Perfection Is the Enemy of the Good

Technorati Tags: No Child Left Behind, public schools, private schools, vouchers, school choice

Amit R. Paley, in the Washington Post, on the No Child Left Behind requirement that 100% of students in every public school in America score at grade level (by 2014) in standardized reading and math tests -- or be denied federal funding:

... Even when the law was enacted five years ago, almost no one believed that standard was realistic.

But now, as Congress begins to debate renewing the law, lawmakers and education officials are confronting the reality of the approaching deadline and the difficult political choice between sticking with the vision of universal proficiency or backing away from it.

"There is a zero percent chance that we will ever reach a 100 percent target," said Robert L. Linn, co-director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA. "But because the title of the law is so rhetorically brilliant, politicians are afraid to change this completely unrealistic standard. They don't want to be accused of leaving some children behind."

Kevin Drum thinks (and I agree) that the 100% requirement is motivated by anti-public education ideology:

Question: Why would NCLB mandate an obviously unmeetable standard? And now that it's up for renewal, why would Republicans continue to insist on that obviously unmeetable standard?

Answer: Because the 100% goal isn't just rhetorical. It comes with penalties. If you don't meet the standard, you lose money, you're officially deemed a "failing school," and your students are eligible to transfer to other schools. And needless to say, by 2014 there won't be any satisfactory public schools to send them to because 99% of them won't have met the standard.

Followup bonus question: What incentive does anyone have to label 99% of America's public schools as failures? That's crazy, isn't it?

Answer: Anyone who wants the public to believe that public schools are failures. This would primarily consist of conservatives who want to break teachers unions and evangelicals who want to build political momentum for private school vouchers. The whole point of NCLB for these people is to make sure that as many public schools as possible are officially deemed failures.

Kevin follows up here.

Avedon Carol thinks Kevin's analysis is "spot on."