I invite you to read this excellent article by Linda-Darling Hammond on the devastating impact that revisions to No Child Left Behind will have on children living in poverty. It is a courageous indictment of the flawed and failing policies of NCLB under both Republican and current Democratic administrations in Washington, acquiesced to by state and local educational bureaucracies.
Darling-Hammond, former executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future and president of the American Educational Research Association, is currently Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University. She launched the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute, directs the university’s Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, and co-directs Stanford’s School Redesign Network. She recently served as the leader of President Obama’s education policy transition team. Darling-Hammond’s most recent book is The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future. Earlier books include The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Schools that Work, recipient of the American Educational Research Association’s Outstanding Book Award for 1998.
Darling-Hammond’s redlining article and the articles mentioned in my earlier blog post on “Speaking Truth to Power” are offered here because readers of this blog are on the front line in both poor and well-to-do schools, or working in so-called reform efforts, where we find ourselves, in one way or another, deeply enmeshed in the daily consequences of educational inequity.
Linda Darling-Hammond clearly delineates her view of how government policy to turn our lowest performing schools around is actually abetting the rapid re-segregation of our nation racially and economically. The data she has amassed in this one article is hard to refute, but changing direction will be no easy matter. Please find yourself a quiet half hour and read all the way to the end of the article to see what she proposes as steps we must take.
(Note: I’ve linked to the re-posting of the article by Valerie Strauss on her Washington Post blog, “The Answer Sheet.” It was originally published in the January 12, 2012, edition of The Nation. There you’ll also find links to several other pieces by Ms. Darling-Hammond.)
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Dear Caltha – Thank you so much for this comment. Your story is testament to the opportunity before us in schools today. So many highly respected voices like yours, Linda Darling-Hammond’s, Diane Ravitch’s and thousands of experienced teachers, are now being raised to get the attention of policy makers. Perhaps we are turning toward the morning. Chip
Dear Chip, your post inspired me to read Linda Darling-Hammond’s complete article. Her comments about the renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act were thought provoking and cogent. I continue to be struck by the stunning fact that legislation to “improve” education focuses on punishing the schools in greatest need (in the current legislation the 5% of schools designated as lowest performing) rather than supporting them in their efforts to provide for the neediest children. We educators know that we don’t make schools do better by punishing them any more than we entice children to do better by punishing them.
I was also struck by Ms. Darling-Hammond’s call to renew the type of support that urban schools received in the 1970s as part of the “war on poverty.” I taught in such a school in the 1970s. My students had benefitted from high quality preschool. Our curriculum was enriched and exciting. As an inexperienced teacher, I received excellent staff development that helped me learn how to meet the unique needs of my students. It is necessary to support the education of the “lowest performing” students with the services that schools in high income communities have as a matter of course. In fact, it’s necessary to provide more in order to educate children who need more. We, as a nation, could provide support rather than punishment again. I encourage anyone reading this post to read Linda Darling-Hammond’s entire article. She carefully describes and documents what’s happening in education today and “What we should do instead.” I’d love to hear what other educators think about her ideas.