Education Writer Alfie Kohn on Leaving Behind No Child Left Behind Behind
On several occasions over the holidays, I was reminded of something I already knew: most people don’t want to wade in the weedy marsh of education policy. If the mainstream press says the new Every Student Succeeds Act is a big improvement over No Child Left Behind, lots of people say, “Wow! We can cross that worry off our list!”
Unfortunately things are going to be a whole lot more complicated.
Much of the thoughtful analysis of the new federal education law has been written for the education wonks who will parse and compare NCLB and ESSA and argue about what the Department of Education will put into the administrative rules. Here, however, is education writer Alfie Kohn’s short, incisive, and well written commentary for the non-expert about the meaning of the new ESSA. Everybody ought to read it, because Kohn so intelligently summarizes the issues.
Here’s what Kohn says about No Child Left Behind, in response to those who liked NCLB and now worry that the new law waters down the old law’s strong federal pressure for accountability: “While the inadequacy and inequity certainly were (and are) inexcusable, NCLB was never a reasonable response Indeed, as many of us predicted at the start, it did far more harm than good; in general, and with respect to addressing disparities between black and white, rich and poor, in particular. Standardized testing was never necessary to tell us which schools were failing. Heck, you could just drive by them and make a reasonable guess… For years, I’ve been challenging NCLB defenders to name a single school anywhere in the country whose inadequacy was a secret until students were subjected to yet another wave of standardized tests. But testing isn’t just superfluous; it was, and remains, immensely damaging, to low-income students most of all.”
So what about those who are celebrating the new law because, they imagine, it will reduce standardized testing? “(T)he outrageous and incalculably damaging reality of testing students Education Writer Alfie Kohn on Leaving Behind No Child Left Behind Behind | janresseger: