Repeal NCLB

[tags]No Child Left Behind, NCLB, Education, Public schools[/tags]

Wes Fryer has a brief manifesto this morning calling for the repeal of No Child Left Behind:

We should repeal NCLB and stop the counter-productive, myopic focus on summative, high-stakes assessment encouraged by this legislation. We need to move in another direction: A direction which encourages teachers to innovate, to creatively connect with students and collaboratively work in project-based and problem-based environments. We need to look at the issue of school governance on a STATE level (not a national one) and figure out how our educational systems can be reformed to encourage innovation and creativity rather than stifling it.

There’s more; go read the whole thing. I don’t completely agree with Wes’ assessment that poverty is the “real enemy” facing public education — there are so many enemies that it’s pretty hard to find a “main” one — and I’m more inclined to give voucher programs a chance than he seems to be. But certainly it’s hard to see how saddling a broken system with more requirements, more demands on resources, and so on via NCLB amounts to improvement, even if it were to be fully funded. Repealing and starting over (or NOT starting over and leaving education reform to the states) seems like the smartest move.