So I'm really enjoying my newest book, "The Overachievers" by Alexandra Robbins. Here's a short excerpt to think about:
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In what's been called a "rebellion" and an "unprecendented bipartisan revolt" against the White House's education centerpiece, at the time of this writing, forty-seven states were considering action against NCLB [No Child Left Behind] mandates. In August 2005 Connecticut was the first state to sue the federal government over NCLB, charging the Bush administration with being "rigid, arbitrary and capricious" in enforcing annual testing that was "unsupported by significant scientific research" and wouldn't help students.

The same year, nine school districts and ten chapters of the National Education Association (NEA)--the country's largest teachers' union--sued the Department of Education over NCLB. By law, the government can't require states to spend their own money to enforce federal policies, but the NEA estimated NCLB funding was at least $27 billion short of what was needed to prepare, test, and score students. In response, former education secretary Rod Paige, who had worked with the White House to draft the NCLB law, called the 2.7 million-member union a "terrorist organization."

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Robbins then goes on to describe the fraud that was later uncovered in the "Houston Miracle" which was the entire basis for creating the NCLB law. Basically the 'rapid improvement' seen in Houston under Rob Paige was achieved by preventing lower achieving students from taking the exams by either keeping them back a grade (so they wouldn't be tested that year), having them not come into school on exam days, or convincing them to 'leave' school before the years the exams were administered. Also the amazing dropout rate of 1.5% was a complete lie, and the true number was somewhere between 25 and 50%, covered up by defining many of the dropouts to be other categories.

Simply in the 4 years I spent at Cromwell High School and going back and visiting over the last 3 I can see that the education system, at CHS at least, is having major trouble. Administration is looking to make a name for themselves at cost to the well-being of students and teachers.

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