The Parent Trigger on the Suicide Bomb
The Parent Trigger on the Suicide Bomb
Jim Horn
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| The idea, all along, was to use the tests, as Senator Judd Gregg mused in 2001 during final mark up of NCLB, to show that public schools are failing and, thus, to usher in “market solutions” and charter schools to replace the “failed” public schools. |
Since No Child Left Behind became law, schools where there are lots of poor kids have been turned into brutal testing factories, where the focus is on raising test scores rather than raising children. Even so, the test scores inexorably reflect the economic disadvantages of poor communities, as parents each year continue to receive the federally-mandated letter telling them their schools are failing.
Some parents shake their heads and shrug off the letters because they know their child’s teacher is doing the best she can. Others get frustrated and angry. And yet most of these parents do not know that Karl Rove and his little band of Texans created NCLB with their dismay and frustration in mind, in order to replace public