Getting back to NCLB (No Child Left Behind), a recent article (www.rethinkingschools.org) by Stan Karp, raises an interesting point about funding. If you've been reading our blog all along, you know that we've been critics of NCLB both for the rigid and inflexible progress that it mandates as well as the severe lack of federal funding to achieve it's goals. Karp steps beyond the funding debate by asserting that fully funding the law would be (1) next to impossible and (2) a bad idea.
     Karp cites studies indicating that it would take an average yearly increase of about 30% (that's $130 billion) for states to even come close to meeting NCLB requirements. But Karp argues that money alone can't fix NCLB and that to increase funding for this flawed piece of legislation would only channel more dollars into testing companies and punishments for struggling schools.
     "NCLB needs to be transformed from a test, punish, and privatize law into a real school improvement law. The obsessive reliance on standardized testing (including the ridiculous "adequate yearly progress" system), the punitive sanctions, the chaotic transfer plans, and the educational malpractice that the law imposes ...all need major revision".