Every Child Left Behind

It doesn't seem right to title this blog the "Liberal Conservative" without talking a little bit of politics. I'll start this one-way conversation by talking about the Bush administrations wretched No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act. Yes, I have been a life-long Republican, but those days are about to change. I won't be switching teams, rather, I'll just play by myself.

So back to NCLB. There's nothing like a bunch of silver spoon brainless baby boomers ignoring everything educational research has taught us in the last 40 years. Why is it that the corporate/political world out there thinks they can fix education? It is beyond stupid to conclude that if we run schools like a business that they will flourish. Anybody ever heard of Enron? The fact is 90% of businesses fail, yet somehow it's become hip to hire lawyers and business(wo)men with no educational backgrounds to run schools like a business...i.e. top down managerial approach. Imagine a world where 90% of schools fail and only 10% turn out right. That's what the business model will do to education.

California is leading the cause in screwing education up. San Diego, for example, hired Alan Bersin as district superintendent back in 1998. Dr. Bersin is a lawyer and not an educator. He recently was given a 90% no confidence vote by the districts teachers and he was recently fired by the school board. Since he did such a wonderful job screwing up San Diego's schools, Governor Ahnold just pegged Bersin to be the next state school superintendent. Heck, why not screw (I'm thinking a different word) the entire state.

So once again I turn back to NCLB. This act is similar to Alan Bersin's famed agenda called Blueprint for Success. Theoretically it sounds great...let's make all of our kids smarter. But the net result is a standardized curriculum in which teachers have no control over what they teach or how they teach it. Kids get to spend about one-third of the year preparing for a standardized test. This isn't learning, folks, unless you count learning how to fill in bubbles on a test sheet as true learning. No Child Left Behind will mean more tests and less learning. Social studies, science, music, and all the other contextual subjects be damned. Those are just "girlie" subjects anyway...I'm trying to make my governor proud. No Child Left Behind is going to result in Every Child Left Behind.

So here's the cool part. You'd think that I'd loathe moving to the most conservative state on the planet. After all, it's the conservatives who are pushing this accountability agenda, right? Not so. I will point out that Edward Kennedy was one of the NCLB geniuses. Well, the kicker is that Utah is the first state to give the feds the middle finger on NCLB. Can you hear the silent standing ovation from the country's dedicated educators. The message is this, educators should to be the ones figuring out what ought to be taught and how it should be taught, not Lawyer Bersin or President Bush.