School daze

Let's try to think of something good that has come out of the No Child Left Behind law. Personally, I can't think of anything. Teachers are teaching to the test, which means that the amount of actual education is being reduced. Sometimes the kids fail the proficiency test anyway, so you've got students who know only how to prepare for a test and still no federal bucks.

These kids may be punished by having their teachers replaced or their schools closed. Isn't this a fun law?

State legislators are also going nuts. In South Carolina (why does all the really good stuff happen in South Carolina?), 81 percent of elementary and middle schools missed their testing targets in 2008. The Legislature responded by reducing the level of achievement defined as proficient.

It's laughable, of course, but it points out the essential absurdity of the exercise: The test is king. The test makes our decisions for us. We can fool the test by cheating, one way or another, but the test is still dominant. You want to know how your kids are doing in school? Ask the test.

Now, according to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, more than 80,000 of the country's 100,000 public schools could be labeled as failing after the next round of tests. Does that mean that 80 percent of our nation's children are receiving lousy educations? Probably not. It probably means that the rapidly escalating standards set by the test are poorly thought out.

As the test diverges further and further from reality, it becomes less useful as a way of measuring anything. Maybe the test will not be king for long.

As Sam Dillon put it in the New York Times: "Critics of the law say it is a bit like requiring all city police forces to end certain crimes - like burglary and drug trafficking - by 2014. They have also long predicted that the law will, over time, determine that all but a handful of schools are failing - a label that would demoralize educators, lower property values and mislead parents about the instructional climates in their schools."

Demoralizing educators seems to be something of a crusade for lawmakers on the right. Republican governors of the Tea Party persuasion have decided that demonizing teachers is the best way to pass union-busting bills. They have put it out that teachers are getting rich, rich, rich and taking luxury vacations in Tahiti.

In fact, it is the legislators themselves who are getting rich, rich, rich, thanks to liberalized campaign finance bills and their embarrassingly slavish eagerness to do whatever their wealthy patrons want or need. The teachers are just the latest group to become the focus of whipped-up resentments.

But of course it's not really only the teachers who would be punished if all these cost-cutting measures went into effect. No, it would be the kids - perchance your kids, although what we know of the plan in California suggests that it's a lot less draconian than those in Wisconsin, Ohio or Michigan.

But if there are fewer teachers because of salary cuts and school closures, there will be more students per classroom, up into the 38-to-44 range, according to some predictions. And what's the single biggest predictor of academic achievement? Class size. Teaching 40 kids isn't really teaching; it's just coping.

An estimated 20 to 25 percent of American children live under the poverty line. The surest way out of poverty is education. If your kid is going to be in a classroom with 39 other kids, and learning about how to take some test they probably won't pass anyway, and making do with shared desks and shared books and inadequate school supplies, what chance does he or she have?

What we have here is the class system being reimposed on America, after a 70-year period when it looked as if we might be fighting our way toward economic opportunity. The rich are getting richer (and they are writing the laws and buying the politicians), and the poor are getting poorer (and more desperate, and angrier, and more resentful), and mechanisms are now being put in place to make sure those trends continue.

So here's what I think, dreamer that I am: I think the No Child Left Behind law should be scrapped. Bad idea; time to drown it in the bathtub. And the money that is saved by disbanding its bureaucratic structures should go right to teacher subsidies. Because they do need it, whatever else you have heard. Don't believe the big lie. Don't believe the little lies either, but that's another column.