In the marketplace of public policy and educational ideas, few have ever been as effectively, even brilliantly marketed as "No Child Left Behind." Who can argue against mom, apple pie, the American flag, and helping every child? The nickname for this law goes well beyond sounding wholesome and good. In fact, the carefully crafted name commands the dimensions of a moral imperative and a patriotic duty. This alone should have caused each of us to pause and start to think critically.

But we are a busy people. Our lives are filled with endless distractions demanding our immediate attention. We barely trust the headlines, and we certainly do not believe the fine print. Taking the law "by name" and trusting our politicians to take care of our children was quite simply the easy thing to do.

And certainly, the intentions of our law makers were not evil.* However, good intentions do not always sound educational policy make. And unless lawmakers amend NCLB, the number of "failing" schools is about to swell from our present 30% (an absurdity in and of itself) to nearly 100% in the next 7 years. Frankly, this angers me greatly. Such failure will not be on the part of our children and their schools, who will none the less be the target of media's blame, but on the part of the politicians who have crafted poor policy into law.

I am hopeful the law will be substantially amended as having most of America's schools labeled a failure is certainly not a politically defensible position for any lawmaker to withstand. Americans quite simply feel confident that the school down the street is doing a pretty good job.** After all, they know those teachers. They know those children.

Our educators work much too hard. We expect and get more from our students today than at any time in our history. To simply label everyone's hard work and impressive record of achievement a failure is anything but a moral imperative or a patriotic duty. It lacks good common sense and is utterly disrespectful.

But what has caused me the greatest level of concern is the cost of lost opportunity. The unanticipated consequence of this legislation has been the dumbing down of curriculum to fact-based, simple recall for the high-stakes tests--the results from which will punish or reward. (Oh, and the reward? You don't get punished. Wow! And in some high performing schools the system redirects your precious, ever-needed resources to the failing schools. So, I guess you get punished, too.) We need a nation of critical thinkers, creative producers, and problem-solvers, not people who have memorized a minimum body of facts that can be easily tested. Critical thinking is hard to measure. Problem solving is difficult to measure. Creative production is illusive and emotive.

And where has the passion for inquiry and thinking gone? Where has the respect and appreciation for culture gone? These have all been left behind in the wake of frenzied efforts to cram facts, disconnected from their realities and contexts, into the minds of unsuspecting children who would increasingly wonder why they have to learn this if they did not already know: it could be on "the test."

Has the life of this generation been reduced to a test of minimum fact recall? My childhood was framed by my teachers within a context of exploration and discovery, of wonder and of amazement, of awe and inspiration, of the beauty of connection and significance.

We steal from and rob our children so as not to leave a child behind.

California State professor, Art Costa, recently said: "What was once educationally significant, but difficult to measure, has been replaced by what is insignificant and easy to measure. So now we test how well we have taught what we do not value."

Our nation will not feel the horrific cost of this tragically flawed educational policy for at least another decade or two. It will be the invisible numbness of a soulless American society functioning at a basic level of empty blandness and boredom, lacking discovery, invention, and creativity. We will consume more and more in our efforts to discover meaningfulness and significance. We will increasingly become a people incapable of doing the hard work of solving enormous global problems. Perhaps because of our short collective memories, no one will understand how this happened.

Educators and the American people as a whole need to demand accountability of politicians.

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* I am however reading increasingly about efforts within political circles to off load the cost of public education to the private sector--an effort I would categorically believe to be anti-American at its very core!
**38th and 39th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll, August, 2006 and 2007