Something about the phrase “Leave No Child Behind” is a set-up for unmet expectations. Of course, children are going to be left behind, even if you have a brilliant policy and devote every collective resource as a society to keep them from failing in school. It’s admirable to aim high, but when the hard realities of class division and the stubborn inertia of Culture hit, critics will have plenty of ammunition to attack ed reform.
That’s why I appreciate an article in Slate that is able to present its assessment that the No Child Left Behind act (NCLB) - why can’t anyone give laws normal names anymore? - is failing miserably without resorting to the usual progressive mantra that children are being left behind. What’s the main reason it’s not working? As the author, Alexander Russo, sees it, one culprit is the ability of better performing schools to refuse students from failing schools:
In Chicago last year, less than a third of the lowest-performing schools actually gave parents a transfer option. Roughly three out of four of the city’s better-performing schools were exempted from having to accept transfers. Only 10 percent of the eligible students in Chicago even requested a transfer, and only half of those were approved. This year, Chicago has 365 failing schools, but only 38 out of roughly 240 better-performing schoolsÂ-just over 15 percentÂ-are being required to take in transfers. That’s not much of a choice.
This just confirms a suspicion I’ve had: that the biggest obstacle to school reform is the zero-sum battles of class that education decisions entail. Whereas in the long run, education provides a non-zero sum resource of human capital - i.e. we are all wealthier if we are more educated in a way that leads to greater productivity growth - in the short run, parents and municipalities have every incentive to protect the economic and cultural capital that they have in their school disticts and not let it be diluted. In short, a process similar to redlining means that there will be no political will to open up well-performing schools to the masses. It is for this reason, more than any other, that I remain steadfastly opposed to school vouchers; in theory they could be a blessing, but in practice there will be no commitment to funding quality education for poor and not-quite-poor children.
But the faults of NCLB should not turn us off to ed reform as a goal. As Russo argues, with tweaking the law could work better and that the alternative to reform is worse than the downside: “what few of the law’s most ardent opponents realize is that the early demise of NCLB is unlikely to usher in a golden age of education reform. Many school districts would likely stagnate rather than make difficult and necessary changes.” Much like the way that anti-globalization advocates urge sweeping aid and economic schemes for the developing world without being willing to entertain any measure that might possibly be enacted, the progessive take on ed reform has been all or nothing: belief that we should bemoan inadequate funding for poorer schools and students, but if that funding doesn’t materialize… oh well, the status quo (watered down high school diplomas for minority students, economic segregation of school districts) is better than letting people we don’t trust tinker with the system. This apporach is unwitting certainly, but misguided and harmful all the same.
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