The Myth and Reality of No Child Left Behind: Public Education and High Stakes Assessment
This book shows how able and committed teachers who regard their profession as a calling are tragically transformed into technocrats fulfilling federal reform imperatives. This inside picture of the terrible price teachers pay to work in the system imposed by NCLB should be a call to action. (Susan Ohanian, author of What Happened to Recess and Why Are Our Children Struggling in Kindergarten?)Dr. Todd Alan Price and his colleagues contextualize the contemporary state of American public education, drawing upon its deep historical roots and philosophical underpinnings. This framework enables the reader to understand the turmoil engendered by current policy waves. These essays pose insightful questions about whether we can build on our historical strengths to meet modern-day challenges of the global era. (Kathleen Sullivan-Brown, Executive Director of the Illinois Education Research Council and Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studi)Price and Peterson's volume should be required reading for policy makers nationwide, as it asks important questions that need answering before NCLB comes up for reauthorization. What is intelligence and how should it be measured? Who benefits from measuring intelligence in specific ways? How has NCLB impacted students, teachers, administrators and communities? I am particularly impressed with the historical and philosophical analysis contained in the early chapters, and I am equally grateful for the qualitative and quantitative work in the volume's later half. In an increasingly standardized world, it's important to have critical scholarship that approaches NCLB from multiple angles. This is a must read for everyone concerned with the future of public education and by default, our democratic republic. In an ideal world, that would be everyone. (Philip Kovacs, former high school English teacher, Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and a contributor to the Edu)