NCLB's impact: My bad! Do-over!

Some of the more-thoughtful right-leaning "Ed Reform" types have been questioning the effects of No Child Left Behind — relentless testing, focus on "the basics" to the exclusion of all else.

It's under discussion on Gerald Bracey's national Education Disinformation Detecting and Reporting Agency (EDDRA) listserve:

Jerry refers here to right-leaning public-education critics Checker Finn and Diane Ravitch:

In their book, Beyond the Basics, [it's more of a report, downloadable from the Fordham Foundation] Checker and Diane write this:

We should have seen this coming. We and others who have pressed for higher academic standards in recent years — particularly since the Charlottesville education "summit" set national education goals in 1989 — should have anticipated the "zero sum" problem that it would give rise to: more emphasis on some things would inevitably mean less attention to others. Insofar as we recognized this, however, we naively assumed that school days and years would expand to accommodate more of everything; that teachers would somehow become more knowledgeable; and that state and federal policy makers would insist on a balanced curriculum.

We were wrong. We didn't see how completely standards-based reform would turn into a basic-skills frenzy or the negative impact that it would have on educational quality (p. 6).

Duh. Or to respond more heatedly — a ticked-off teacher posted a response on the EDDRA listserve that I'm reposting with his permission.

Yes, Diane and Checker, YOU were wrong. But many, many of us, who, you know, actually teach in classrooms and work with real children every day, as well as many, many researchers and professors knew you were wrong and you told us all to kiss off and even went so far as to question our academic credentials. I see that you can't let that one go still; I caught the little dig "teachers would somehow become more knowledgeable". Bite me, Diane and Checker. I'm a little short of forgiveness for you at this point; the lives of my Title I students have been irrevocably tainted by the monstrosity that is NCLB and directly resulting from your playing footsie with the conservative politicians who made this happen, from Clinton to Bush. Too late in my book for an "Oops, my bad! — do-over!"