NCLB Questions With Surprise Ending!

Marion Brady has spent 75 years in education one way or the other. She has some questions for the Aspen Institute, an organization soliciting electronic feedback about the NCLB Act. Mr. Brady suspects that this information gathering is a prelude to a recommendation that the 50 state versions of NCLB be changed to one national version.
These are Marion's questions via Daily Kos.

Question: Management experts say poor institutional performance almost always indicates a "system" problem. NCLB doesn't blame poor performance on the system but on teachers and kids. Are the experts wrong?

Question: NCLB demands "standards and accountability" for school subjects. Wouldn't it make more sense to key standards and accountability to ends rather than means, to kids' ability to fuse and actually use what they've learned?

Question: Some researchers say that pre-natal and early childhood care, environmental contamination, parental attitudes, family income, language facility and many other factors affect student performance. In well-run NCLB schools, are these irrelevant?

Question: NCLB relies on market forces to shape schools up. Does this mean that learning is unnatural and won't happen unless teachers and kids are threatened or bribed?

Question: NCLB is rapidly pushing "frills" out of the curriculum. Has research now established that art, music, physical activity and so on have nothing to do with scientific and mathematical reasoning ability?

Question: Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of kids are being held back because of poor reading and math skills. Is the ability to interpret symbols the only way the young learn, and therefore sufficient reason to flunk them?

Question: NCLB's avowed aim is to "close the achievement gap." The tools for measuring that gap are tests of symbol-manipulation skills. Don't these skills track relative wealth and privilege, therefore tending to maintain the gap? And aren't the tests incorrectly but nevertheless widely seen as indicators of intelligence, bringing into play gap-perpetuating self-fulfilling prophecies?

Question: NCLB goes a long way toward cutting local educators and school board members out of the decision-making loop. Does the history of top-down, centralized control suggest this change strategy works well?

Question: Education is supposed to teach kids to think for themselves, not just recall what they've been ordered to remember. Are the centerpieces of NCLB (corporately produced, machine-scored tests) able to judge the relative quality of complex thought processes? If so, why aren't they already doing that?

Question: NCLB assumes the "core" curriculum (the mainstay of present schooling) is as appropriate today as it was when it was adopted in 1892. Is it?

Question: If there are problems with the traditional, same-thing-for-everybody curriculum, don't "raising the bar" and "rigor" just make them worse?

Question: Will manipulating the curriculum to "maintain America's competitive position in world trade" be more likely to ensure America's future well-being than helping kids love learning because it lets them pursue their interests and talents wherever they lead?

Question: Frantic to avoid the test-triggered "failing" label, most schools use myriad strategies to "game" the system. For example, knowing the worst kids will never make the cut on high-stakes tests, and the best will do so without help, the "marginal middle" gets most of the attention. Is it possible to track and counter all the ingenious strategies emerging in response to naive policies?

Question: Many educators (maybe most) now assume that NCLB is a clever strategy less concerned with closing the achievement gap than with undermining confidence in public education and laying the groundwork for privatizing the institution. Are they wrong? And if they are, how can their cynicism be countered and morale restored?

Many agree that the push to federalize education is on. Rod Paige and Bill Bennett state their case for education change in this recent Washington Post article.

You can add your comments to the Aspen Report here. As an added bonus GUESS WHO THE CHAIRMAN IS? Find out by clicking on the Aspen Report. SURPRISE!!! Isn't that reassuring?