Out Loud and in Public

Abstract

I HAD A sort of post-traumatic-stress-related flashback last week. I it was triggered by the Presidential debates. I'd thought that criticizing No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was all but forbidden. But the Democratic candidates didn't have a single nice thing to say about it, and each one of them could point out plenty of shortcomings. And did they ever. Out loud. In public. Gov. Dean (still in the race as this was written) reminded his opponents that he had been against NCLB since day one. I remembered that about him. I'd read the news reports at the time. Later, my mind had created entertaining images of him holding a lantern in the Old North Church and admonishing Patrick Henry and Sam Adams for failing to meet his standards of revolutionary fervor. Sen. Kerry said NCLB was a good law that had been corrupted by misinterpretation and torpedoed by lack of funding. That answer didn't work for me. After I'd finished trying to figure out what Kerry could have been thinking when he cast his vote for the law, my mind began to wander off in another direction. Could this new freedom to criticize NCLB be the beginning of the slippery slope that leads to the legalization of qualitative research? Maybe it could. I imagined myself on Wall Street. A ticker-tape parade was weaving through a vast crowd of merrymakers. Qualitative researchers were dancing in the streets, and funders were forcing grant applications into the dancers' hands and pockets. Grounded theorists were kissing phenomenologists. Qualitative research had been liberated! I was having fun with that image and hoping the giant Huckleberry Hound balloon would come by before I was snapped back to reality. That's when the flashback hit. I found myself going over and over the last four years and my experiences with No Child Left Behind. In those four years, I've had three jobs (it's not as bad as it sounds). Each forced me to interact with NCLB or its precursors. Four years ago, I was president of Foxfire. At that time, our work focused largely on national reform efforts. Three years ago, I taught elementary school methods courses in a university teacher preparation program in northern Montana. The last two years rank among my all-time favorites. I taught in a public school located on the Chippewa-Cree reservation about 30 miles south of the Canadian border. The work I did with these children propelled me in new and exciting directions that I'm working on this year and next. I was surprised by the ways NCLB affected teachers in that little school on the reservation. I'd thought it would be one of the schoolpeople's and community's last concerns. It wasn't. Teaching is stressful. It just is. It doesn't matter whether we're teaching preschoolers or doctoral students. Years ago, I embraced the stress as a natural part of the work. So I'd expected that. But the stress I felt during those two years in Montana was different from anything I'd experienced before. It had a new layer that was much more difficult to identify and accept. It was almost surreal. This new stress wasn't about the kids. They were great. It wasn't about my teaching methods or the racial difference or even my cultural illiteracy. I could find ways to deal with those realities, worries, and concerns. Not easy ways, mind you, but ways. As I studied it, I began to believe that the new and elusive stress was being generated by No Child Left Behind. Many teachers were worried about the law's vague but omnipresent threats. They created a sense of doom that hung over us like a dark cloud. NCLB had changed the educational climate. It zapped teachers' energy and crushed their morale. I had really loved working at Foxfire, too. Our approach to teacher support made perfect sense. It might best be described as a think globally, act locally approach to change. We believed that sustainable school change grew out of the hearts and minds of teachers. …