2008 Woodie Awards
No Child Left Behind Act disadvantages minority children
Daniel Black
Issue date: 10/19/06 Section: Opinion
These struggles for the liberation of public schooling notwithstanding, many involved parties on both sides of the struggle appear ignorant or dismissive of one very real consequence of the No Child Left Behind Act: that it is -by measure of its effects on education rather than the endless and valueless discourse of politicians- the enforcement of continued apartheid education. Our nation's tradition of dividing children into separate learning environments on the basis of ethnicity was promised to end over fifty years ago. Progressive movements to make this promise reality have surfaced and receded over the decades, but although they've been in a slump lately, the priority of NCLB claims to supersede the will of the court order to integrate schools. Though they certainly will not say so on camera, those responsible for this "reprioritization" desire very much to see apartheid fully restored and permanently established so that children of different ethnicities are isolated.
I will point out, for the benefit of anyone who believes this accusation is too much to believe, that the findings of the very same Supreme Court that penned Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, the "Warren Court", were openly denounced by a man who I believe we can all agree exerts serious influence on American society from within our current government: Chief Justice Samuel Alito. It was no secret that Alito disagreed with these findings, even before he was appointed to the Supreme Court, but that didn't concern the current administration. These men have been collaborating since the Reagan years to further their own inner circles, indeed their own race, at the expense of others' opportunities and basic civil rights. This sort of disregard for progressive politics is characteristic of Bush and those responsible for the comeuppance of No Child Left Behind, in fact it has never been a priority for the executive to adhere to the will of the court, not in 1954, not in 2006.
The prejudices and ethnocentrism of NCLB is not limited to merely shortchanging Blacks and Hispanics. NCLB ignores the right and dignity of all population subgroups other than those from whom it was crafted, and this intolerance is self-evident. The very spirit of broad-sweeping, all-encompassing standardization of education, the rendering of everything uniform, that respects no diversity in what is learned and how it is demonstrated by the learner flatly rejects nearly all modern prevalent theories pertaining to education. Education and development are culturally contextual, marked by variance from one educational setting to another depending upon community, geography, ethnicity, and demography. An upper-class child from a quiet suburban town learns differently from a lower-class child in an inner city school whose education also differs from a child's who grows up in a rural farming town, an Amish village, an Native American reservation, etc. Each of these children are able to learn, each capable of flourishing in their own unique educational context. These beliefs are outlined in detail by nearly all of the most influential and respected educational theorists in our history. John Dewey's construct of a public school as a "laboratory of democracy" has stood solid and been admired for over a hundred years; the legacy of NCLB is a meager five, and has met with more controversy than Dewey's pedagogy has in over a century.
I will point out, for the benefit of anyone who believes this accusation is too much to believe, that the findings of the very same Supreme Court that penned Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, the "Warren Court", were openly denounced by a man who I believe we can all agree exerts serious influence on American society from within our current government: Chief Justice Samuel Alito. It was no secret that Alito disagreed with these findings, even before he was appointed to the Supreme Court, but that didn't concern the current administration. These men have been collaborating since the Reagan years to further their own inner circles, indeed their own race, at the expense of others' opportunities and basic civil rights. This sort of disregard for progressive politics is characteristic of Bush and those responsible for the comeuppance of No Child Left Behind, in fact it has never been a priority for the executive to adhere to the will of the court, not in 1954, not in 2006.
The prejudices and ethnocentrism of NCLB is not limited to merely shortchanging Blacks and Hispanics. NCLB ignores the right and dignity of all population subgroups other than those from whom it was crafted, and this intolerance is self-evident. The very spirit of broad-sweeping, all-encompassing standardization of education, the rendering of everything uniform, that respects no diversity in what is learned and how it is demonstrated by the learner flatly rejects nearly all modern prevalent theories pertaining to education. Education and development are culturally contextual, marked by variance from one educational setting to another depending upon community, geography, ethnicity, and demography. An upper-class child from a quiet suburban town learns differently from a lower-class child in an inner city school whose education also differs from a child's who grows up in a rural farming town, an Amish village, an Native American reservation, etc. Each of these children are able to learn, each capable of flourishing in their own unique educational context. These beliefs are outlined in detail by nearly all of the most influential and respected educational theorists in our history. John Dewey's construct of a public school as a "laboratory of democracy" has stood solid and been admired for over a hundred years; the legacy of NCLB is a meager five, and has met with more controversy than Dewey's pedagogy has in over a century.
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