by George Wood, Superintendent of Federal Hocking Local Schools, Executive Director of the Forum for Education and Democracy and Board Chair of The Coalition of Essential Schools
Our Lake Wobegon moment has finally arrived. This year, all children shall officially be above average.
For those of you who have forgotten, 2014 was the target date by which all children were to be proficient in reading and math. At least that is what the politicians in Washington decreed when, over a decade ago, No Child Left Behind replaced the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
I doubt those who dreamed up this rhetorical sleight-of-hand caught the irony of having the "proficiency" target date fall on the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson's declaration of war on poverty. Ironic because ESEA was a very small part of that war.
Johnson and his allies knew that public education was a crucial weapon in the fight against poverty--especially in still-segregated schools of the South. But the president had no way to influence educational policy because the federal government was, constitutionally, out of the education game.
