2008 Woodie Awards
Nation in need of drastic solution to No Child Left Behind Act
Daniel Black
Issue date: 10/26/06 Section: Opinion
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BY DANIEL BLACK
Staff Writer
Herewith, we have over the past three weeks identified numerous problems guaranteed by the No Child Left Behind Act if it is allowed by this nation's citizens to continue. We have explored how, through the act, the executive branch of the federal government has overstepped the bounds of its power and intruded into state and local authority domains, doing so to exploit Children. We have examined how rigorous testing instead of proper educational resourcing will likely lead to macro-level failure, failures that will be easy to blame on the children rather than those truly responsible. And lastly, we have unearthed the true colors of this act, exposing it as flatly racist and class-discriminatory to the extent that it has dragged the state of education over a century into the past.
Borne primarily of objective logic and unbiased reasoning, these assertions leave the reader with little doubt of their legitimacy, but they nevertheless leave hungry the desire for constructive answers, resolve, or simply even hope for the future. After providing Circle readers with three weeks of only assaults on educational policy, I plan to deliver sustenance for satisfying these resulting hungers. Understanding how to creatively reform society, beginning with surgically depositing No Child Left Behind into the waste basket, requires that we first understand what exactly the act is functioning to accomplish. Though in the past I've written extensively about what this act cannot realistically hope to achieve (improving education), I will, for the benefit of those inclined to accept the role of advocates and agents of social action, share what I believe are the goals of those who enacted NCLB.
No Child Left Behind, beneath all the elaborate bureaucratic veils of deception and distortion, is a conscious, conceited assault against public education, an effort to shift education into the corporate sector, to privatize it, so that wealthy friends of politicians can squeeze profits through the manipulation and exploitation of children's education.
Staff Writer
Herewith, we have over the past three weeks identified numerous problems guaranteed by the No Child Left Behind Act if it is allowed by this nation's citizens to continue. We have explored how, through the act, the executive branch of the federal government has overstepped the bounds of its power and intruded into state and local authority domains, doing so to exploit Children. We have examined how rigorous testing instead of proper educational resourcing will likely lead to macro-level failure, failures that will be easy to blame on the children rather than those truly responsible. And lastly, we have unearthed the true colors of this act, exposing it as flatly racist and class-discriminatory to the extent that it has dragged the state of education over a century into the past.
Borne primarily of objective logic and unbiased reasoning, these assertions leave the reader with little doubt of their legitimacy, but they nevertheless leave hungry the desire for constructive answers, resolve, or simply even hope for the future. After providing Circle readers with three weeks of only assaults on educational policy, I plan to deliver sustenance for satisfying these resulting hungers. Understanding how to creatively reform society, beginning with surgically depositing No Child Left Behind into the waste basket, requires that we first understand what exactly the act is functioning to accomplish. Though in the past I've written extensively about what this act cannot realistically hope to achieve (improving education), I will, for the benefit of those inclined to accept the role of advocates and agents of social action, share what I believe are the goals of those who enacted NCLB.
No Child Left Behind, beneath all the elaborate bureaucratic veils of deception and distortion, is a conscious, conceited assault against public education, an effort to shift education into the corporate sector, to privatize it, so that wealthy friends of politicians can squeeze profits through the manipulation and exploitation of children's education.
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