By Daniel Pryzbyla Columnist EdNews.org

"Trustworthy – deserving of trust or confidence; dependable; reliable." Since its bi-partisan support and enforcement in 2002, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) public education act's K-12 student testing experiment has failed miserably. It has not been trustworthy in implementing a law allegedly enacted to help all children learn.

Most politicians supporting NCLB probably never envisioned the new high-stakes testing law with its arbitrary and capricious nation-wide rules and punishments being an "experiment" of the nation's Title I public school students, teachers and staffs. But that is exactly what it has turned out to be. Certainly, its new rules, demands and consequences had never been used before. Nor have any Congresspersons voting on NCLB ever experienced these conditions in their personal K-12 schooling. Likewise, none of the architects of NCLB had ever participated in such high-stakes testing during their K-12 education. Call it by any name you wish, it doesn't change its inherent educational experimentation status.

They consciously omitted it being "experimental" because of its implications of "uncertainty." Uncertainty, of course, is a normal factor not only in basic introductory school science projects, but also at higher levels of experimentation. How soon we forget earlier political and religious leaders who assumed the "world" to be flat. After this proved to be false, they and educators later believed the earth to be the center of the universe. Scientific experimentation by Copernicus and later Galileo proved this to be false, but a century had elapsed before its official public recognition. It wasn't until 1961 the Catholic Vatican officially apologized for its earlier imprisonment of Galileo. His crime? He had refused to keep his scientific discovery with a telescope a secret any longer.

Any type experiment brings with it uncertainties. The same is true for social and socioeconomic experiments such as NCLB. It too has proven it's not an exception to these uncertainties, especially in K-12 education and its ongoing development of our diverse, youngest population. Initially focusing on Title I, K-8 public school low-income populations throughout the country, NCLB-driven politics also included the bold, divisive pro-voucher, "privatization" initiative in the act. Historically and politically, these have been 2 separate education entities. Although defeated, its post-NCLB political activities reveal the significant differences. Voucher advocates use "school choice" as a marketing slogan to "compete" with public schools. However, this competition within NCLB would not exist on an equal playing field. The major difference would have been, and still is – being private and religious schools, they would not have had to comply with NCLB public law requiring its high-stakes testing dictates, punishments and "school sanction" rules. Not exactly fair "competition."

The Republican pro-voucher initiated NCLB act's inclusion of vouchers had revealed its deceptive cornerstone. This would prove to be ongoing in NCLB future implementation endeavors. As with any hypothesis, far more reaching questions had to be asked and answered before NCLB could be enacted, but weren't. If some of them had been, it was behind closed doors. Public educators on the front lines being directly and indirectly affected by the bi-partisan act had been left out of proceedings and decision making. Basic experiment instructions point out, "Design an experimental procedure to test your hypothesis." Of course, few politicians had even seen or read the entire 800-page NCLB experimental document. A 90-page "summary" is what they had to cast their vote on. This was politics on the fast-track. Yet they were debating a major NCLB public experimental education issue. It would formulate nation-wide consequences aimed specifically at socioeconomic distressed neighborhoods and racially low-income families.

NCLB high-stakes testing experimenters have not abandoned their political privatization plans and goals. For vouchers, it's been a double-edged sword. They had never won any of their voucher-initiated voting referendums in any states they tried. Competing with each other in a "competitive marketplace" to increase enrollment, religious status and/or bank accounts proved too restrictive. Plucking a few public school students now and then throughout the years also proved too limiting. To their chagrin, an estimated 90 percent of students were still being educated in taxpayer funded public schools. Since other private initiatives had succeeded raiding public services, there had to be a way.

Follow others' same game plan – proclaim inefficiency and high costs for "failing" public schools. NCLB high-stakes testing would be used to agitate, punish or even close the most vulnerable low-performing public schools in districts located in the most vulnerable socioeconomic distressed areas. If this sounds hypocritical, it is. Obviously, they haven't found a "free marketplace" yet either. A trustworthy scheme?

Outside officialdom of "free marketplace" theory, there are examples of "court ordered" private and religious voucher school programs. One of these is the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) in Milwaukee, WI. Although court ordered, it began as a "secular" private school program for only Milwaukee low-income parent(s). Started in the 1990-91 school year, it had a 300 student enrollment at a cost of $2,446 per student. However, a significant issue often omitted in political dialogue was these new "taxpayer" costs were deducted from the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) district's annual budget. By the 1997-98 school year, MPCP secular enrollment had increased to 1,497 students at a cost per student of $4,696. The approximate $7 million was still being deducted from MPS.

After highly contentious political debates to include "religious" schools in MPCP, they were finally admitted – again by court order – to begin the 1998-99 school year. The inclusion of religious schools also dramatically increased MPCP enrollment to 5,751 students now at the cost of $4,894 per student. The total $28.7 million was again deducted from the MPS budget. As expected, a political backlash erupted expecting MPS to continue deducting the increasing costs from its budget with MPCP "religious inclusion." If it was court-mandated, why should MPS have to continue to drain its budget at the expense of education programs for its students?A politically divisive agreement was finally reached. MPS would pay 50 percent of MPCP costs and the other 400-plus state public school districts would pay the other 50 percent beginning the 1999-2000 school year.

MPCP enrollment had increased again to 7,575 students at an increased cost of $5,106 per student, hiking its budget in the 1999-2000 school year to $39.1 million. MPS 50 percent share of the cost was $19.5 million. Without having to pay private tuition any longer, this provided a second year of "free lunch" for the vastly religious student majority now attending MPCP schools. Of these, almost 70 percent were Catholic. Vouchers had found their "competitive marketplace" in Milwaukee. Better yet, they didn't even have to "compete" for tax dollars or "compete" in any Wisconsin academic testing accountability rules. This was the type voucher "blueprint" that would have been included in NCLB, if it hadn't been defeated.

Other voucher advocates simply detest public education – period. "The contract strategy we propose in this book would break up the public monopoly over the provision of public education and devolve responsibility for operating schools to non-public entities, including groups of teachers, parents, social service organizations, and private firms," said Paul T. Hill, Lawrence C. Pierce and James W. Guthrie in their RAND Corporation study, "Reinventing Public Education: How contracting can transform America's schooling" published in 1997 by the University of Chicago Press. "Contracting in public education is part of a larger reform movement to redefine the appropriate roles for government in American life."

This gives a hint the Department of Education NCLB bureaucrats are really cozy with a wide variety of voucher-related supporters besides NCLB high-stakes testing fans. To, "…devolve responsibility for operating schools to non-public entities" and education to be a part of a larger reform movement "to redefine the appropriate roles for government in American life" go a bit further than NCLB's current experimental agenda goals. And exactly who will promote this experimental hypothesis to a future NCLB agenda? Will this too be asked for Congressional bi-partisan support?

In her Rethinking Schools Winter 2004-05 article "Keeping Public Schools Public," Barbara Miner commented on the power being handed to testing companies. "There has been little public outcry over the fact that private, multinational companies operating beyond public oversight are determining which students, schools, and districts in the United States are deemed "failures" and which are deemed 'successes.' Given the secrecy that shrouds testing company operations, information is negligible."

NCLB experimentation has failed every education litmus test from its inception. Expecting it to become trustworthy is fool's gold. Its renewal would be a cruel hoax.