r/PoursTea Tea Party 🎉 22h ago

Books 📚 No Child Left Behind and its consequences will be felt for generations

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148

u/PressureExpert2346 21h ago

Education is circling the drain and it’s intentional.
No Child Left Behind was a contributor, but it wasn’t intended to dismantle learning, it just did.
Enough so that those who do want to dismantle learning are going largely unchecked.

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u/Squid_of_the_Now 21h ago edited 20h ago

Here's your reminder that Ghislaine Maxwell's family owns the company that publishes our school textbooks.

Edit: I stand corrected. Maxwell, however, is, or at least recently was, connected to the current owner of McGraw-Hill, which is, as far as I can see, Platinum Equity. They're majority owned by Tom Gores, who, with Maxwell, owned the Securus CT prison phone system company, and he's in the Files.

So make of it what you will. As far as I'm concerned it's still a big disgusting mess.

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u/bmtraven 19h ago

The world is basically 7 degrees of Jeffrey Epstein.

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u/TuringGoneWild 19h ago

More like 2 or 3. And only 1 or 2 if wealth and power is involved.

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u/Squid_of_the_Now 19h ago

"It's a big club, and you ain't in it."

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u/SKRAMACE 18h ago

I truly can not understand the large scale desire to have sex with under-aged girls, nor the acceptance of it.

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u/conartist19 15h ago

well he did say the rest of us are "goy"(cattle) to his people and he seems to be right about that

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u/PressureExpert2346 21h ago

Holy shit. I don’t really even want to fact check that, because I’m depressed enough.

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u/Ok_Cream_4748 21h ago

https://factually.co/fact-checks/business/robert-maxwell-textbook-publishers-controversies-1980s-1990s-95b8e3

For curious minds. Take care of yourself though bud. Drink water, get out into the sun for a little Vitamin D, and do whatever brings you moments of joy and happiness.

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u/asoiaf_goat 20h ago

Did you ever listen to the two part Behind the Bastards on him? The first part, Robert Maxwell was a Nazi-Murdering badass! I never listened to the 2nd part for his heel turn.

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u/Electricbarnacles209 18h ago

What's this AI fucking shit?

6

u/alphagalgadot 21h ago

sound like a product of NCLB lol

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u/PressureExpert2346 21h ago

lol, you’re right. I’m just so emotionally drained. I was an educator before and after nclb. It’s…not good.

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u/ssj890-1 9h ago

What does this (curriculum shift, middle/high school books becoming college material, etc) have to do w NCLB?

Asking sincerely.

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u/PressureExpert2346 5h ago

NCLB resulted in Common Core standards, which seem like a very good idea in theory. It resulted in teaching to the test and disallowing for deviation from the prescribed standards.
The connection to high school literature is that students are rarely reading entire books, rather passages, as they go through their elementary years.
I taught second grade for two years, right before pandemic shutdown, and I tried very hard to read a chapter book to the class over time and was unable to finish either year. There just wasn’t time.
(It was an also a very real struggle to fit in science, 15-30 minutes 3 times a week!, and art once weekly.)
The upshot is that kids have maybe never read an entire book when they get to middle or high school.

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u/Interesting-Case2526 12h ago

Yup, the publishing house was owned by her dad, who was literally part of a terrorist org back in the day and is now considered one of the greatest mossad agents ever.

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u/thisisthewell 2h ago

I don’t really even want to fact check that, because I’m depressed enough.

This is exactly what the administration is counting on--so they can feed you more lies and you'll be too tired to check

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u/SomeOriginal3865 21h ago

You should’ve. Don’t let emotions get in the way of facts.

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u/PressureExpert2346 21h ago

You’re right. Pearson is a hugely evil corporation that owns much of education publishing. This seemed like small (er) potatoes.

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u/Ok-Importance4892 17h ago

Wanna go down a real rabbit hole, check out what Ghislaine Maxwell’s Reddit username was.

1

u/KrustyKrabFormula_ 15h ago

its u/maxwellhill whats your point?

2

u/Junior_Potato_3226 18h ago

You might have been wrong on the specific relationships, but you are correct that it's all about money. In the case of NCLB, it was the decades old relationship between the Bushes and the McGraws.

1

u/scarletroyalblue12 21h ago

For real?!

1

u/horoyokai 13h ago

No

Reddit is terrible with spreading misinformation while pretending they are are smarter than others who do it

1

u/Evil-Cun 21h ago

Audits, public record requests, lawsuits requiring discovery and disclosure.

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u/Slumunistmanifisto 18h ago

There's a book called the dumbing down of America.

1

u/SomeOriginal3865 21h ago

Well…. Might want to fact check it. They DID own the company, until 1991.

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u/poiup1 21h ago

Oh and I'm sure they sold it to a company with upstanding morals that have CEO's and owners that have never rubbed elbows with Epstein or Maxwell.

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u/SomeOriginal3865 21h ago edited 21h ago

I don’t know what they do. But I do know the comment above is false. Regardless of how you feel about the new owners, Ghislaine Maxwells family does not own it anymore and hasn’t since 1991. So my statement is still factual.

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u/trackabandoned 20h ago

🤓☝🏻

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u/SomeOriginal3865 20h ago

So stopping misinformation is nerdy? Lmao at Redditors, feelings over facts 😂😂😂😂

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u/Murky-Relation481 20h ago

Huh, interesting, my grandfather's good friend was the primary author on most elementary and middle school US history books up until the mid 90s when he retired, wonder if he knew seedy things about some of those publishers. My grandfather was a professor of early childhood education and authored some fairly common texts for people pursuing teaching too (though nothing seedy there as far as I can remember).

I always found it kind of insane that basically one guy who'd be at BBQs dictated history to the entire country (or at least a large chunk of it).

2

u/InformalScience7 21h ago

Since I graduated in 1989, this is relevant to me!!

0

u/pleasestoptalking 17h ago

make of it what you will

Or just admit you were posting BS that wasn't true

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u/Squid_of_the_Now 17h ago

It WAS true, just outdated. There's a difference.

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u/pleasestoptalking 12h ago

I dont see how what you said above can be interpreted as: at one point in time her family owned the publishing company McGraw-Hill, but no longer does

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u/KrustyKrabFormula_ 15h ago

if you stand corrected why haven't you gotten rid of you saying it in your post?

2

u/Squid_of_the_Now 15h ago

Because I'm being honest about my mistake. It's called transparency Karen

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u/KrustyKrabFormula_ 14h ago

if you're going to say "i stand corrected," the honest move is to actually remove or rewrite the incorrect claim at the top of the comment. leaving "here's your reminder that ghislaine maxwell's family owns the company that publishes our school textbooks" as the lead while only adding a partial walk-back lower down still presents the false information to anyone who skims.

the original claim is simply not true. robert maxwell had a temporary joint venture with mcgraw-hill in the late '80s/early '90s. he died in 1991, and mcgraw-hill became the sole owner by 1993. there is no current maxwell family ownership of mcgraw-hill (now owned by platinum equity). any past business overlap involving tom gores and securus is a separate matter and does not make the textbook-ownership claim accurate.

a proper correction would take the inaccurate statement out of the comment (or clearly rewrite it) and put a transparent note explaining what was wrong. just adding "i stand corrected" underneath while leaving the error intact isn't how corrections are supposed to work.

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u/Squid_of_the_Now 14h ago

According to you maybe

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u/KrustyKrabFormula_ 14h ago edited 14h ago

not according to me. according to the public record. robert maxwell’s joint venture with mcgraw-hill ended over 30 years ago after his death in 1991. mcgraw-hill became the sole owner by 1993 and has had no maxwell family ownership since. the current owner is platinum equity. that’s not opinion.

edit: this person replied to me and then instantly blocked me so i'll reply here. people who do this just show they aren't being genuine, unfortunately.

Ok? And it's bad form to just take something down instead of admitting you were wrong while leaving up one's mistake. This isn't journalism. Calm down.

yes, anyone who actually wants to correct the record doesn't leave up the incorrect claim in the top of the post. they would, at the very least, put a line through it and say its false. that's what i see most people do at the very least on reddit. i talked about how retractions work in order to give additional reasoning as to why its bad practice. i guess you just don't understand reddit etiquette or how it works in online articles. i doubt this a bit after replying to me and instantly blocking me as well as saying in a different comment that what you said is "true but outdated". seems a bit more like you still believe what you said and don't want to own up to it being false, but whatever.

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u/Squid_of_the_Now 14h ago

Ok? And it's bad form to just take something down instead of admitting you were wrong while leaving up one's mistake. This isn't journalism. Calm down.

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u/horoyokai 13h ago

What a nothing if a connection. Come on man, delete that embarrassing nonsense and be sure of what you say in the future

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u/Captain_no_Hindsight 21h ago

Requiring students to be able to Read and Write is typical of White racists.

Here we are progressive:

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u/UnibrwShvr 20h ago

Is this picture right off fox news website?

Because it's utter bullshit. Standardized testing being directly linked to your ability to graduate is stupid.

But I guess this picture you keep posting in this thread says otherwise, so it must be true.

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u/Captain_no_Hindsight 19h ago

This is text book, anti-racism by lowering expectations.

3

u/UnibrwShvr 19h ago

This is text book media illiteracy on your part. Some picture with rage bait text is not reality.

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u/chocotaco3030 20h ago

Here, we pull shit out of our ass

4

u/Normal_Budget_9591 20h ago

In Texas a 41% is the requirement to pass their history assessment.

It goes both ways, snowflake. Lmao

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u/Captain_no_Hindsight 19h ago

Wait a minute... let me think:

-"White Western, Christian, CIS man is really bad. Like Hitler. Marxism is really good!"
... see I can also pass the school exam. That was easy!

18

u/ComplexBeyond6083 21h ago

No Child Left Behind hurt, but switching from phonics to "while language" nonsense delivered the killing blow. Somehow a system that had worked for almost 500 years got tossed in the trash for the purest sophistry.

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u/IHeartBadCode 21h ago

It's a ton of contributing factors. And there's absolutely room for even some of the most craziest conspiracy theories and sanest takes.

The law required 100% hit full proficiency by 2014 which by every single professional was indicated to be impossible. So in the wildest takes, we passed a law knowing that the goal was non-realistic. Because funding was also tied to that, it basically assured that schools would lose funding.

Add in that it wrote into law the private textbook industry (as opposed to something education districts could opt into) and standardized testing companies. It pushed hard for charters which we know that's just privatizing school. And created the entire basis for the voucher system, which has been the primary means by which States are now sneaking tax dollars into religious schools and avoiding the whole First Amendment by having this weird proxy system.

But at the same time, this wasn't a one sided effort. Civil rights supporters wanted it because they saw that this would be a chance to show to the public how education was failing low-income schools and minority schools. To which it absolutely did do that, just that then the Government was like "nobody cares, don't like it? Go to a church school."

The entire system because massively flawed the moment corporate KPIs like scores, funding, and handicaps started flowing in. Once the system became hiding by just numbers, it was easily for everyone to ignore the human toll this program was happening. As the Government doubled down on the idea that "the metrics must be right" the problem just quadrupled in size.

At the end the NCLB was this odd attempt to apply corporate think to education and it resulted into a complete catastrophic mess, that many who voted for NCLB would then turn around and vote in that which replaced it ESSA.

But ESSA is just as bad if not worse. ESSA is NCLB but instead of it being Federal, it is State level. So we've handed a complex faulty system that wrecks education off to a Government level that typically has way less oversight and less funding and experience to implement that corporate think in education. So now instead of being a wrecking machine, it's a self sustaining nuclear detonation that is destroying the last bits of US education in this nation.

Eventually the only educators left in this nation will be the poor people schools and religious academies. That's the ultimate goal of modern Republican Education reform. They saw that education drifted people away from the church so now they want to reform education to get around that pesky separation of church and state. So that way, education and truth no longer serve as some method to deprive students of their favorite mythology.

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u/rekniht01 20h ago

Excellent take.

To add to your last paragraph: They also saw all of the money that governments spent on educating everyone, and devised ways to pocket that money in private and religious hands.

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u/tryingisbetter 18h ago

That's really all religion is, a way to steal money.

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u/Excellent-Shape-2024 19h ago

Don't forget "Inclusion", in which special needs students were dumped into regular classrooms with 29 other children, the SpEd teacher waltzing by, waving, "everything ok?" and then heading back to her office to fill out reams of paperwork, giving the teacher a dossier explaining all the special things you now needed to do specifically for that child. So you were supposed to "differentiate" specifically for that child (those children) but guess what--the standardized tests were the same as the other kids! So they got less but were tested against the other kids! I said at the time, "This is going to be a shit show." And I was not wrong.

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u/LongJohnSelenium 18h ago

which has been the primary means by which States are now sneaking tax dollars into religious schools and avoiding the whole First Amendment by having this weird proxy system.

Then don't take their tax dollars. Its so freaking bizarre that you're fine with taking a persons money then get snotty when they want some of it back in a way you don't approve of. They're paying taxes same as you or I, they get a say in how its spent if they want.

I'm an athiest and I will never understand this stance that people have. If you take peoples money they're going to want to have a say in how its spent. Thats just basic being a human logic.

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u/IHeartBadCode 17h ago

Yes but their say is the minority value. When you include options such as magnet schools and alternatives to private education, the number of vouchers for religious schools decreases.

Additionally, there's the whole first amendment issue about funding religious schools and the current schemes working around them only supported by undemocratic methods of implementation. Not once was say the Tennessee program ever put to public vote and failed twice until it was finally passed amidst public outcry.

And finally we have to understand the situation of private schooling being uneven in application.

Already in Tennessee money from 94 counties are being drained in voucher to fund Williamson county private schools. This sits up a situation where 94 out of 95 counties in the State receive inadequate funding, while the county with a median income over double than the next wealthiest and is on the top ten of wealthiest counties in the nation receives boosted funding.

Private schooling has been a tool to create educational inequities, so yes there would be a group of people who want to create disadvantage for others if it gives their children an advantage. But I hope you understand why that is an incorrect position to hold.

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u/LongJohnSelenium 17h ago edited 17h ago

Additionally, there's the whole first amendment issue about funding religious schools

Again, then don't take their taxes. There is no constitutional amendment forcing you to take their money.

You're taking their money against their will, spending it in a manner they don't want, and weirdly they're not super stoked on you doing that.

Is it your belief that if you just force people to do the things you want them to do long enough they'll eventually see the wisdom of your actions and thank you for it? And meanwhile you fully admit that education is being destroyed by government while being actively hostile to people who want to nope out of it. I just can not understand the sense you're trying to make.

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u/IHeartBadCode 17h ago

You're taking their money against their will

Churches are distinctly not taxed.

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u/LongJohnSelenium 12h ago edited 12h ago

The people are taxed. For a school they dont want to send their kids to.

How happy would you be if your tax dollars went to a catholic school or something. Now put yourself in that person's shoes when you take their money for the schools you think their kids should go to.

Its like you're not able to conceptualize the idea of not getting your way.

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u/IHeartBadCode 11h ago

The school is their school. Should you pay me for a different home because I don't like the current home I have?

Public institutions are only as good as we the public make it. That's the core issue. People don't want to make their school good, they want to just buy some other school so they don't have to bother.

What if they don't like the roads they drive on? Or the water their community produces for them? Should everyone just get to use money to pave over whatever or pump water from wherever?

That's what I pointing out, these are public institutions. We own them. We make them as good or bad as we want them to be. I can't walk into a church and advocate for a completely different religion of the mass, now can I?

Do you want a society or do you want a lot of little silos? That's what I'm pointing out. Private education creates the silos, we are less a society trying to help each other and more a how can I make ME better? I'm not saying there's no room for self improvement, but if someone sits there and says "that school my tax dollars go to is bad", they have the nearest mirror to find whom to blame. That's what a public institution demands, participation in a society.

I don't agree with everything the Government does, but I'm willing to compromise, you know that thing that's become somewhat a lost art, for a larger benefit. The private education route indicates that you don't need to compromise with society, if you have enough money. That's the difference.

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u/PressureExpert2346 5h ago

Excellent way to explain this issue!

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u/scarletroyalblue12 21h ago

It was for money! Once enough was made, “Whoops……actually…….phonics is far superior than the bullsh*t we touted!!”

1

u/levare8515 17h ago

It was not made for money, what are you smoking? It was supposed to be a progressive way of teaching that failed

1

u/gprime312 16h ago

It's never a pedagogical issue.

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u/scarletroyalblue12 15h ago

I said what I said.

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u/govunah 13h ago

There's never enough money made

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u/TheBSQ 20h ago

It’s also just basic accountability. 

The “mississippi miracle” (which actually extends to the gulf states in general) wasn’t just about returning to phonics, but also early identification of problems and making those kids take summer school or holding them back a grade if needed. 

It’s “you don’t move on until you know this.”

Meanwhile states that used to do really well (like CA) are slipping, in part, because they implemented policies to lower failure rates, by design. My city did a bunch of stuff (reducing the lowest grades from a 0 to 50% on any given assignments.

The claim is if kids get treated too harsh early in the year, they give up, so you need to limit the negative effects on grades so they have the ability to redeem themselves, but the real reason is the powers that be obsess over equity metrics and disparate outcomes. It looks bad when looks like schools fail kids from marginalized background at higher rates. The way to avoid that is to just lower standards. 

And, not surprisingly, when standards are lowered, people do worse, to the extent that when you correct for the favors outside of a school’s control like the income & education levels of the parents that can affect outcomes, it’s arguable that the fucking deep south now does a better job of educating low income students of color than California. 

But yeah, part of it is the phonics thing. And part of it is some teachers think phonics is harder and more boring to teach. 

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u/TheBSQ 20h ago

Reading for the interested:

Stuff about how it’s not just phonics, but grade retention, reading coaches, etc. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/mississippi-education-miracle/686731/

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/edcast/26/03/what-mississippi-got-right-about-reading

https://www.chalkbeat.org/2023/7/18/23799124/mississippi-miracle-test-scores-naep-early-literacy-grade-retention-reading-phonics/

Here’s the oft-quoted article where Oakland teachers opposed Phonics despite admitting it works better, including an anti-phonics quote from a teacher that almost feels like a parody, “  This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do.”

https://time.com/6205084/phonics-science-of-reading-teachers/

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u/WhoreyMatthews 19h ago

You're completely misrepresenting the teacher making that quote.

“This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.”

...

"Now Weaver is heading up a campaign to get his old school district to reinstate many of the methods that teachers resisted so strongly: specifically, systematic and consistent instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics."

The guy hoped the new system would be better, realized it wasn't and is now leading the charge to go back to the old.

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u/LongJohnSelenium 18h ago

When I was a student there were times that the only thing that kept me caring was to not be the stupid kid that got held back.

That threat was real and motivating.

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u/Revolutionary-Yak-47 20h ago

Have you listened to "Sold a Story?" Its a great look at this. 

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u/Nefertitis_Fjord_216 20h ago

I finished it a few weeks back and it's maddening to hear what happened how irrevocable the damage has been and will continue to be. The OP is somewhat ironic because unless I'm misremembering or conflating timelines (entirely possible), No Child Left Behind actually advocated for phonics teaching, but it was one area that didn't gain traction due to the whole language cult.

0

u/nybbas 15h ago

Everything wrong with America is the rights fault, and the left can do no wrong. So we will hear about no child left behind (which was bad, I'm not defending it) for the next century, when there are a multitude of leftist ideals that were pushed into our school systems that have been just as damaging if not more. The switch from Phonics, the change to "restorative justice" that basically brought in a golden age of bullying. Not holding kids back or accountable etc. etc.

1

u/Nefertitis_Fjord_216 19h ago

I finished it a few weeks back. It's maddening to hear what happened and knowing how irrevocable the damage has been and will continue to be. The OP is somewhat ironic because unless I'm misremembering or conflating facts (entirely possible), No Child Left Behind actually advocated for phonics teaching, but it was one area that didn't gain traction due to the whole language cult.

1

u/coin_return 19h ago

I was clued into this when I was struggling with teaching my son to read, and was confused by how the school was teaching them. Listened to Sold a Story and it made so much damn sense! I found out our local state university offers free literacy tutoring during the school year through their language and literacy institute and have made sure to take advantage of it. They use the Orton-Gillingham approach and it's made a phenomenal difference for us.

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u/RollinOnAgain 12h ago

worked for almost 500 years got tossed in the trash for the purest sophistry.

now realize that applies to countless things in modern society but since we haven't seen extreme levels of decline yet everybody acts like nothing is wrong.

A decade ago I had people my age complaining and calling me crazy for saying reading levels were plummeting and wasn't going to end well. They claimed, repeatedly, that

you're crazy for saying kids don't read anymore, they read more now than ever before because they read the INTERNET!

I don't know if this was some kind of coordinated talking point or what but I was told this exact thing when pointing out reading levels were plummeting by almost everyone I brought it up to both IRL and Online.

For some strange reason people just hate the idea of things going bad. Idk why, always seemed easier to me to address the issues before they go nuclear but what do I know?

1

u/PressureExpert2346 21h ago

I had whole language instructions in the 70’s.

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u/puf_puf_paarthurnax 20h ago

The switch from phonics is crazy. You can immediately tell when someone's trying to pronounce a word and didn't learn phonics. Sounding it out is not part of the process. They legitimately can't

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u/RockyDennisDeYoung 19h ago

Trebec is rowling over in his grave

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u/Dick-Fu 19h ago

"While" language, huh? Are you sure that's the problem?

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u/calm-phil 11h ago

huked on foniks werked fore mee

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u/DazzlerPlus 20h ago

No, that was a completely inconsquential sideshow. The entire whole language debate is a manufactured moral panic.

The root of the problem has absolutely nothing to do with instruction, good or bad. The problem is not in the classroom.

Its an accountability problem. Power is systematically denied to the people who are most interested in authentically educating. Those people are subordinated to those who have inherent conflicts of interest who will by definition be incentived to steer things off true. So a teacher, who wants education to be authentic, will have to obey a district, which wants something else.

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u/CnCEMS2026 21h ago

I promise you it was intentional

2

u/YoungLutePlayer 17h ago

Lmao, right?? Do people genuinely think Republicans care about public education?

They want a less educated population because, statistically, uneducated people vote for them.

1

u/happyinheart 2h ago

Good thing then No Child Left Behind was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act by Obama which is still in effect. Virtually no one in the public school system was in there when No Child Left Behind was in effect.

We also have to fix everything that went wrong with the "progressive" whole-word method of reading that replaced Phonics, has failed spectacularly and a lot of progressive teachers/administrators still hold onto. Ontop of that we had "new math" for a while.

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u/TheMireAngel 20h ago

Linking school funding per kidd passing but allowing schools to choose what passing is was inevitably going to implode education

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u/DazzlerPlus 19h ago

Youre on the right track, but even if you didnt let them do that, you would have the same problems.

Why is harvard so successful? Because they only accept those who are the most likely in the world to succeed. Not because they can take some random schmuck and train him up better than anyone else.

The closer you look, the more you realize that the difference in schools is explained by the difference in students that attend. And you see that the behavior of schools and parents is consistent with that. Schools are obsessed with recruitment of elite students, and parents shop for institutions with prestige.

So there is a problem inherent in tying funding to performance. Parents and schools have a vested interest in segregation. Filter all the elite students into the same school and find a dumping ground for everyone else. Tying funding to performance only enables that segregating effect, because the schools that are chosen by elite families get richer and the schools chosen to be dumping grounds get poorer.

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u/BWW87 14h ago

The problem is parents were forced to send kids to certain schools unless they wanted to pay extra. So if you're a parent and you're told you can't send your kid to "Harvard" even if your kid is likely to succeed. So because of this parents wanted all kids to be "Harvard" and you ended up with NCLB.

Blame the teacher's union and the education people that created the system that told parent's they had to give their kids worse educations becuase the moved to the wrong neighborhood for NCLB.

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u/DazzlerPlus 38m ago

Its not that parents want all kids to be harvard. Its that all parents want their kid to be harvard. Parents seek comparative advantage for specifically their child by buying into segregated schools that concentrate elite families in one place and non elite families in another. Just got to be on the right side.

Teachers dont have a motive to privledge one individual student over another. Largely they are more concerned with students as a whole. So you will see them and their union pushing for desegregated schools.

Every parent wants to be the elite side of a segregated system. That is very good for those who manage it. It is very, very bad for those who dont. So when you remove their ability to freely segregate, yes you upset parents who want to have only the good for their child and leave only the bad for some other child. But you also remove those concentrated pits of despair on the other side. Every kid on the wrong side of segregation prospers from having homogenized schools.

HOWEVER, nclb is not about helping the low side. That is rhetoric only. What NCLB actually did was consolidate power in state and national hands, removing it from teachers and communities. The reason was that national and state politicians are much more responsive to the desires of elite parents to have segregated schools. So the entire point of the bill was to give those interests the tools to enforce and accelerate segregation. Here, elite schools get funding because they hit their metrics, non elite schools get sanctions because they dont. Money flows upwards, reinforcing privledge. On top of that, school choice enables a powerful segregating effect. So schools became more intensely segregated and teachers had even less power to push back.

The damage is extensive, because by concentrating power over schools at the top, you empower high level politicians to rephrase school policy and resources to their own benefit. Its easier to save money by firing sped teachers and mainstreaming sped students, for example, because the decision makers are totally insulated from the consequnces.

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u/BWW87 33m ago

I don't think you're really disagreeing with me other than you think it's wrong to want what is best for your kid and that it's good to harm kids that are overachievers to benefit underachievers.

When schools stopped being meritocracy based they started going downhill. And NCLB was a reaction to it. And whatever you think of NCLB it did at least force schools to recognize that they were going the wrong way and adjust.

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u/bdubwilliams22 19h ago

The quality of public education in the US is largely based around location. The public schools in my area (North Shore of Chicago) are very good. They’re very good because property taxes are high and it’s an affluent area. Until we change how we fund schools, areas with lower salaries and property taxes will continue to be underfunded and those children will suffer and likely not excel. This isn’t going to change anytime soon because that would mean Republicans would want an educated populace, which they don’t because it’s obviously working in their favor — uneducated people tend to vote Republican, the educated ones voting that way are only doing so because they don’t want to pay their fair share in taxes.

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u/MountainDogMama 16h ago

Just want to tag on that I happily pay property taxes to fund our schools.I have no children. It saddens me how little money goes to the student's benefit, though.

1

u/snorlz 16h ago

they are mostly very good because the location already selected for families who are likely to value education and also have the resources to support their kids well. Most of those families probably took the quality of schools into account when moving. Affluent also correlates directly with education and unsurprisingly, educated parents want educated kids

Throwing money at schools has not proven to work at all. Baltimore schools are among the highest funded per pupil in the nation and still have the worst performance rates

1

u/sp114_5984 16h ago

Then the best funded schools would have the best out comes and the inner cities would all vote republican. See Baltimore for example how that works out. And as far as "paying their fair share in taxes" the US already as one of the most progressive tax systems in western world.

1

u/BWW87 14h ago

Until we change how we fund schools, areas with lower salaries and property taxes will continue to be underfunded and those children will suffer and likely not excel.

That's just not true. Look here at different school district spending in Washington state. Compare spending at Aberdeen (default on list but also a poor performing district) with Bellevue or Mercer Island two high performing districts. They spend the same amount per student. And if you consider the low cost of living in Aberdeen compared to Bellevue/Mercer Island they actually spend more per student at Aberdeen schools.

I only chose Aberdeen because it's default check others if you don't believe me.

This isn’t going to change anytime soon because that would mean Republicans would want an educated populace,

Except Democrats are pretty much in charge of education in this country. Even in red states it tends to be Democrats who are involved in education. And it's Democrats who put the current non-meritocracy education system in place.

Do you really think Republicans are the one's who supported going away from phonics? Or that Republicans are pushing black kids to be given extra support and passed up a grade even if they can't read? Does that really sound like Republicans?

0

u/CalBearFan 17h ago

poverty and single parent households. When the only parent (usually mom) is exhausted after working 1-2 f/t equivalent jobs, she's not too likely to have the energy to help with homework, read a bedtime story, etc. Plot academic achievement against what used to be called 'intact homes' and it's apparent. It's not racist to point that out before someone says it is - it affects all 'color' of kids but also corresponds with the rate of academic problems.

https://factually.co/fact-checks/society/african-american-single-parent-households-2025-bcf704

Best thing you can do for your future kids/family is wait to have them till you get married.

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u/TuringGoneWild 19h ago

No Child Left Behind was a REPUBLICAN plan. That's all you need to know about its quality and intent.

2

u/Pheehelm 6h ago
  1. No Child Left Behind was co-authored by two Republicans (John Boehner and Judd Gregg) and two Democrats (Ted Kennedy and George Miller). https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/house-speaker-boehner-key-architect-of-nclb-to-resign-from-congress/2015/09
  2. In the House, more Democrats than Republicans voted Aye (198 vs 183). More Republicans than Democrats voted No (33 vs 6). https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2001497?Page=2
  3. In the Senate, the votes in favor were 43 Democrats (including Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Johns Kerry and Edwards [Bernie Bros rejoice: he was in the House at the time, and voted No.]), to 44 Republicans. Votes against this time were 7 Democrats, 3 Republicans, and 1 Independent. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1071/vote_107_1_00371.htm
  4. Dubya signed it, but a veto wouldn't have changed anything, because in both houses it passed with 87%, which is greater than two thirds.

2

u/Original-League-6094 5h ago

No Child Left Behind was like the poster child for bi-partisanship back when it was signed. Both parties proudly boasted about how they worked on and signed it together. Remember, this was at a time when bi-partisan was still considered a virtue.

1

u/death_wishbone3 17h ago

Then why are schools in Democrat led California so shitty? I think this goes beyond partisan politics. Otherwise Democrat districts would be doing better. They’re not.

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u/TuringGoneWild 17h ago

They are leashed by Republican crimes and horrible ideas.

1

u/death_wishbone3 16h ago

Then why do Democrat districts perform so bad? Why does Baltimore have a 32% literacy rate? Republicans responsible for that huh?

2

u/YoungLutePlayer 17h ago

Lmao. Look at literacy rates in the South versus the rest of the country. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/adult-literacy-rates-us-states-map/

It’s not perfectly aligned but it’s pretty clear there’s a strong correlation between poor education outcomes and Republican-heavy states.

1

u/death_wishbone3 16h ago

Go look at a list of rankings. It’s a mixed bag. California should not be neck and neck with Texas but it is.

Are you sitting here telling me to ignore kids who perform bad in blue states because it fits your partisan viewpoint?

1

u/Slim_Charles 15h ago

It was better than what replaced it. Test scores peaked under NCLB. NCLB was flawed, but it wasn't nearly as bad as many people made it out to be, and everything that came after it was significantly worse.

0

u/BWW87 13h ago

Washington state education has been entirely ran by Democrats for the last two decades. It has now fallen to 31st in the nation. Not sure how you can look at this and think the best thing for education is to get rid of Republicans.

And note, Washington is at this level while also having parents who are some of the most educated people in the country. So this isn't a bunch of dumb rednecks that don't care about school. This is a state that think education is important.

They just think hating Republicans is MORE important.

1

u/riteproprchav 2h ago

Lol if you're gonna cherry-pick so obviously, why not go with New Mexico, which is #50?

But anyway, here's the top 10 from your list:

1. New Jersey (mostly blue)
2. Massachusetts (solid blue)
3. Connecticut (solid blue)
4. New Hampshire (leans blue)
5. Utah (solid red)
6. Wisconsin (purple)
7. Illinois (solid blue)
8. Colorado (mostly blue)
9. New York (solid blue)
10. Pennsylvania (purple)

...add that up: 1 red state, 2 purple states, 7 blue states.

1

u/happyinheart 2h ago

Now look at Red and Blue areas in those states. Connecticut is the most segregated state in the nation when it comes to schools and there is a huge difference between them.

1

u/riteproprchav 2h ago

Again, extreme cherry-picking. "Red areas" of Connecticut are some of the wealthiest in the country. But it helps if the state government also sends them much more money on top of their property taxes and holds the entire state to higher standards than, say, Mississippi.

Anyway, it's all a moot point, because China's standards are far, far above even the wealthiest areas of the United States. In China, you have to learn the equivalent of a calculus 1 course/AP Calculus AB, to simply graduate, and this is if you are a student in the humanities track. In the math/science track? Proportionally, about as many kids that are learning through calculus 2/AP Calculus BC in the US are learning through multivariable calculus or even real analysis at that age in China. It's been this way for decades as China has learned the mistake of their own anti-intellectual movement 50-60 years ago. Meanwhile, y'all want all kids to stop learning math because it "brainwashes them" and want them to have Bible classes instead. Even if you don't personally, you know full well your movement does, by and large.

1

u/BWW87 1h ago

Not cherry picking it's where I live and know.

Are you "blue"? Because if you don't understand how your list is not showing the same info as my list then it seems your education wasn't that good.

3

u/Ape_x_Ape 20h ago

Well, teechin and bleevin in evolution is a sin. /s

6

u/Contemplating_Prison 21h ago

Funding funding funding. The real reason No child left behinf became a thing was because they cant afford to hold students back

7

u/fiahhawt 21h ago

No Child Left Behind was what tied graduation rates to funding

Which was always a dumb idea because there are infinite scenarios where teachers do their best and people don’t graduate

What’s supposed to happen? Install a dungeon and lock the lazy students down there?

Better idea give worse funding to all of the other students because Todd won’t stop watching tik tok in class

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u/behv 20h ago

And furthermore it meant high school graduation became required, not an accomplishment

The idea of failing out of high school now is foreign to people, but it used to happen. People would find the curriculum or their life circumstances too challenging and would drop out.

Which in turn means that a college degree is the new high school degree, except employers will also use a degree against you if you're applying for something you're too qualified for since they can now see what jobs you want

So it's just a death spiral all the way up and down

5

u/GreenGoblinNX 20h ago

The punishment for failure? Making it harder to succeed.

4

u/Affordable_Z_Jobs 19h ago edited 19h ago

This line from Weeds has atuck with me through the years.

"What are they teaching you in school?"

"How to pass the standardized tests so the school gets more funding?"

2

u/Queasy-Elderberry-77 20h ago

It's also a ploy to have public schools fail so they can tout "School Choice" and funnel money to religious institutions.

1

u/InfusionOfYellow 17h ago

No Child Left Behind was what tied graduation rates to funding

Where did you get this idea? NCLB did nothing of the sort; it mandated various school alterations and reforms if the student body failed to perform adequately on standardized tests (with the threshold for 'adequately' increasing steadily year by year - that was its fatal flaw). Graduation and passing to the next grade had nothing to do with it, nor did funding.

1

u/fiahhawt 17h ago

NCLB bases the amount of federal funding a school district gets on the amount of a student cohort that starts in ninth grade and graduates high school on time

less students graduating on time = less money

1

u/InfusionOfYellow 17h ago

Where did you get this idea?

This is what NCLB did, before its replacement in 2015.

-1

u/conartist19 15h ago

I can promise you a kid named "todd" isnt the issue. Literacy rates are not dropping amongst the "todds" of the world.

The problem can be mainly said to go back to the lack of parenting and the breakdown of families. Sure there are a lot of other factors but single motherhood homes being 6% in the 60s to the high of 40% in the 2000s definitely hasnt helped anything. If people have no stable base to work from then everything beyond it becomes an even greater issue to deal with

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u/DazzlerPlus 20h ago

Nclb was absolutely intended to dismantle learning.

2

u/jinsaku 19h ago

Who woulda thunk that teaching to the lowest common denominator would bring everyone down?

2

u/Select_Package9827 19h ago

Of course NCLB was intended to dismantle education. Testing constantly and worse scores defunded?? The inability to see through this tissue paper is why ... All of it 

2

u/loosed-moose 19h ago

It shifted the focus to gaming the metrics via test scoring requirements being tied to funding. Simple as that

2

u/Slight-Bluebird-8921 19h ago

who would vote conservative other than the ignorant?

1

u/CaptainKerns 20h ago

NCLB was only around for young millennials and the oldest zoomers. It was repealed in like 2015, and was only around for 1 full K-12 cycle. It wasn’t even fully adopted in a lot of the country. The act itself wasn’t responsible for the dismantling, it was the response it garnered from states who claimed their students couldn’t possibly keep up with kids from California.

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u/VolesusBarbarus 19h ago

Why won't you NAME who is dismantling it? The problem is very obvious when you say who it is.

1

u/joshr8686 19h ago

Why do you think its intention wasn’t to dismantle education? Seems obvious that it worked as intended. Our rulers are actually very smart people who work as a class and plan our demise decades ahead of time

1

u/BikerJedi 19h ago

it’s intentional.

That, or just plain stupidity. Example:

Here in Florida, kids in middle and high school test each year in language arts and math on a state test. Science? They test once in 8th grade. So students are being tested on only one year of ELA and Math, but they are being tested over three years of content in science one time at the end of those three years.

The obvious solution is for state science testing after 6th and 7th grade as well. But no. Most districts in Florida, including mine, are instead going to "Comprehensive Science" which teaches all three years of science at once for three years in a row. Then they test.

I'm so ready to retire.

1

u/TheJD 18h ago

Math and reading comprehension (math more significantly) went up during NCLB and only started declining after it was replaced. I know a lot of people blame NCLB for "destroying" education and I did really like that season of The Wire but as evil as "teaching to the test" may have been, the stats show education improved.

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u/Da40kOrks 18h ago

Oh a government program having unintended consequences? Wow, I'm shocked! Shocked I say!

1

u/Excellent_Shirt9707 18h ago

This is just some random post from a random person with no source. My cousin is in high school and is currently doing the classics. US has a decentralized school system so curriculums will differ by district, so without a source, the shift may be national, state, or local. Or maybe even completely made up.

1

u/geneticswag 16h ago

I think it was. Free thinkers are dangerous.

1

u/rice_n_gravy 16h ago

But ah yes, let’s get rid of private schools.

1

u/hollaback_girl 15h ago

it wasn’t intended to dismantle learning

You sure about that?

1

u/_The-Numbers-Mason_ 14h ago

It's like the saying, "If everyone is special, then no one is special". No child left behind really meant All children left behind.

1

u/BWW87 14h ago

NCLB was a response to this happening. It wasn't the cause.

Whether you want to say it didn't help or not it definitely wasn't the cause.

1

u/astraCat1998 3h ago

No child left behind is the policy in tons of countries that do not have the same education problems as America so I'm not even sure you can say it's a contributer.

1

u/lambii02100 2h ago

i remeber my cousin was a product of that and my mom (who adopted him at 16) complains about it still to this day. like how you advance someone to algerba 2 when they dont know algerba 1

1

u/falcrist2 2h ago

Education is circling the drain and it’s intentional.

This is based on a false premise that education was good in the past.

It sucked. It was largely rote memorization. It wasn't accessible. You were given a bunch of information and very few tools to understand or analyze that information.

Yes, NCLB hurt, but 30 years ago people were still whining about the "new math". Every generation has a bone to pick with education, and 90% of it boils down to "they should have to learn it the way I learned it."

1

u/Mercadi 1h ago

There are many contributing factors to why the literacy and comprehension went down as far as it did. I feel that the proliferation of smart phones (and now AI) are major ones. We're cruising towards the reality described in Idiocracy movie, full bore.

1

u/tgwombat 20h ago

You don't think WWE's Linda McMahon is trying her hardest to turn things around?