Joanna ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NCLB dead? Good. May it rot in the hottest fire in hell!
The point of NCLB never was to improve education. The goal was, as all the other goals of this deeply corrupt and arrogant administration, to put more money in the pockets of the middle men. The gov overseers, the testing companies, the consultants. And they did make some big bucks in the last eight years. So, from that standpoint, NCLB was a resounding success.
As for those of us left to cope with its destructive effects on communities and schools. Perhaps it will help us realize that shopping is a lousy model to apply to schools. A good education is a basic democratic right. It is not a shopping experience.
That should be our battle cry: A good education is a democratic right. It's not a right for those children whose parents know how to game the system. It's not a right for those who can afford private schools. It's a right for everyone. It requires that ALL schools be good schools; that ALL teachers be appropriately rewarded for one of the toughest jobs there are; that ALL children have access to what is needful to be able to learn: safe schools, food, health care, and good teachers.
We must reject the received wisdom that education is a scarce resource for which parents must scramble, to which they must devote weeks/months of detective work. We must reject the notion that children whose parents are unable or unwilling to do this work should be left to rot.
Democracy without an educated populace is nothing other than the rule of those who can afford to buy the media. That is not democracy; it's just well organized propaganda. Because democracy cannot exist without education, education is a basic democratic right.
Setting up vouchers, charters, and a myriad of special case scenarios is one more way of dividing the population, of making us fight one another rather than demand that the state be accountable for delivering a decent education to all.
This is not an argument against parent involvement. Parent involvement is pure gold. But children should not suffer for their parents' failings. Isn't that what democracy promises: that children should have an actual chance to learn and to become functioning members of our society--despite the hand that was dealt to them at birth?
Education is a basic democratic right: because democracy depends on it.