Spartacus,
NCLB certainly has some fine goals — raising achievement, improving the quality of teachers — and parents, of course, aren’t perfect. But the question for policymakers is this: what policies can we actually implement that will _fulfill_ NCLB’s goals (something the law itself has not done).
Having reviewed the historical evidence dating back to before your namesake, and the modern international research from all over the world, I’ve found that far and away the best policy is to promote universal access to a free and competitive educational marketplace.
NCLB and other central mandates are hobbled by the monopoly system in which they try to work. Sure, NCLB aims to improve the quality of the teaching workforce, but in almost every state in the nation you need to get a full college degree _in teaching_ from a state-accredited education school, in order to hold a permanent teaching job in the government schools. The result? Bill Gates couldn’t teach computer science, Lance Armstrong couldn’t teach phys. ed., etc. Maybe they and other subject area experts wouldn’t all turn out to be gifted teachers in the classroom, but under the current system we’ll never find out. In a competitive marketplace, schools have a powerful incentive to hire and retain the best teachers, regardless of their college pedigree.
