On Slight Modifications and the American Dream

Abstract

THE LEAD story in the December/January edition of Reading Today was titled Hot, What's Not for 2003. This article reported the results of a survey designed to identify key topics in and Explaining the methods they used to gather their data, Jack Cassidy and Drew Cassidy drew attention to changes from last year's list. Two topics were dropped from the list, they pointed out, while one topic, reading and practice, was modified slightly and became scientific and practice. Modified slightly? From where I sit, this is not a slight modification. And calling it that, for whatever purpose, is no more reasonable than calling a science curriculum's change from teaching evolution to teaching creationism a slight modification. The change is huge. It goes to fundamental beliefs and values. This modification effectively silences a large portion of the community and challenges the purposes of education in a democratic society. I've always been an optimist. I am so optimistic that I don't see the glass as just half full; I see it as half full and rising. But in the past year, my optimism has been modified slightly. I have become an angry optimist. Since the role is new to me, I'm not sure yet what an angry optimist does. I guess I will learn that in the months to come. But I do know the source of my anger. It is the legislation known as Child Left -- a cynical political slogan as empty as the act's promise for success. Okay, we've seen that before. Naive and poorly conceived promises are made, programs are developed at great taxpayer expense, consultants make a small fortune, something that can pass for change is achieved, and failing programs are declared successful. A season later the programs are gone, and new ones have taken their place. There is nothing new in that. It is so much a part of education in America that we hardly notice as programs and promises fall by the wayside. Where, for example, is the full access to technology that was promised to all American children? In spite of the fact that we know there is a serious technology divide between middle- class and working-class and poor children, I don't hear much about that issue in the public debate these days. But No Child Left Behind is different. It isn't possible to sit back and wait for it to pass into obscurity, as I'm sure it will. This legislation has stacked the deck against children, especially children who are culturally, linguistically, and ethnically different, who live in diverse communities and in economically stressed households. One way the deck is stacked is both simple and elegant. Control the research, and you control what is taught and how. And this legislation does control the research. The Department of Education has announced it will no longer discuss whether scientific research is the best approach. A decision has been made; it is not only the best approach, it is the sole approach. By closing the discussion about how we come to understand teaching and learning, No Child Left Behind has constructed a clever cycle that promises reports of vast success. It also promises ethical compromises and narrow agendas. And by tying funding for programs to such narrow measurement, the President and his Congress have effectively suppressed diverse ways of understanding the complexities of teaching and learning and schools and schooling. What they will hear, and what we will hear, will be decided by the they choose to fund. And they have already announced that they will fund only one kind of research. A friend of mine, a statistician, works for a federally funded program. She was recently responsible for writing a report to the Department of Education. In her first draft, she discussed the findings of the program's scientifically based research. She also included a few sentences explaining that, while such offers important insights, it is by its nature narrow in scope. …