Diane Ravitch
No Child Left Behind is the worst piece of education legislation ever passed by Congress. Secretary Duncan said recently that the law will cause more than 80% of all of our nation's public schools to be labeled failures this year. By 2014--the law's target date--nearly 100% of American public schools will be stigmatized as failing.
Is there any other national legislative body in the world that has ever passed a law that caused almost every one of its schools to be labeled a failure? NCLB is a giant wrecking ball, setting up public schools for failure, incentivizing cheating, and encouraging districts and states to game the system by lowering their passing mark, lowering their standards or other strategies.
NCLB has set the stage for large-scale privatization of public schools, no doubt cheering the emerging entrepreneurs of the education industry, but doing incalculable harm to one of our most important democratic institutions. Of course, it has been a bonanza for the testing industry, which now rakes in billions for test and test-pr...
