Gail L. Sunderman and Jimmy Kim, Harvard Civil Rights Projects
February, 2004
Gail L. Sunderman and Jimmy Kim of the Harvard Civil Rights Project authored this quartet of early appraisals of NCLB, which come with an introduction by project co-director Gary Orfield. The first - "Expansion of Federal Power in American Education" - is spectacularly ironic. The Civil Rights Project having argued for years that Washington should play a larger and pushier role in American education, it's downright bizarre to see these folks arguing for flexibility. In "Large Mandates and Limited Resources," they argue, again, for a more flexible approach to accountability than NCLB sets forth. In "Does NCLB Provide Good Choices for Students in Low-Performing Schools?," they supply a fairly perceptive overview of the strengths and (mostly) weaknesses of NCLB's public-school choice program during its first year of implementation, but in "Increasing Bureaucracy of Increasing Opportunities?" they offer a stupid and ideological appraisal of the "supplemental services" program. Keep in mind that the Harvard name doesn't assure thoughtfulness or consistency! Nor, as it turns out, even competent copy editing. (E.g. "Supplemental educational services represents a major tenant [sic] of the law. . . .") You can find this lot at http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/news/pressreleases.php/record_id=44/.
