Inside the Current Issue

No Child Left Behind, or The Privatization of Public Education

Book Review Jonathan Kozol, The Shame of the Nation (Crown, 2005) Deborah Meier and George Wood, editors, Many Children Left Behind (Beacon Press, 2004) Kenneth Saltman, The Edison Schools (Routledge, 2005)

Tony Monchinski

"Education belongs to everybody. High standards belongs to everybody." So claims President Bush, whose No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act ostensibly encourages (and enforces) high standards in America's public education system. NCLB seeks "a high quality education" and "accountability" based on "the best scientific research" mirrored by "standards" for each and every student in America. In reality, NCLB represents a step in the direction of the privatization of public education with lower class students and children of color further victimized by a system already largely failing them.

Fifty years after Brown vs. Board of Education outlawed segregation in American public schools, Jonathan Kozol reports that things are still pretty ugly. Kozol's The Shame of the Nation documents "apartheid schooling" in the United States. Consider: our New York is one of the four most segregated states for black students, with only one black student in seven attending a predominantly white school. "If you want to see a really segregated school in the United States today," Kozol writes, "start by looking for a school that's named for Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks." Sure enough, New York City's MLK High School, a block away from Lincoln Center, has a student population 96% black and Hispanic and only 3.8 % white, Asian or other.

Kozol makes the case that race and class are intertwined in American education. The NYC Public Schools system spends $11,700 per-pupil, compared to the $22,000 shelled out per-pupil in nearby Manhasset. Poor children lack the opportunities children from middle class and well-to-do homes take for granted. For example, the budget for pre-school funding has been slashed, with 40% of 3- and 4-year-olds who qualified for the Head Start program in 2001-02 lacking the opportunity to attend because of cutbacks. Furthermore, "Thirty-five out of 48 states spend less on students in school districts with the highest numbers of minority children than on students in the districts with the fewest children of minorities."

Children in segregated schools receive a different type of education than do their suburban and affluent peers. "Pervasive corporate indoctrination" fosters "pedagogy of direct command and absolute control." Kozol takes us into classrooms throughout America where walls are adorned with posters advertising Wal-Mart, Sears and other retail stores; where children are assigned "management position" classroom jobs such as "Pencil Sharpener Manager" after filling our printed application forms; where "earnings charts" keep track of children's writings skills; where schools are labeled "Academy of Enterprise" or "Corporate Academy"; where "industry-embedded education" is seen as the only way to go. Kozol points out that schools with money or schools with children from money do not follow these formula, that in better off schools "the school-to-work idea, if educators even speak of it at all, is little more than seemly decoration on the outer edges of a liberal curriculum."

Enter No Child Left Behind. Touted as a panacea to the woes of American education, NCLB represents nothing more than a dismantling of public education and its transfer to the private sector. In Many Children Left Behind, contributor Alfie Kohn writes, "you don't have to be a conspiracy nut to understand the real purpose of NCLB. Indeed, you have to be visually impaired not to see it." Senator Jim Jeffords recognizes that NCLB "will let the private sector take over public education, something the Republicans have wanted for years." How will this be implemented?

NCLB calls for all schools to make "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) as measured by scores on standardized exams. NCLB separates school populations into categories, and 95% of students in each category must take a standardized exam and pass it for a school to show AYP. A school can be labeled as needing improvement if every population category meets its goal except, for example, the school's special education or limited English proficiency populations. 100% passing is required by 2014 of all categories. Kohn explains that this is a "'diversity penalty' such that the more subgroups of students that attend a given school, the lower the chance it will be able to" make AYP.

Students are currently tested in third through eighth grades, but Bush wants to extend this to every year of high school as well. Some states take their own initiative and offer standardized exams as early as kindergarten, or require the passing of an exam for promotion to the next grade level. Principal George Wood warns that "the evidence is clear - when students are retained in the same grade for more than one year the likelihood that they will drop out rises dramatically." As Kozol shows, race ties directly into this because "in 48 percent of high schools in the nation's 100 largest districts, which are those in which the highest concentrations of black and Hispanic students are enrolled, less than half the entering ninth graders graduate in four years."

Schools failing to make AYP and labeled "In Need of Improvement" will suffer various penalties, from paying vouchers to send students to more successful schools; to the dismissal of principals and staff; to the handing-over of individual schools to private educational management organizations (EMOs). Everyone wants our schools to be successful. No one is against high standards, progress or accountability. But critics of NCLB detest a system they see as geared towards failure. "Already," Stan Karp explains, "28,000 of the nation's 90,000 schools have been warned" that they are in danger of not making AYP, and "estimates indicate that ultimately 75 percent of all public schools will be labeled 'in need of improvement.'" The public will equate test scores with progress, and when we are told that test scores aren't high enough, public education will be further maligned to the point where the private sector can swoop right in to the rescue.

There are those who see public education as one vast untapped source or profit. EMOs like Edison Schools fit this bill. Kenneth J. Saltman details their history in The Edison Schools. Edison schools were started by former Esquire magazine publisher Chris Whittle. Before Edison, Whittle gained prominence for Channel One, a program that provided public schools with televisions and VCRs for every classroom. In return, schools promised that each class would watch Channel One's daily ten minute broadcast, ensuring a captive audience for its two minutes of commercials. Whittle has also championed unpaid child labor. Money could be saved (and hence profits raised) by requiring students in Edison-run schools to take over janitorial and administrative tasks. "It turns out that by Whittle's logic," notes Saltman, "600 school kids working one hour a day equals 75 full-time adult staff."

In 2001-02, Edison was the largest EMO running 136 public schools in 23 states. But Edison's track record is not one worth emulating. Edison hasn't raised test scores. Edison hasn't proved it can run schools better than public schools. Edison hasn't been able to make communities happy (or its shareholders, for that matter: shares of Edison once traded at more than $20 apiece, but then fell to less than $2 a share amidst various scandals and finally in a buyout Edison lost its publicly traded status). At the same time that Edison was losing money, it launched a consulting firm, Edison Affiliates, which focuses on administrative reform and raising test scores.

As companies like Edison chomp at the bit, awaiting public school failure seemingly guaranteed by NCLB, the effects of NCLB on democracy are worth considering. Deborah Meier posits that NCLB is undemocratic, flying in the face of the last 200 years of conservative ideology championing states rights and the dangers of big government. "By relying on standardized tests as the only measure of school quality, NCLB usurps the right of local communities to define the attributes of a sound education." When local schools fail to make AYP, democratic authority on the district level will disappear as the federal government steps in. As it is, "the very definition of what constitutes an educated person is now dictated by federal legislation. A well-educated person is one who scores high on standardized [exams]." Washington has not fully funded NCLB either. When the country's largest teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA), criticized the White House for not delivering on promised NCLB monies, former education secretary Rod Paige called the NEA "a terrorist organization."

In addition to undermining democracy, NCLB is just downright bizarre. "Imagine," invites Stan Karp, "a federal law that declared that 100% of all citizens must have adequate health care in twelve years or sanctions will be imposed on doctors and hospitals. Or all crime must be eliminated in twelve years or the local police department will face privatization" The kicker is that NCLB champions "standards" and "accountability" in the name of equity while victimizing most those who would benefit from true equity. "It is important to recognize both that the schools targeted for privatization are predominantly nonwhite," writes Saltman, "and that the schools most targeted for discipline are nonwhite." Schools with large minority populations are most likely to embrace curriculums modeled on discipline rooted in "racialized ideology" with a greater emphasis on teaching to the tests. Students are held back to avoid having to take and possibly fail mandated exams.

President Bush's father tried to reform education in 1991 with "America 2000." Who remembers that plan now? Like other cure-alls offered to fix the real and perceived ills of American education, NCLB can't and won't work. Sure, test scores might go up, but is that an indicator that children are being well educated? Increasingly, schools are teaching to the test in the hopes of raising scores. Music and art classes, recess and nap time are being cut out in many schools to allow for more test prep. The real question is, what will be the toll on future generations of schoolchildren and American citizens? Three years into NCLB, the indications are not pretty.

Tony Monchinski is a PhD student in the Political Science department.