It is increasingly looking likely that there will not be any legislative movement to reauthorize No Child Left Behind (NCLB) before the next election. At the same time, it’s worth mentioning the results from the last Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll published in August (the grandaddy of polling American’s attitudes towards public schools for the past 39 years). In the conclusion sections you’ll see that the public is shifting quite significantly away from this public policy. One of the most encouraging results (see table 14 in the report) is the growing disenchantment with the increasing reliance on standardized testing. As the pollsters’ conclusions suggested, it is probably no coincidence that the criticism of standardized testing has developed since this form of appraisal became the principal strategy in implementing NCLB.
Robert Godfrey
AMPS 