A Monday Washington Post Op-Ed has drawn some strong responses from the ed reform blogging circles for what seems to be an over-simplified version of NCLB's impact on schools and children.

In the op-ed, a second grade teacher from Silver Spring, Maryland decries one of the consequences of NCLB which, in his opinion, has been the creation of a "skills gap" between minority and low income children and their white and more wealthy counterparts. By focusing on narrowing the "achievement gap", i.e. the basic skills like reading, writing, and math in which disadvantaged children are often as much as four years behind, the author alleges that those schools are actually perpetuating a "caste system" in which poor and minority kids are being trained for low-level jobs and the more fortunate kids are being taught critical thinking skills for the 21st century.

The main culprit, the author continues, is standardized testing, which has in his estimation and experience created two kinds of classrooms based on where a child goes to school. One is the classroom for the children who are behind, where youth are rigorously trained and taught how to read, write, add, and subtract so that they can pass the standardized tests. The second is the classroom for children who attend school in nicer, wealthier districts where the kids are taught high level, critical thinking skills (he gives the examples of learning about the Underground Railroad, performing dances based on retold versions of Cinderella, and planning how to save wolves from extinction).

The biggest problem with this Op-Ed is that it ignores the real-life consequences of what it proposes. The author seems to suggest that the children who enter fifth grade only able to read and do math at a first grade level don't need to improve on those skills in order to succeed in the 21st century. I can only infer that the author believes that if only these children knew how to retell Cinderella with their own choreography... that only then they would be prepared to succeed. As Kevin Carey from the Education Sector notes, there was a time before NCLB when schools were not asked to show how well they were teaching low-income and minority students, and when there were no punishments when the least advantaged children were simply discounted and disregarded in school. During this pre-NCLB period, our schools had exactly the kind of freedoms that the author cries out for, to do what they wanted without consequence with their low-income and minority students. Does the author of the WaPo Op-Ed mean to suggest that during these glory days, all children were receiving excellent education regardless of their family income or skin color? And how exactly is it that students will be able to do the "high level thinking" in high school if they don't possess basic abilities in reading and writing?

To be sure, concerns are well-placed any time a child in the 2nd or 3rd grade cries in school, whether its out of anxiety over a standardized test or for any other reason. But let's remember that most of the text anxiety that students create is the fault of districts and states who implement grade-promotion requirements, which are never mentioned in NCLB. And let's not forget that because of the powerful local role in education, it has always been individual schools and principals who choose whether to make test preparation a small part of an overall lesson plan, or whether to implement "drill and kill" type marathons where kids only learn how to fill out bubbles. To blame NCLB for poor pedagogical decisions made in schools would be like blaming the First Amendment for the existence of hate speech.

Lastly, we need to remember that every time we nod in shared reproach about the harmful psychological impact of testing on kids, that it is the same tests which have provided motivation and the satisfaction of high-achievement to thousands of our education system's greatest success stories in KIPP schools and elsewhere, the kinds of success stories that The Ron Clark Story and other movies glorify.

The point of this is not to cheerlead for NCLB. To be sure, there are serious problems that need addressing with the law. Too many schools are truly hamstrung by the blunt ways in which it attempts to measure proficiency, and too many schools making real progress are not given due credit because of nuances in the law. One could also argue that the basic bargain of NCLB hasn't been met either on the part of the federal government, which is that schools must be held accountable to high standards, but government must first provide the resources needed to reach those standards to begin with. And then there is the issue of those standards themselves and whether they are high enough to be meaningful. But if we decide in the next year or two not to reauthorize NCLB, please don't let it be because we want schools to have the choice to stop focusing on our nation's least fortunate children. That, I'm afraid, would be a much greater sacrifice then a child missing out on Cinderella dance practice for the sake of learning grammar.