By the time that President Bush took office in 2001, the desire to raise achievement for all students (born out of A Nation at Risk) still remained, but with a distinct tendency to avoid any discussion of what students should know in any subject (a result of the history standards controversy). To satisfy both of these conflicting demands, reformers began to concentrate exclusively on skills - primarily reading, and secondarily mathematics.
The demand for higher standards was replaced by the demand for greater accountability, and this was to be understood solely in terms of test scores in reading and mathematics. It was presumed that the performance of districts, schools, and individual teachers could be measured by changes in students' test scores. Of course, this is not the case, for a large number of reasons, many relating to the nature of the tests themselves. The most fundamental underlying assumption was that all students could succeed given the right teachers and schools. Social structural factors, in the end, did not matter. This, of course, is neoliberal ideology. Social structural factors will always have primary causality, and school-related factors can only have marginal mitigating effects.
The accountability movement joined forces with the school choice movement and the resulting love-child was Bush's No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Under NCLB, school progress is measured by student performance on state-designed tests in reading and math. Those who fail to meet "Adequate Yearly Progress" face sactions: students may receive vouchers to attend other schools, for instance, or the school may be "restructured" and placed under different (possibly private) management. One may note that states can set the bar for "proficiency" wherever they want, so that the test results are essentially meaningless, and that simply testing certain literacy and numeracy skills is not an adequate measure of quality education. Hence, NCLB encourages states to lower their standards and teacher and schools to narrow their curriculum to focus on basic skills and test-taking strategies.
However, the greatest implication of NCLB lies in the types of sanctions it employs. NCLB is basically a covert strategy for privatizing the education system. Consider: 1) the bar set by NCLB is so high that only the highest-achieving schools in the wealthiest and most homogenous locales could ever reach it (and even that is not certain);by 2014 nearly every school will be considered "failing" and 2) the consequences for "failing" involve the use of vouchers and the transfer of public funds to private organizations. The reason why just about every school will be considered "failing" by 2014 is that at that time all schools are supposed to reach 100% proficiency for all measured subgroups (race-based and ability-based). However, one subgroup - English-language learners - are defined precisely by their failure on tests of literacy. Any English-language learner who attains a level of proficiency will pulled out of the English-language learner subgroup. Likewise for those with "special needs." NCLB is not measure progress at all!
Obama has largely continued the program established under Bush's presidency. He has accessorized it with some similarly-minded carrot-wielding programs, like Race to the Top. In Race to the Top, certain states - the "winners" - receive extra funding for their schools. And the basis for this vital funding is arbitrary criteria assigned arbitrary weightings, with a little bit of flawed statistical reasoning thrown into the mix, and topped with subjective ratings. Obama and his appointees to the Department of Education continue to voice their support for school choice, competition, charter schools, and teacher accountability.
Going back to what I claimed are the primary roles served by education in a capitalist society, it is reasonable to ask, how does the project of privatization - essentially eroding the public school system - serve those ends? First, education continues to be subsidized. In fact, with programs like Race to the Top, more federal money is being doled out. True, privatization and choice seem to undermine the assimilative role of education, yet they also stand as affirmations of neoliberal ideology, and work as effective means to increase social stratification. Furthermore, with its premise that education reform is about schools and teachers, and not about poverty and society, the new school reforms have absorbed the efforts and directed the actions of those who wish to change society, forcing them to do so set within certain bounds that do not disrupt the social hierarchy at all.
But mostly I believe it is about unions. There has been a concerted anti-union effort throughout the entire WW2 era, and it has kept the United States economically competitive with other industrialized nations, who have stronger unions and/or higher wages. However, the teachers' unions are now one of the most powerful workers' groups (which says more about that state of unions in general than anything else). Most privatization schemes, be they vouchers, charter schools, "restructuring," etc. undercut teachers' unions. Focus on teacher effectiveness (assigning teachers sole responsibility for student achievement when social factors are far more significant), proposals for merit-based pay, attacks on tenure, the claim teachers should be fired more easily, the de-professionalization of teaching and insistence that there should be no requirements for entering the field - all are direct swipes at teachers' unions.
One thing is certain. The "biggest losers" in the new era of reform, with all of its haphazard tinkering with poor and urban school districts, is the most disadvantaged students in the country.
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