The Pedagogy of Oppression: A Brief Look at 'No Child Left Behind (original) (raw)

The No Child Left Behind Act and the Black-White Achievement Gap

2016

The present article probes into the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2002 and appraises its impact on closing the black-white achievement gap in American public education. Aiming at boosting academic achievement in schools across the United States, rising the performance of underprivileged students to the level of their more affluent counterparts and magnetizing qualified professionals to teach in every classroom, the NCLB is in effect the end product of a series of noteworthy embryonic and evolving key federal educational policies and reforms, recurring reauthorizations of previous laws, and suggested recommendations made out of a significant number of educational commissions and summits, from the foundation of the American Republic to the eve of its enactment in 2002. Despite considerable efforts to address racial disparities, millions of American students, particularly blacks, continue to attend schools that are not separate but grossly unequal in both resources and academic ou...

he pedagogy of oppression: A brief look at the 'No Child Let Behind'

PETER MC LAREN & RAMIN FARAHMANDPUR The origins of the current standards-based movement in public education can be traced back to the early twentieth century when curriculum theorists like Ellwood Cubberley and others attempted to align school curricula to the needs and demands of the U.S. economy by developing a scientific approach to designing and planning them. 1 From the 1950s to the 1970s, with the Cold War in full swing, the "back to basics" movement gained momentum in teacher education programs and graduate schools of education. Supporters of the movement were determined to ensure that school curricula reflected not only the ideologies and political views of the dominant social classes in the United States, but that they also prepared students for employment in the growing military industrial complex to defend the country against the so-called communist threat. A report published in 1983, A Nation at Risk, was another significant milestone in the history of the education reform movement. 2 The report vilified schools for the relatively weak economic performance of the United States compared to its Asian and European rivals. The driving forces behind the recent educational policies of the No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001 are neoliberal social and economic policies that favor outsourcing and downsizing methods of production in the name of flexibility and efficiency. Under the neoliberal economic model, schools must perform similarly to corporate entities. Just as the Dow Jones stock indices measure the performance of companies and represent the pulse of Wall Street, so too the Adequate Yearly Progress Report (AYP) measures and ranks the performance of public 94

No Child Left Behind and High School Reform

Civil Rights advocates hailed the 2001 reauthorization of the ESEA, optimistically entitled "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB), as a step forward in the long battle to improve education for those children traditionally left behind in American schools -in particular, students of color and those living in poverty, new English learners, and students with disabilities. The broad goal of NCLB is to raise the achievement levels of all students, especially underperforming groups, and to close the achievement gap that parallels race and class. The Act intends to do this by focusing schools' attention on improving test scores for all groups of students, providing parents' more educational choices, and ensuring better qualified teachers.

Cooking the Books: Educational Apartheid with No Child Left Behind

On the two-year anniversary of its enactment, NCLB education reforms continue to garner rock-solid support from a majority of Americans, accord- ing to a new national poll released by Americans for Better Education.1 As the NCLB legislation trickles down to local school districts, its impact is likely to fundamentally alter the relationship between the federal government, the states, and America’s 14,500 public school districts. This shift in the balance of power of education, from states and local school districts to big govern- ment, is the most significant in a generation. Looming behind the veneer and rhetoric of the Bush education plan is a set of destructive actions that are designed to destroy public education by enabling a huge exodus into risky experimental alternatives.2 “No Child Left Behind” is much more than a label devised by clever promoters.

Exacerbating inequality: the failed promise of the No Child Left Behind Act

Race Ethnicity and Education, 2007

Hursh wider society, it diverts our attention from the issues that must be tackled if we are to improve all students' learning and develop a more equitable society. Therefore, I will begin by providing a short description of NCLB focusing on the characteristics most pertinent to my argument here: mandatory standardized testing used to evaluate students, teachers and schools, and the consequences schools face if their test scores do not achieve 'adequate yearly progress.' I then turn to the central rationales for passage of NCLB, in particular that standardized testing and accountability will improve student learning for all children and close the achievement gap, and then provide evidence that NCLB may be undermining education and exacerbating inequality. The promise of No Child Left Behind NCLB passed as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001 and, as such, will need to renewed and is likely to be amended by the now Democratically controlled Congress and the President in 2007. NCLB affects almost every aspect of elementary and secondary education, most obviously curriculum and assessment, but also increases the qualifications for teachers and teachers' aides, opens up schools to religious groups and groups, such as the Boy Scouts, that discriminate, and requires that students' names and contact information be given to military recruiters and that schools adopt curriculum that has been 'scientifically tested.' However, I will focus on the testing, accountability and curricular aspects of NCLB. Further, because NCLB leaves it to the states to develop their assessments and states vary in the consequences the tests have for students (for example in New York, Texas and about 10 other states, students must pass one or more standardized tests to graduate from secondary school, and in New York City and Texas students must pass tests for promotion from specific 'benchmark grades'), my evidence for the success or failure of NCLB necessarily relies on state rather than national data. President Bush promoted NCLB as a means of replicating at the federal level the 'success' previously achieved at the state level, such as in Texas (where he was governor) and New York. NCLB requires that 95% of students in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school be assessed through standardized tests aligned with 'challenging academic standards' in math, reading and (beginning in 2007-08) science (US Department of Education, 2003c, p. 4). Furthermore, states must permit the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to administer standardized tests to a sample of students in tested grades so that students can be compared across states. Each state is required to submit to the federal government a plan for student assessment and how they will determine whether schools are making adequate yearly progress. Each year, an increasing percentage of students are to demonstrate 'proficiency' until 2014, at which time for all states and every school, all students (regardless of ability or proficiency, whether they have a disability or recently immigrated to the United States and are English language learners) are expected to be proficient in every subject. Note 1. NCLB passed in the house 381-41 and in the Senate 87-10.

The Federal No Child Left Behind Act and the Post-Desegregation Civil Rights Agenda

2003

SUMMARY: ... Board of Education transformed American schools and established the judiciary as a principal protector of the constitutional rights of minorities bereft of political defense. ... But based on our close observation of the New Accountability at work in Texas, Kentucky, and Community District 2 in New York City-observations we describe in detail in a companion study-we are convinced that this method of organizing schools offers the best hope of improved educational outcomes for those most neglected by the current school system. ... Either the states are getting flexibility without giving anything in return-in which case the NCLB amounts to the deregulation of federal funds spent on education, which in turn delivers students, particularly poor and minority students, into the hands of selfish local oligarchs-or, the standards and accountability system are real enough, but are not actually intended to achieve reform. ... For example, the Cross City Campaign for Urban School R...