No Child Left Behind and the Public Schools - Tapa dura

This important new study takes an in-depth look at the successes and failures of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), quite possibly the most ambitious - and hotly disputed - federal educational initiative since desegregation. Opponents of NCLB criticize it as underfunded and unworkable, in its attempt to square the competing demands of elite- and street-level realities, while supporters see it as a radical educational reform, necessary to even the score between advantaged and disadvantaged students. In all the discussion about NCLB, policy makers have failed to ask the most basic and important question: ""Can we ever really know if a child's education is good?"" Ultimately, Abernathy argues, policy makers must begin from the question of how we produce quality in education, rather than assuming that any test can accurately measure the elusive thing we call ""good"" education.

Scott Franklin Abernathy is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.