26 CONVERSATIONS ABOUT
ORGANIZING, SCHOOL REFORM, AND
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Those who designed, passed, and signed No Child Left Behind
excluded low-income families from any of the fundamental decisions built into
the act. Important educational policy choices - the use of standardized
testing, for example, or the definition of highly qualified teachers or the
type of curricula that may be used – are being relocated to state capitals and
Washington. Meanwhile, parents continue to wonder why Ronald Reagan is the
last president in their kids’ history text, how many substitutes can rotate
through one room in one year, and why their students bring home the same
worksheets for three grades in a row.
The 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (a.k.a. No Child Left Behind or NCLB), is sucking the oxygen out
of any broader national debate over what to do about public education,
especially in major urban centers. With a modest increase in school aid, a
significant increase in regulation, and a full court press by top
administration officials marketing NCLB, it smothers the discussion with a
tangle of mixed signals. Governors, state education officials, and national
interest groups wage a non-stop war of attrition to reshape the U.S.
Department of Education (DOE) regulations, generally to protect their budgets
or their reputations.1 At the city level, school officials
variously treat NCLB as the soon to melt away flavor of the week or a federal
intrusion that pressures districts to pare the local educational program down
to a reductionist version of literacy and numeracy.
Between October and March, we spoke with 29 organizers in
26 grassroots organizations that work on education justice issues in 14 states
and the District of Columbia. We took an in-depth look at their recent school
reform activity and explored the relevance of No Child Left Behind to solving
the problems they confront in their local schools and districts. This report
summarizes those conversations, identifies some themes, and, of course, raises
new questions. We found that:
° While organizers and community
leaders are conscious of No Child Left Behind as a national policy issue,
they frequently do not yet see it as relevant to solving problems in their
local schools. When NCLB is on a group’s radar, it registers most often as a
suspected Trojan horse for vouchers, charters, privatization, and other
proposals seen as threatening the survival of neighborhood schools.
º Most groups, however, are working on
issues directly related to quality of instruction, and when presented with a
variety of policy options drawn from
1 Gewertz, C. Urban Students Show Reading, Math
Gains on State Assessments.
Education Week,
March 31, 2004; Richard, A. and Robelen, E. Federal Law Is Questioned By
Governors.
Education Week, March 3, 2004.
- NCLB regulations, a majority expressed interest in those that relate
directly to quality of instruction.
- º In spite of their increasing focus on quality of instruction,
community groups are less likely to have organizational relationships with
teacher unions than with almost any other constituency.
- º In terms of support – beyond funding – that groups need to pursue
educational justice organizing, by far the largest group mentioned capacity
building (specific technical assistance on NCLB), teacher quality, and
access to education experts who can help them think through and plan
education campaigns. Runner up concerns were increased and more experienced
staffing and assistance in forming collaborations.
In a nation where for generations public education policy
has been atomized into tens of thousands of public school districts, No Child
Left Behind is forcing local groups into the classic environmentalist stance –
act locally, think globally. The grassroots organizations we interviewed have
to struggle just to remain politically competitive in a local policymaking
environment. Many of the organizers we interviewed acknowledged that the
education justice issues they confront should be viewed in some larger
framework. They express interest in interacting with colleagues from other
organizations to explore how that framework relates to their local work. The
three organizations we represent and, we hope, others that include education
justice issues among their priorities, plan to assist several grassroots
organizations in building the necessary bridges to connect global educational
policy to local educational quality.
for the full report see
http://www.communitychange.org/shared/publications/downloads/nclbconvo.pdf
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