A small intellectual brush fire has broken out among American liberals concerning the No Child Left Behind act. This month, The American Prospect featured a passel of articles under the title "Children Left Behind: Educating America." Among the contributions was Peter Schrag's "Bush's Education Fraud," contending that NCLB "could well implode and take down two decades of state educational reforms with it." The article traces the full gamut of NCLB objections, some reasonable - the clumsy choice provisions and vexed treatment of special ed students, for example - and some not so, such as the whining about "unfunded mandates." (For more on that topic, see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=134#1661.) Other articles are standard fare, such as Richard Rothstein's eternal lament that standardized tests can't assess "creativity, insight, reasoning and the application of skills to unrehearsed situations." Writing in the 21st Century Schools Project Bulletin, Andrew Rotherham responds to the TAP authors in a sharp essay called "Impotent Liberalism." Says Rotherham, "it never seems to enter the calculus of today's establishment liberals that perhaps a system that works inadequately for too many poor and minority youngsters (and does so in all types of communities - equity problems are not just the urban tail wagging the public school dog) needs broader reforms." A fascinating and we hope constructive battle of ideas among the left.
"Children left behind," The American Prospect, February 2004, (not all articles in this section are available online)
"Impotent liberalism," by Andrew Rotherham, 21st Century Schools Project Bulletin, February 10, 2004