It seemed like a good idea at the time…

“We will make the teachers accountable!”  “We need standards!”  “All children will be proficient by 2014!”

The Republicans needed a rallying cry.  They needed an issue…and well, they had always thought that the public education needed an overhaul.  This was as good a time as any.  They brought forth the blessed words of St. Reagan in his reading from the Gospel, “A Nation at Risk”.

It is odd though; the original report did not suggest all the testing that we currently do.  According to Garland (2014) testing was only supposed to be at “at major transition points to identify either the need for remediation or advancement.”  Where did all this need for testing come from?

In my head, I play a scene where I compare Bush and his NCLB with the Caesars and their Colosseum.  It is almost as if  the crowd was crying for blood and Bush thought that giving them Education Reform and tests would keep the plebeians happy.  Of course, that fact that Bush was good buddies with the Chairman of Houghton Mifflon (the people that we all buy the standardized tests from) probably had nothing at all to do with it…