“Pass the damn test”!

“One of the greatest mistakes is to judge a policy on its intentions rather than its results.”

-Milton Friedman

            “Yeah, but you still ain’t said why my progress wasn’t adequate”(Beers, pg 2).  The idea of neoliberalism does not allow for this student to be excited about his own progress because he did not “pass the damn test”(Beers, pg 3).  To the outside world, the idea of just hiring a company to come in and “fix” any and all education problems makes sense.   But to those of us on the front lines of education this is a ridiculous idea that cannot work.  And it has nothing to do with revising textbooks or providing new reading materials, its simply because students are children who need to be reached in more ways than one.  Big business does not get this, and in reality, they don’t want to.  If they “got” it, their materials would “fix” an issue and that would be the end of them. 

            Neoliberalism’s main agenda is to privatize the education sector.  This way for-profit companies can make lots of money while quietly wishing that students fail the next state test. Guess what happens then?  These for-profit companies will be called back in to reassess the “problems” and provide another expensive program that should help the students “pass the damn test”! 

             The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, also known as “NCLB” is a US federal law that was originally proposed by President George W. Bush in 2001.  The intent of NCLB is that all children will meet state academic achievement standards to reach their full potential through improved programs. In 2003, author Jack Huberman argued that the NCLB was specifically designed to make schools fail in order to clear the road for voucher and charter schools. Charter schools are neoliberalism’s logical conclusion for education, where schools would become for-profit institutions (Trammel 2005). During the Bush administration, government actively pushed for voucher programs and charter schools.             

            Wanna know what I think would help students “pass the damn test”?  Let the teachers teach the way they know how, allow the students to learn at their own pace, stop placing stress and time demands on a population that is already close to breaking.  And maybe, just maybe, ask the teachers and students what they think will help in the classroom, because Big Business really has no idea.