Why won't Congress admit NCLB failed?

[LWolf]

My guest is Monty Neill, interim executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, known as FairTest, a non-profit organization that works to end the flaws and misuse of standardized testing.

By Monty Neill

Neill points out the failures of NCLB and the high-stakes testing movement to actually improve the public education system.

Then he points to some key reasons why Congress seems unwilling to reject these fixes:

Most important, the de facto alliance among corporate groups such as the Business Roundtable, a growing list of high-tech and hedge-fund billionaires, a few large foundations (Gates, Broad and Walton among them), Duncan's Education Department, and major national media has spent tens of millions of dollars and used extensive networks to promote their ideas.

They have created the new status quo of test-based accountability and increasing privatization, which they promote as “reform” even though it doesn’t work.

Those tens of millions have been highly effective; even people on a supposedly "left-wing" website like DU support the increasing privatization of public education as "reform."

The choice, however, was never between do nothing or focus on high-stakes testing. Better options have always existed. But these have been under-financed, not supported by the most visible and wealthy sectors in society. They also are more complex, not simplistic like tests, making them harder to sell with sound bites – as if the mind and learning were simple!

Testing is a cheap “fix.” Genuinely improving schools and teaching, and overcoming the poverty and segregation that are still the most significant factors in student outcomes, are expensive, complex and politically difficult. Too many members of Congress – and their state counterparts - are willing to accept the cheap way out, even if it is no solution at all.

More:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/why-wont-congress-admit-nclb-f.html#more

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Humans simply suck admiring failure

Unfortunately it is that simple. Humans at times suck.

[sabrina 1]

2. Like everything else in this country today, privatization is the goal

Anywhere there are huge public funds, there are vultures swooping down to grab them.

NCLB was all about profits, privatization and was devised by Bush family crony business people FOR business people. The Educational Publishing Corps have had windfall profits for the past ten years. Harcourt, Pearson, and McGraw-Hill-, especially the last whose founders are close friends of Bush, have seen huge profits from the publishing of tests and tests to test whether students are ready for the test. Testing is profitable, and isn't that all that matters?

It is failing, of course, as expected. But that doesn't matter. They will walk away with billions in profits even after the system itself has been discarded, as it will eventually. Bush et al will never look back, never give a thought to the generation who were victims of this system. But they will be a lot wealthier. Neil Bush too has profited greatly, preparing his silly 'educational' program in advance of the law.

By 2014, when we are supposed to see a 100% success rate for all students across the country, it will all be over. As if that were ever possible, even with a real educational system.

Privatizing was the dream of Republicans for a long, long time. They succeeded with Education funds, failed so far with SS although it looks they may achieve that goal in the very near future. The military has been privatized too to a great extent.

And the mortgage industry, privatized the record-keeping and forged and did whatever was necessary to keep the profits coming.

At least during these awful times, when Ayn Rands desciples took over the country, we finally got to see how destructive this kind of capitalism is. But that won't compensate for the harm done to America.

[LWolf]

6. You're right. It won't compensate for the harm done.

The public doesn't need to be complicit. Why are they not fighting back, sooner and more strongly?

[Overseas]

15. Well said! Thank you! //nt

[FiveGoodMen]

3. The purpose of NCLB was to get everyone teaching to tests and discourage actual thinking

It didn't fail at all.

[LWolf]

7. But who was listening when we pointed that out?

Even before it went national with NCLB, we were pointing this out in response to the state versions cropping up in the 90s.

[gateley]

4. I'm sure they're making money off of it somehow (like Bush's brother). nt

[LWolf]

17. That's the whole point of privatization, isn't it?

It's not enough to run mega-corporations that outsource jobs in the private sector; if there is public money being spent, they want that, too. :(

[Rex]

5. Because failure can be used to hide even bigger failure.

It is called the Bush Doctrine and was originally created to fail on purpose (see Iraq).

[LWolf]

8. Yes.

Why would a Democratic Congress be supporting the Bush Doctrine?

[Rex]

13. I don't know, I can't believe it myself.

[Starry Messenger]

9. They have too much invested in it, financially and politically, I'm guessing.

And maybe they actually like it. Although they complain about it, no one has ever made a move to do away with it have they? Obama did in some campaign speeches, but I'm learning that he deals with that by changing the name of something and claiming he meant something else.

[Hannah Bell]

10. because they want the money.

[madinmaryland]

11. Because we are all too busy blaming Arne Duncan for NCLB.

Funny how the Rethugs have not taken any responsibility for the shitty law that Bush wrote.

[sabrina 1]

12. Because Dems have made that law theirs and taken it even further.

It belongs to Dems now, and to Arne Duncan and when it is finally declared to be a complete failure as far as education goes, and the American people develop some spine and end it, it will be remembered as a Democratic system that failed American's children. And no one will care because it was never meant to be a great success, it was meant to transfer as much of the Education Fund into private hands. It has done that very successfully, enriching many of Bush's friends and now Democratic friends.

Obama was supposed to reform this failed system. But as soon as he got to the WH, he changed his mind and decided to enhance it and to attack teachers and pretend they are to blame for any failures in the system.

And he appointed Arne Duncan who was not too successful in Chicago so what made him think he would succeed in the rest of the country? As I said, educational success is not the goal, money is. No one in their right mind could possibly think that testing and focusing on test scores was ever a way to educate students.

[LWolf]

14. That's not correct.

We blame Arne Duncan and Barack Obama for keeping the worst of parts of NCLB in "A Blueprint For Reform," which is in place to reauthorize ESEA, and for RTTT, both of which not only continue the shitty education policy Bush ushered into the federal level, but expand it.

[Overseas]

16. K&R !

[Reader Rabbit]

18. When's the last time *anyone* in Congress admitted to a mistake?

Politicians don't admit to legislative mistakes, only sexual peccadilloes—and then only when they got caught red...handed.

[Rex]

19. +1

Very good point and I will expand on that further - our American govt system is built to never admit to making mistakes. It seems to be an unwritten rule - don't ever admit to failure, just the successes. Sex and tabloid live need not apply. Just the gargantuan, epic failures.

[LWolf]

21. Good point.

Can we hope that they will quietly bury the mistake, instead of continuing it under a new name, like "A Blueprint For Education Reform," or "Race To The Top?"

[Tatiana]

20. NCLB is making some people a lot of $$$$.

If NCLB was NOT designed to make a bunch of money for the Neil Bushes of the world, the Department of Education would commission its own national achievement test and offer it for free to LEAs (local education agencies), thereby cutting out the corporate middle-men.