I should state, up front, my own biases about NCLB before responding to this report. I find many of the arguments made by both those in favor and those opposed to NCLB persuasive. In other words, I am confused. I think this conversation has only just begun; the issues need to be more crisply framed before we move to vote on them.
This report reads suspiciously like a survey devised by MSU faculty at the request of the teachers’ unions, to elicit responses that deride NCLB. Here’s one way to summarize the way the report summarizes the attitudes of the public toward NCLB:
The only people who think NCLB or its partner-in-crime standardized testing is any good are those who haven’t bothered to think about them. Don’t try to fool us with all these facts. We don’t have much confidence in vouchers, on-line learning, or even charter schools; give us our good ole system of teachers in a classroom. Just pay them more.
Obviously lop-sided polemics like this give comfort to the enemy of those who espouse the views in it.
Two facts are enough to make the survey suspect, and thus destroy its value as a potential arrow in the quiver of the anti-NCLB folks:
The composition of the sample: three-quarters of the respondents have no children in school!? More than 40% are over 50!? More than 80% are white!? Come on!!!
Dangerously ill-defined and profoundly loaded questions like that discussed in Table 5: “Would you rather judge schools based on some state-mandated test or “improvements students in the school made during the year?” “Improvements” … what does that mean!?
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