Spellings Defends Toxic NCLB Policies

Even though national test performance gains were higher before NCLB than after, and even though the achievement gaps between black and white/rich and poor remain gaping, and even though ACT scores are flat and SAT scores are at a ten year low, and even though child poverty has risen steadily over the past 15 years, and even though millions of our best teachers have been run out of teaching by unethical testing and pressure cooker accountability practices, and even though tens of thousands of communities across the country have lost their schools to corporate welfare charter reform schools, and even though  90+ percent of the nation's schools were failing by 2014 (based on Spellings' impossible definition of "adequate"), and even though a half-million parents last year opted their children out of the racist and classist tests that Margaret Spellings' policies inspired, even with all this, the bloviating cow, Margaret Spellings, yesterday defended the most damaging and irresponsible education policy in American history:

Spellings, a key architect of No Child Left Behind, made no apologies for an accountability system that is now vehemently derided by schools and parents. Many have that luxury, Spellings said, because it's not their children who are failed by public schools. School districts and board members are always ready with an excuse as to why some children, especially those in poverty, can't learn.

"It made people uncomfortable and it still makes people uncomfortable, this idea that adults need to do a better job serving our students," Spellings said. "How can we hold onto that outrage in our heads when only half of our minority students are getting out of high school? How can we hold that idea in our head with the notion that all our teachers are effective and pretty much all the schools are good, but half the kids aren't performing and our workforce is at risk?"

Outrage, indeed!  Under Spellings' watch, resegregation of schools escalated, labeling and sorting of children became standard school practice, child health deteriorated, school funding became more unfair, teaching became scripted, curriculum was canned, child stress soared as learning waned and play was banned in many schools, school privatization proliferated, and child poverty rose to an all time high. So yes, Margaret, I'm holding the rage.