NCLB: A Huge Mistake

NCLB (No Child Left Behind) was passed to close the achievement gap. That goal is laudable and long overdue. However, the high-stakes testing dictated by NCLB as the way to tackle the problem is a disaster. It stifles the imagination and inspiration of teachers, narrows the curriculum, drains sparse resources of public schools, and crushes the spirits of the very students it is intended to help.

Perhaps the biggest problem with NCLB is that it ignores the growing level of poverty in this country that is the underlying cause of the achievement gap. Testing doesn't provide jobs, living wages, health insurance and other basics that are the foundations of strong families and of hope. We can't test hungry or hurting kids into achievement anymore than we can bomb totalitarian societies into democracy.

I recommend 4 books that shed light on the issues surrounding the high stakes testing approach of NCLB and its failure to address the pervasive poverty that affects the achievement of too many of our children in too many of our public schools. David Berliner's books, The Manufactured Crisis and Collateral Damage reveal the costs of our over-reliance on and over-interpretation of testing. The costs are far greater that financial. Jonathan Kozol's books Savage Inequalities and The Shame of the Nation will take you inside these impoverished neighborhood schools and leave you wondering, "How can this be in America?" How can mandated, costly, high-stakes testing do anything but exacerbate these kinds of problems?