It’s a Sin

American Association of School Administrators Executive Director Paul Houston names what he calls the 7 Deadly Sins of NCLB in Phi Delta Kappan. Before he gets into sloth, greed, and – wait, make that testing, accountability, etc. – he argues that NCLB is flawed because it’s looking at the wrong things. 

“The deadly sins of NCLB are largely the result of a set of wrong assumptions about the problems facing schools and children,” he writes. “If we continue to fix things that are not really broken, we will simply break those things that work while the real problems go unattended.”

There’s plenty of food for thought here. There’s also a memorable analogy that now joins “No Dentist Left Behind” in my arsenal. For sin #6 – “Leaving out the experts,” Houston says [boldface added]:

Those at the federal level do not — and cannot — know better how to educate a child than those working at the child’s level. In other professions, while guidelines are created for public safety, bureaucrats don’t try to second-guess the work of professionals who deliver services. For example, pilots, while subject to rules and regulations, are still presumed to know better how to fly the plane than their passengers. 

BTW, if you’ve studied religion, you’ll remember that the 7 Deadly Sins are also known as “capital vices.”

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