Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/381166
"With one-size-fits-all education, we couldn't meet the needs of our students," says George Zepeda, here solving a problem with Manual Gonzalez. " W h a t w e r e t h e y t h i n k i n g ? H o w w i l l I e x p l a i n t h i s c r a z y, c o n v o l u t e d l a w t h a t changes every aspect of education, yet sounds so innocent?" I wondered. I ended up compar- ing NCLB to the story of the six blind men and the elephant, where each one feels the elephant and arrives at a different conclusion. One feels the animal's side and determines it is like a wall. The second feels the trunk and decides it is a snake. And so on. My editor added this dramatic sentence at the end: "The difference is that teachers are fervent in their efforts to collectively determine the nature of the beast." I explained that "unbeknownst to the pub- lic" the beast would mandate annual testing of children, even if they had learning disabilities or were English learners. It would force veteran educators to prove they were "highly qualified." It even called on schools to provide the names and addresses of students to draft boards. And yes, all students — 100 percent — had to be proficient in English and math by 2014, or their schools would be closed, turned into char- ters or stripped of funding. Meanwhile, the bar of "proficiency" would rise each year, making it harder to achieve success. Schools were being set up to fail. My first article on NCLB contained a great quote from Scott Howard, superintendent of Perry Public Schools in Ohio: "NCLB is like a Russian novel. That's because it's long, it's com- plicated, and in the end, everybody gets killed." To learn more, I attended a national con- ference of education writers, where a speaker discussed Nicklebee. I assumed he was talking about a kids' TV show, but it was the new nickname for NCLB. I started calling it Nicklebee too, but my editor said it sounded too cute for something so sinister. Diane Ravitch, the nation's foremost education expert, described the 2014 goal as "a timetable for the demolition of public education in the United States." She believes the goal of 100 percent proficiency resulted in many public schools being privatized, charterized or closed nationwide, with superintendents boasting about these atrocities as though it was a badge of honor. Staff and students at low-performing schools suffered tremendously, says Ravitch, despite zero evidence any of the so-called remedies under NCLB actually worked. P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y S C O T T B U S C H M A N 11 V O L U M E 1 9 I S S U E 2