The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is a reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It is the Bush administration’s education reform plan. The NCLB mandates that school districts eliminate the gaps in education between poor students and wealthy students, Black and white students, special education students and regular students, and students with limited English and those fluent in English. The stated goal is to provide for those students who historically were denied an opportunity to a quality education. To close the gap it requires that all students make adequate yearly progress and be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014. Congress passed this law was with the support of the majority of both parties. With such lofty expectations and goals, why is NCLB being criticized and labeled a set-up for vouchers and privatization?

There are several reasons: NCLB raises standards without supplying the states with adequate resources to meet the needs of their students. Even the funds originally promised for NCLB face cuts due to the wars on terrorism and Iraq. All 50 states now face a cumulative deficit of $68 billion. The NCLB requires each state to submit a plan with yearly goals showing how all of its students will become 100 percent proficient in reading and math by 2014. Yearly standardized testing is the means of assessment. Student attendance and the rate of high school graduation are also part of the assessment. By 2005 there must be a qualified, certified teacher in every classroom. Each year there are escalating sanctions for all schools and districts that do not meet their state goals for making “Adequate Yearly Progress,” (AYP). Schools that don’t make it are listed in several failing categories. Schools that have reported violent incidents are labeled “dangerous schools.” Parents of children in these failing and/or dangerous schools must be notified and offered a transfer for their child to a “successful school.” In many districts there are few or perhaps no successful schools with spaces for those asking for transfers. The Department of Education says that lack of space or overcrowding is not a valid excuse for denying transfers to these students. Does this make sense? The NCLB does not provide funding to build new schools and classrooms. Students in failing schools must also be offered tutoring paid by the state.

Our suspicion should have been aroused when proven methods of raising student achievement such as small class size, early childhood education and improved teacher training etc. were not mandated by or mentioned in NCLB. We should have been suspicious when Bush appointed Rod Paige, an African American educator from Texas, to be secretary of the Department of Education and Eugene Hickok from Pennsylvania to be undersecretary. When Bush was governor of Texas, he opposed lowering class size and students’ test scores improved because teachers taught the test. Recently Texas has been criticized for falsifying dropout rates to avoid federal sanctions and reducing the number of questions that students have to answer to pass the tests. Hickok headed the Pennsylvania Department of Education under former Governor Tom Ridge, who tried unsuccessfully to pass a voucher bill in the legislature. But Ridge was successful in the illegal state takeover of Philadelphia’s schools and partially successful in his scheme to privatize them under the management of Edison Schools Inc.
The school district of Philadelphia became an experiment for the NCLB when it was subject to state take-over at the end of 2001. The reason for the take-over was a $250,000 deficit. The reason for the deficit was that Pennsylvania would not provide adequate equitable funding for its schools. African American students in Philadelphia never received a quality education. In 1970 the Commonwealth Court ordered that racial segregation be eliminated by 1975. Magnet schools and a voluntary desegregation plan were instituted. Some Black students were bussed to white schools. But schools in Black neighborhoods were allowed to deteriorate just like the communities they served. In 1994 Commonwealth Court Judge Doris Smith ordered the state to correct the problems her education team found and to immediately upgrade schools in racially isolated neighborhoods. Ridge and the state legislature refused to obey the order. Ridge had other plans for Philadelphia, namely – privatization. Education in Philadelphia is now a cottage industry: charter schools, for-profit privatized schools, non-profit privatized schools and reconstituted schools. At the top is CEO, Paul Vallas.

Many students can’t keep up and must stay after school for mandatory tutoring. Philadelphia has 40 percent of the state’s impoverished families. Black unemployment in the city is twice the national rate. But the Department of Education does not want excuses for failing the tests. Meanwhile the Republican-dominated legislature is six months late passing a budget. Schools had to borrow money from banks to keep their doors open. Governor Rendell, a Democrat, asked for $650 million in additional funds to improve the schools. The legislature came up with only $258 million of new money after months of debate and a promise of more funds next year. The Republican-led legislature is not nor was it ever committed to quality education for all its students. Wealthy school districts can afford good schools by funding them through property taxes. Urban and rural districts cannot. As we observe the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, a quality public education is still not attainable for all students in the United States.

The National Conference of State Legislators estimates that 70 percent of the nation’s schools will be subjected to sanctions before the end of the decade. Florida reported that 87 percent of its schools and all of its districts failed to meet adequate yearly progress in the 2002-03 school year. In Pennsylvania half of the schools failed to make adequate yearly progress. Said Jack Jennings from the Center on Education Policy in Washington, DC, “There is no set of national standards. You can have schools of the same quality in two different states ranked far differently”. Some suburban schools where test scores were in the top portion of the state were shocked to find that their schools did not make adequate yearly progress goals because special education students did not make the required goals. School staffs, students and parents in schools where great effort and cooperation has taken place over the past two years to improve the quality of education are demoralized when their schools are labeled as failing.

Quietly, dissatisfied parents, especially African American parents, are being told that what they need is “choice.” If their child’s school is failing, the state should give them a voucher so they can send their child to a private or parochial school. Organizations such as the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) are organizing Black parents around the concept of choice. Right-wing foundations such as the Bradley Foundation, which also funded David Horowitz’s ad campaign against reparations, support BAEO. The philosophy of the NCLB is anchored to the market-place concept where competition is supposed to force bad schools to shape up or go out of business and where good schools thrive. Parents are viewed as consumers and the commodity they are shopping for is a quality education for their children. A few years ago parents were told that charter schools were the answer to their children’s needs, but charter schools have not raised student achievement any more than public schools. Privatized schools have not worked any better than the struggling public schools. Private schools do the choosing not parents and students. So “choice” is just a distracting myth. It distracts parents, educators, students and the entire community from organizing for real education reform – adequate equitable funding, small class size, smaller well equipped schools, qualified certified teachers and administrators, comprehensive early childhood education and parent involvement.

Meanwhile, labor and civil rights organizations remain committed to defending public education. The NAACP remains committed to quality public education and opposes vouchers and privatization. Reg Weaver, President of the National Education Association, calls NCLB the “granddaddy of all under-funded federal mandates.” Sandra Feldman, President of the American Federation of Teachers, believes that people in high places hostile to public education and supporters of vouchers see NCLB as an opportunity. Teachers are under pressure to move students at a rapid pace through a basic skills reading and math curriculum, and students are pressured to pass reading and math tests.

The NCLB will not close the educational gap between the haves and the have-nots. It will destroy the concept of public education as an entitlement and the basis for political democracy. The fight for public education must be part of the 2004 election campaign. The NCLB must be repealed or changed.

--Rosita Johnson is a public education activist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.