Students of education are aware of the story of public education, of legendary figures like Horace Mann riding from district to district trying to improve the American school by establishing a common school fund and developing teacher-training programs. Those who followed worked hard to broaden the mission and refine the institution. While advancing the distribution of textbooks, developing curriculum materials and employing testing tools, even as early as 1845, standardized testing was used to see if it all worked. Advocates used the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 to make accessible to all an education of worth for social advancement.
Yet today's No Child Left Behind Act, signed in 2002 is, ironically so, a reform driven not by the advocates, but bypublic education's most ardent detractors. NCLB appears to be an attempt to change the public education system fundamentally, from the perspective that it is broken, its mission in need of radical revision.
Todd Alan Price, Ph.D., is an assistant professor, Educational Foundations and Inquiry, National-Louis University. He has published several articles on No Child Left Behind, and produced a documentary,
No Child Left Behind Report: Public Education in the Crosshairs.
Elizabeth A. Peterson, Ed.D, is an associate professor in the Department of Adult Education at National-Louis University. She currently teaches doctoral and masters students of adult education.
This book shows how able and committed teachers who regard their profession as a calling are tragically transformed into technocrats fulfilling federal reform imperatives. This inside picture of the terrible price teachers pay to work in the system imposed by NCLB should be a call to action. Susan Ohanian, educator, activist, and author of What Happened to Recess and Why Are Our Children Struggling in Kindergarten?
Dr. Todd Alan Price and his colleagues contextualize the contemporary state l3+
![The Myth and Reality of No Child Left Behind: Public Education and High Stakes Assessment [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/5/1/0/2_6666108.jpg "The Myth and Reality of No Child Left Behind: Public Education and High Stakes Assessment [Paperback]")