[I hope this post about the changes to No Child Left Behind proposed by Congress proves interesting. It was originally posted on Edwize and written by Edwize blogger Jackie Bennett in response to a New York Times editorial.]

Every corner of the educational community has protested the consequences of No Child Left Behind, including that the law has narrowed the curriculum and unfairly penalized schools already making progress.

In spite of that, an editorial in the NY Times defends the status quo. Referring to proposed NCLB revisions, the Times complains that the changes will "allow schools to mask failure in teaching crucial subjects like reading and math by giving them credit for student performance in other subjects."

Yet, just one paragraph earlier the Times has this to say: "Faced with poorly educated workers at home — especially in science — American companies are increasingly looking abroad."

So, on one hand, kids are poorly educated in science. But on the other, says the Times, we should make no attempt to remediate that deficiency by broadening NCLB so that it includes science in its accountability framework. That contradiction is especially troubling given that NCLB has not just failed to address student deficiencies in subjects like science and social studies; it has exacerbated them too.

Apparently, those deficiencies show up locally as well. At a CEC meeting on Staten Island on September 10, [NYC School Chancellor] Joel Klein made the comment that while high school students seem to be performing passably well on English and Math Regents, the results are not very good in Science and Social Studies. That surprises none of us who have watched K-8 resources shift away from well-rounded curriculum to an almost obsessive focus on just two subjects – all in a response to the serious flaws in NCLB.

As it stands, NCLB is a blunt instrument applied to a complex issue. In fact, with their multiple disciplines, multiple settings, multiple populations, multiple economics, and multiple cultural contexts schools are about as complicated as the world in which they exist. Nonetheless, the Times (and the Business Roundtable it references) would have us ignore those complexities out of an unfounded fear that addressing them will be "confusing."

In order to fix NCLB, lawmakers need to grapple with the complexity of education, not ignore it. Because right now, like most simple and politically expedient laws imposed on complex issues (remember the California golf clubs?(1)), it doesn't work.

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1. The link may be restricted. It references a NY Times editorial that decries the three-strikes-you're-out law that sentenced a man who stole golf clubs to 25 to life.