NCLB, the liberal vice
Samuel Freedman has an interesting profile in today's New York Times of liberal activist and staunch pro-No Child Left Behind advocate William Taylor. While some of the heaviest criticism of NCLB has come from liberal quarters, Taylor is not alone in bridging social conciousness and support for the Act; most of my friends at the Education Trust fall in the same category. Let's not forget, also, that NCLB was the culmination of a long legislative proccess, much of which occured under President Clinton.
It's an interesting vice that liberals have been put in. On the one hand, I think many people understand the flaws with NCLB's emphasis on standardized testing and by extension fact-based learning, the myriad ways to circumvent its intentions and the borderline unfunded mandate it at times represents. On the other, it's hard to deny that across-the-board accountability prevents districts from ignoring poor or minority students, thereby opening a road towards equity.
The determining factor for where a liberal falls in that spectrum (which in turn probably dicates one's support or detraction from NCLB) is the question of how much someone thinks schools can do. If you're more the demographic determinist, society-first Richard Rothstein type, then schools can't do very much at all and the benefits of accountability are outweighed by the costs of the imposition. If you think schools can largely make up the educational difference in spite of the community, then crappy standardized tests and some stifling of teacher creativity are bitter pills worth swallowing.
Obviously, these positions are not concrete; the strongest anti-NCLB folks can agree that accountability should be improved while the staunchest NCLB supporter wants to see the community improved. I fall somewhere on a different axis, taking the position that schools can make the difference and that NCLB was/is a necessary short-term program for the purposes of establishing the infrastructure for accountability (data systems, ceasing the rug-sweeping, etc.) but needs to start giving way to pedagogy and related structures designed to impart the right type of skills -- namely critical thinking.
What's really interesting to me is that it seems many liberal supporters of NCLB have fallen back on the argument "there's nothing better," grounded in the aforementioned ideals of equity. Take Taylor, for example:
It's an interesting vice that liberals have been put in. On the one hand, I think many people understand the flaws with NCLB's emphasis on standardized testing and by extension fact-based learning, the myriad ways to circumvent its intentions and the borderline unfunded mandate it at times represents. On the other, it's hard to deny that across-the-board accountability prevents districts from ignoring poor or minority students, thereby opening a road towards equity.
The determining factor for where a liberal falls in that spectrum (which in turn probably dicates one's support or detraction from NCLB) is the question of how much someone thinks schools can do. If you're more the demographic determinist, society-first Richard Rothstein type, then schools can't do very much at all and the benefits of accountability are outweighed by the costs of the imposition. If you think schools can largely make up the educational difference in spite of the community, then crappy standardized tests and some stifling of teacher creativity are bitter pills worth swallowing.
Obviously, these positions are not concrete; the strongest anti-NCLB folks can agree that accountability should be improved while the staunchest NCLB supporter wants to see the community improved. I fall somewhere on a different axis, taking the position that schools can make the difference and that NCLB was/is a necessary short-term program for the purposes of establishing the infrastructure for accountability (data systems, ceasing the rug-sweeping, etc.) but needs to start giving way to pedagogy and related structures designed to impart the right type of skills -- namely critical thinking.
What's really interesting to me is that it seems many liberal supporters of NCLB have fallen back on the argument "there's nothing better," grounded in the aforementioned ideals of equity. Take Taylor, for example:
Mr. Taylor had heard [all the criticisms of NCLB] before, and something combative crept into his tone. "I really have not heard an alternative," he put it. "To say more of the same, just give more money, is not an answer. It is not good enough to say this is a societal problem, though certainly that is the case. If you say everybody is responsible, then nobody is responsible."First off, when your defense for your policy can be summed up as "it's less bad than everything else," that's not exactly inspiring. But more importantly, Taylor is presenting a false choice. The implication is that you can either have NCLB or a system with no accountability in which poor and minority kids again recieve different and worse treatment than their counterparts. I think you can maintain accountability while alleviating the major flaws of NCLB. In fact, I'm planning on staking a whole lot of time and energy on that proposition. It seems like creating a well-run, well-funded system that maximizes thinking skills while maintaining equity and accountability should be the next educational endeavor, and one all liberals (and everyone else!) should be able to get behind.A moment later, he threw out a dare: "If you've got some better ideas, then let's hear them. It's time for them now."
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 at 4:22 PM.
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