The Real Left Behind

The Blog | Gerald Bracey: Things Fall Apart: No Child Left Behind Self-Destructs | The Huffington Post: "For the record, my first anti-No Child Left Behind (NCLB) article was commissioned by Newsday in late 2000 and published January 28, 2001. At the time, NCLB was a no-name plan, the administration not yet having ripped off the slogan of the Children's Defense Fund. But even then I saw not a great civil rights act as some, but yet another Orwellian double-speak program like Clear Skies, Clean Waters, and Healthy Forests--a program to accomplish the opposite of its avowed intent . . .

. . .But as the law enters its fifth year, even its supporters can no longer ignore that the law is imploding. On November 30, Frederick Hess, Education Director for the American Enterprise Institute and Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation convened a conference, "Fixing Failing Schools: Are the Tools in the NCLB Toolkit Working?" I attended.

After the first four presentations, moderator Finn declared that instead of providing sweet cakes and coffee, "I should be handing out mood altering pharmaceuticals, those that deal with depression." No later presentations offered anything to elevate Finn's mood as one scholar after another delivered evidence on this failed provision or that failed provision and the law's failure to accomplish its stated goal: to elevate the achievement of poor children and minorities. . ."