... just ask them.
Once a school has "failed" to meet their [sic] annual yearly progress, they find themselves under microscopic scrutiny by everyone from the federal and state government to their local school boards and parents. Talk about pressure.
Those of us who really care about children, who really care about what is happening to our schools, know that you can't mandate learning.
Alis Headlam, senior fellow with the Vermont Society for the Study of Education, writing in the Rutland Herald.
Leaving aside the impoverished grammar, there is something troubling, not to say infuriating, about the gist of those two thoughts. Like most people inside the educational establishment, Headlam doesn't like No Child Left Behind. Fair enough. There are plenty of ordinary citizens who don't like it much, either. Who would just as soon see the federal government get out of the education business entirely and get back to doing what it is good at -- which, as Peter Drucker once remarked, comes down to "waging war and inflating the currency."
Just kidding there. But there is a good, serious argument for getting
the government out of education and the dissatisfaction with NCLB makes
it. The Feds tend to impose lots of high-handed regulations on the
peasants and enforce them ruthlessly, if not efficiently. The locals
must comply or lose the money Uncle Sugar has deigned to pass along.
Which, incidentally, may or may not be enough to cover the costs of
meeting the federal mandates. Opponents of NCLB argue that they get
the strings but there is no money attached.
Unfortunately, the education establishment wants the money without
the strings. And justifies its claim on the treasury by asserting that
its members are "those who really care about children."
Oh, really.
Well what about parents? If the educators are so concerned about
children and such experts in knowing how to nurture them, then why not
trust parents to realize this and make decisions accordingly? Why not,
in short, let parents decide where the money goes and impose
accountability by sending their children to those schools that are
doing the best work?
We are talking, of course, about vouchers. The ultimate expression
of local control and individual empowerment when it comes to
education. But vouchers impose accountability on the educrats and they
respond like vampires in a garlic patch. They also make life difficult
for those parents who impose accountability by choosing to school their
own children at home. Perhaps the theory here is that while you can't
"mandate learning" you can bury insurgent parents in so many forms that
they will eventually give up and give in.
One wonders if Headlam ever wondered just how we got to NCLB in the first place. It is a government response -- typically ham-handed -- to a crisis of confidence in public education. People, especially parents, were concerned that the public schools were not doing their job. They wanted results.
Headlam thinks this is a terrible thing and that, "We need to give education back to the schools where it belongs."
But please, none of this microscopic scrutiny. We can’t take the pressure.
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