From
Salon
Excerpted
from “The Allure of Order: High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled
Quest to Remake American Schooling” by Jal Mehta. Published by Oxford
University Press
In late 2001, three months after the September 11
attacks, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) passed both House and Senate with
strong bipartisan majorities and was signed by a Republican president.
Promising to use the power of the state to ensure that all children were
proficient in reading and math by 2014, proponents heralded the act as the
greatest piece of federal education legislation since the creation of the original
Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965. By requiring the states to set
high standards, pairing them with assessments that measured whether students
were achieving those standards, and holding schools accountable if students
failed to do so, NCLB, in the eyes of its sponsors, would close achievement
gaps and make America’s schools the envy of the world.
