The first mistake that this administration made was to call education reform a race. Races connote winners and losers. Yet, we need to ensure that all our students and schools are winners. I think a more appropriate name for this initiative is Climb to the Top because the focus should be on how to get to the top.
The administration's second mistake was to continue Bush's initial mistake of focusing on testing; instead of being a tool for education reform, testing has morphed into the end-all, be-all of said reform. Yes, assessment is essential for determining the effectiveness of programs such as RTTT aimed at achieving something as ethereal and elusive as education reform or the more tangible goal of closing the education and economic gaps between the haves and have-nots. At the same time, improved test scores should not be the ultimate objective of education reform.
This notion that test results are the essential goal of education reform has created an environment in which teachers must "teach to the test;" students aren't really educated so much as prepared to pass tests so schools and states can get federal funding. School administrators hate teaching to the test because schools become fact factories instead of houses of learning. Teachers hate it because they are forced into a very small curricular box and are not allowed to do what they love to do, namely, educate young people. And students hate it because rote memorization of facts is neither interesting nor motivating, and they don't get a real education. Perhaps the saddest aspect of NCLB is that it HASN'T WORKED! In the eight plus years in which NCLB has been in place, there have been few appreciable or lasting gains in test scores for which NCLB can take credit. What it has overwhelmingly succeeded
