The Lack of a Revolt Against NCLB
Hi all,
I’ve been thinking about methods of resistance to the negative effects of NCLB and have wondered why, in the age of anti-incumbancy and conservative state rejection of federal stimulus money, why we haven’t had some innovative social configurations providing a calculated, rational, evaluative revolt against NCLB.
By my understanding of the law, it exchanges federal education dollars in return for states to come up with a standardized performance indicator (test) that is administered yearly in schools, and that there must be significant consequences –including administrative firing, teacher replacement, funding drops — tied to the outcome of those tests. Because the federal government does not have jurisdiction over education (the reason they can’t mandate the test themselves), all of this is tied to the federal dollars that a district receives. Last I