By Daniel Pryzbyla Colimnist EdNews.org

Tooting horns and blowing whistles, an education "reform" report from the Aspen Institute's "Commission on No Child Left Behind" appeared front and center stage February13 for Congressional education committee leaders and U.S. Department of Education chief Margaret Spellings. Why? She had said it was "99.9% pure" already.

Hidden in her desk drawer was Machiavelli's infamous political book "The Prince." While some readers might have fuzzy recollections of the term and others unfamiliar with it, a dictionary definition saves time. "Machiavellian – "…being or acting in accordance with the principles of government analyzed in Machiavelli's 'The Prince,' in which political expedience is placed above morality and the use of craft and deceit to maintain the authority and carry out the policies of a ruler is described."

Briefly, Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) was a statesman in the city-state of Florence before Italy later became a country. Originally drafted in 1513 as a letter of political advice to the new ruler of Florence, "The Prince" in translated form is a mere 90 pages. Almost 500 years later, it's not limited only to politicians' personal libraries, but available at your local library too. It's even sold in bookstores. Most likely, the book, considered a "Classic," is still required reading for political science majors and MBA programs. Chapter XVIII, "How rulers should keep their promises," can easily be downsized nowadays to include public and corporate figureheads. It begins, "Everyone knows how praiseworthy it is for a ruler to keep his promises, and live uprightly and not by trickery. Nevertheless, experience shows that in our times the rulers who have done great things are those who have set little store by keeping their word, being skillful rather in cunningly deceiving men; they have got the better of those who have relied on being trustworthy."

By mere coincidence, education chief Spellings only official press release the same day heaped praise on the Aspen Institute's report. "The Aspen Institute's Commission on No Child Left Behind report: 'Beyond NCLB: Fulfilling the Promise to Our Nation's Children' released today illustrates the broad, bipartisan commitment to improving our nation's schools that was behind the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001." "…I am encouraged that the Commission addressed embedding growth models in the law to measure student achievement over time, the pressing need for highly qualified teachers in every classroom, and more significant interventions and critical resources for schools that are chronically underperforming."

It's amazing she's heaping praise on an "institute commission" in an official press release for the education act that she portrayed "99.9% pure" to begin with. A 15-member commission headed by 2 ex-governors and a slew of private voucher supporters with 75 recommendations, funded by 6 foundations was needed to add ".1%" to make it "100% pure"? Not very likely; especially when the funding included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. "Co-chairs Secretary Tommy Thompson and Gov. Roy Barnes have my gratitude for their dedication to reauthorizing and improving the law. I welcome their help in moving the renewal process forward. I also look forward to working with them and their colleagues in the coming weeks and months as we urge Congress to reauthorize the law," said the Commission's cheerleader.

Co-chair Tommy Thompson was the former Republican governor of Wisconsin, well known for dismantling the state's welfare department and replacing it with "W-2," a failed non-profit system aimed more to gut welfare rolls than "provide jobs." Yes, same $5.15 per hour minimum wage, temporary jobs they are still working at today. In turn, within Milwaukee, these were frequently the vast number of single mothers of color with children attending Milwaukee Title 1 public schools. Later, he added to his dismantling of public services credentials. Thompson played a key roll influencing one of the nation's first private and religious school voucher programs for Milwaukee in 1998. For these political deeds, Republican President George W. Bush appointed him Secretary of Health and Human Services during his first term. Politicians willing to gut public services for profiteering from the taxpayers' coffers are rewarded. However, they call it "saving" taxpayers money. Machiavelli was cheering in his grave.
"See? It works!"

Besides the Aspen Institute's report, numerous other organizations "committed to educating all of America's students" had also given "official" testimony at committee hearings, but opposing the current NCLB education law – not enhancing it. However, pro-voucher Spellings intentionally omitted them from the official department press release.

The "Commission" report garnered attention in a New York Times article the following day – "Tougher Standards Urged for Federal Education Law," by reporter Diana Jean Schemo. "No Child Left Behind, the federal education law, should be toughened to judge teachers and principals by their students' test scores, and to block chronically ineffective educators from working in high-poverty schools, a bi-partisan commission recommended Tuesday," she wrote. According to the article, "The chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate education committees promised that the recommendations would be part of the debate over renewing the law. That set this report apart from the flurry of proposals on updating No Child Left Behind coming out in recent weeks." Monty Neill, executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, which is skeptical of standardized exams, said "the recommendations will only intensify teaching to the test."

"Citing broad variations in achievement standards between states, the commission also recommended that states adopt a national standard of achievement, pegged to the National Assessment of Educational Progress," she reported.

Reg Weaver, president of the National Educators Association, said the "Commission" report "recommending that teacher status be tied to student test scores is ill-conceived." He said such an approach would impose stiff penalties on teachers and result in even more emphasis on "teaching to the test." Test scores are no "crystal ball" he asserted. "They give snapshots of student performance. They don't reveal the complete picture of what goes on in a classroom: the resources, student preparations and parental involvement that play a key role in determining if a teacher will be 'effective.' Congress should reject this negative proposal and instead focus on positive efforts to ensure that all teachers have the skills and support they need to close gaps in student achievement.

"This ill-conceived proposal would add even more bureaucratic hoops for teachers to jump through," said the NEA President. "It's like asking an orchestra to play a symphony and not checking to see if they have instruments. Effective teaching requires giving teachers what they need to be successful – smaller class sizes, mentoring programs, professional development and professional pay," said Weaver. "This proposal pits teachers against each other and would label one out of four teachers as unqualified and ineffective. It will discourage teachers from teaching in hard-to-staff schools, where students may not score high enough on standardized tests."

American Federation of Teachers president Edward J. McElroy stated, "The Highly Qualified and Effective Teachers recommendation in the commission's report should be a nonstarter for the congressional committees dealing with reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). If we have learned anything in the years since NCLB was enacted, it is that teachers and paraprofessionals working in classrooms are the ones who know best what works and what does not. Our members have had five years of experience with NCLB, and they know now that the law's school accountability mechanism, the "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) formula, is not a useful tool in distinguishing between good schools and schools in need of help. How, then, can we ask teachers to accept another unproven accountability formula when five years of living with NCLB has demonstrated that fundamentally flawed, ideology-driven, top-down proposals don't work?"

Utilizing only high-stakes testing for student "achievement" has had its damaging personal and financial consequences for Title 1 students, parents, teachers and public schools. From it's onset in 2001, NCLB was implemented solely for society's most socio-economically and racially disadvantaged education population attending Title 1 public schools. High-stakes testing and AYP demands have never been an all-encompassing gauge for knowledge and learning. If they were, why are not all charter, religious and private schools in poor neighborhoods exploiting this NCLB brainchild and its consequences?

NCLB Machiavellian tactics continue to dismantle still another public domain.

Published Februay 19, 2007