NCLB In Your Face (Susan Ohanian Speaks Out)From: "Janet Hecsh"

Date: Wed, June 18, 2008 1:27 pmNCLB In Your FaceTo all who care about public education:The June 8 issue of TIME magazine carried a story verifying what someof us have long suspected. Susan Neuman, a member of the group thatactually WROTE the NCLB legislation, said some members of her team"saw NCLB as a Trojan horse for the choice agenda -- a way to exposethe failure of public education and 'blow it up a bit'."Got that? They DESIGNED NCLB to make you and your profession look assorry as possible!If that doesn't make you mad, you're not paying attention. Theeducation establishment should have screamed bloody murder. Instead,it has pretty much cooperated in the effort, writing thousands ofwrong-headed "standards" and administering corporately produced teststhat test little of real consequence. Even this admission of NCLB'atrue intent hasn't caused a ripple. Nobody on this list seems even tohave heard of this admission, much less joined in a serious effort tokill NCLB.Below is a letter to Senator Obama. Please at least take a minute toread it. Better yet, give thought to the well-being of America's kidsand add your name to it. You can click on this hot link and sign theletter, sending Senator Obama a vital message about education.[Note from JoBeth - better yet, send to both Senator Obama and SenatorMcCain - and maybe Senator Clinton while you are at it]To: The Honorable Barack H. ObamaJohn C. Kluczynski Federal Office Building230 South Dearborn St.Suite 3900 (39th floor)Chicago, Illinois 60604From: The UndersignedOf all human drives, the need to satisfy curiosity, to learn, tounderstand, to make sense of experience, appears earliest in life andis more powerful than any other. That the current thrust of publiceducation reform has not moved us significantly closer to meetingthat deep human need is now apparent.Consider: Standards have been imposed. Art, music, recess, history,civics, geography, and other "frills" have been eliminated. Studentsand teachers have been shamed, intimidated, pushed out, fired. Vastamounts of money and instructional time have been spent oncorporately produced tests and test prep materials. "Bars" have beenraised. Students have been sorted, labeled, and retained indefinitelyin grade. Distrust of educators has been publicly demonstrated aspoliticians, business leaders, and other non-educators have replacedprofessional educators in positions of authority.And what is there to show for this radical, punitive reform strategy,a strategy now known to have been designed to undermine confidence inpublic schooling and pave the way for alternatives? Look past theideology-driven, cherry-picked and manipulated data and it is clearthat systemic problems not only persist but have intensified. Theachievement gap has not closed. New teachers quit at an alarmingrate. Homeschoolers continue to abandon the system. Conscience-stricken educators risk job loss to protest policies that are at oddswith research and common sense. Experienced teachers resign or seekearly retirement. Preoccupation with test scores brings educationalinnovation to a standstill. The worst and best students are neglectedas resources are concentrated on those whose scores might be raisedenough to save a school from reorganization or closure.Continuing on our present educational course, propelled by thesimplistic notion that educating is a mere matter of settingstandards, covering the material, and then testing, is a recipe forinstitutional and societal disaster. Standards? Of course! Butstandards tied not to a random handful of disconnected schoolsubjects but to the personal qualities essential to individual andsocietal well-being. Tests? Of course! But tests not of what can beremembered of something read or heard in class and stored in short-term memory, but tests of the ability to make more sense of thepresent moment, of the trends of the era, of life.These kinds of standards and measures of accountability cannot bemandated by centralized political authority or acquired by theletting of contracts to corporations. They are products of aconstantly bargained agreement between individual learners and theirteachers or mentors, based on mutual trust and respect.We urge you to appreciate the dangers of standardizing education, offocusing narrowly on achieving minimum standards, of locking staticsubject-matter standards in place in an era of accelerating change,of seeing the young as mere cogs in the wheels of commerce, ofassuming that doing more diligently what we have been doing since the19th Century will see us safely through to the 22nd. We urge you, inshort, to reject the superficial "standards and accountability"approach to education reform and the reactionary policies to which ithas led.There are, of course, constructive roles the federal government canplay. Welcome, for example, would be actions encouraging broad dialogon equitable and stable funding, measures increasing support forresearch and innovation, and, of course, comprehensive programsaddressing poverty, cultural deprivation, environmental degradation,and other problems directly affecting student performance.But attempts to manipulate what teachers and students actually domust be entirely abandoned. The inherent complexity of the task, itsdynamic, constantly changing nature, the importance to its success ofimagination, flexibility and creativity, and the gross inadequacy ofpresently available standardized measures of performance, makecentralized control of the classroom dangerously counterproductive.Let us help you build a system of education we can believe in.Sincerely,ELECTRONICALLY SIGN THIS LETTERWe, the UndersignedCc: Linda Darling-HammondStanford University School of Education485 Lasuen Mall, Stanford, CA 94305-3096MediaLetter to Senator ObamaINDEX OF NCLB IN YOUR FACEFAIR USE NOTICEThis site contains copyrighted material the use of which has notalways been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We aremaking such material available in our efforts to advanceunderstanding of education issues vital to a democracy. We believethis constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material asprovided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordancewith Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site isdistributed without profit to those who have expressed a priorinterest in receiving the included information for research andeducational purposes. For more information click here. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own thatgo beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyrightowner.Janet HecshAssociate Professor, College of EducationDepartment of Teacher EducationSacramento State University6000 J StreetSacramento, CA 95819-6079jhecsh@csus.edu