practices won’t improve matters. It’s
just that the fight for good schooling will be easier
to mount, and the wild explosion of gaps in every other
domain of children’s lives may be brought to a halt.
Oddly enough, what matters more, for strictly schooling
"outcomes," is not what happens inside our schools but
inside our society. On those questions there is little
doubt which candidate will be better for our kids. We
need to remember that the larger struggle is also
critical if we truly intend to leave no child behind.