Is NCLB Doing Us a Favor?

Gary Obermeyer, Friday Jan 22, 2010, 04:45 am

I've been thinking... No Child Left Behind (NCLB) may be doing us a favor by accelerating awareness of the obvious -- that all students cannot learn in a system that was designed to grade and sort. 

This situation is most evident in schools that serve populations of high poverty, high transiency, and limited English proficiency.  However, under the current rules it is inevitable that all schools will be identified as failing.  At some point, the preposterous notion that the left half of the bell curve can be eliminated by working harder will be exposed.  We can only hope that the contradiction between mass production and human variability will become obvious to the U.S. Congress as they work through the reauthorization of NCLB.

What do you think?  Is NCLB doing us a favor?  Do you seen opportunities to help policy makers understand that the primary problem is the system and not the people in it?

Gary

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