No one is suggesting we throw it out because its a Republican plan; most people want to throw it out because its an underhanded, and educationally use-less proposal, that does nothing but draw up a large amount of negative statistics to justify school vouchers, suburban flight, charter schools, and any other number of cockamamie schemes to dismantle public education. Standardized testing does little or nothing above what grades tell us about a child's performance and certainly doesn't tell us WHY their unable to perform. To figure that out we would actually have to spend money on real research as to what pedagogical methods actually work; I suspect most conservatives don't want to do this because it may undermine their various prejudices and "scientific" justifications for discrimination based on class, race, gender, and national origin.

This is purely anecdotal but: I know a number of teachers and none of them are opposed to testing (or phonics) on principle. But most of them dislike No Child Left Behind because of how it's impemented, at least in Washington State. As it's been described to me, the main problems are:

• High-stakes testing. Testing is fine, but should everything depend on one test in the 10th grade?
• Inflexible criteria. Most of the teachers that I know have large numbers of ESL students, many of them refugees from countries like Somalia and Ethiopia.

I, too, am dismayed when p.c. educational dogma gets in the way of actually teaching. I like standardized tests because, with so many students, they are a reasonable way to measure how everyone is doing. What bugs me though, is one result of "No Child Left Behind", which seems to be that the children are taught a sort of constant "test prep". I coached SAT classes for years and thought how nice it would be if the kids had actually learned critical reading, reasoning, and math skills instead of hurriedly cramming "test taking" skills at the last minute. I don't think NCLB is bad per se, but something got lost in the translation. I really don't know what to do about it.

P.S. Is the sandy daughter old enough for Harry Potter? I can't imagine any child not loving it.

Mr. Siberio, please proofread your post. If you are an educator, you should write grammatically so you don't detract from your message.

...Garrison, I just can't. This isn't about demagoguery and it's not about partisanship. What it boils down to is a program (Reading First in particular and NCLB in general) that comes with enough strings attached to render it unwieldy, if not downright ineffective. As an educator, I can only suggest that in trying to impose the latest systems and theories (many of which line the pockets of big educational corporations) we have tied the hands of the good, well-meaning teachers you mention. They are unable to teach young Juan in the way he needs, or young Tamara in the way she needs. They can't because they are bound to specific methodologies, which are themselves tethered to specific tests, which promise all kids of "assessment outcomes" but which lead to the sad statistics you quoted. None of this is helping kids read. I would welcome the legislation from ANY party that will recognize that the solution to the problem is not found in a fancy program with accompanying curriculum, but rather is found when we, as a society, recognize that education has to be a priority, has to be valued, and has to be funded. Then, and only then, will the kids read.

Much better to be taught to pass a standardized test than to be forced to read "Lake Woebegone Days" senior year.

Trust me on that one.

I object to the premise of No Child Left Behind, which is remarkably like the premise of Lake Woebegone, where all children are above average. The illogic is staggering. I object to the methodology of NCLB, which punishes schools that fail and does not consider the failure of the social system around the school, as in my wife's elementary school, where kids in her class can't come up with the three buck entrance fee to the planetarium but do buy the 15-buck ticket to the wrestling federation extravaganza, with which they are familiar from playing wrestling games on their X-Boxes. I object to the focus of NCLB on narrowly defined test responses based on teaching narrowly defined objectives. Yes, it's important to be able to say who the main character of a story is, but when the lesson is learned via made-up little paragraphs in fake, forgettable fictions that exist only to convey the idea "THIS IS A MAIN CHARACTER," then the lesson is trivial and the learning at best temporary. I object to the pragmatic consequences of NCLB in the life of a classroom. The rigidly defined schedules; the focus on training to take the test; the constant second-guessing by administrators: all of it is guaranteed to make learning such a painful endeavor that even the brightest of children will tune out.

Are there good, useful elements of NCLB? Keep 'em. But dump the malicious bulk of the whole.

Garrision, I must respectfully disagree. I am not an educator, but I spent 8 years on my local board of education. From that seat, I saw NCLB and its requirements impair teachers' abilities to inspire children to learn. I saw hundreds of parents upset at an increased focus on teaching to an arbitrary test. I heard from students disappointed to find that their educational opportunities were diminished because of the federal mandate's focus on limited basics. All that, without significantly increasing the ability of at-risk students to learn.

NCLB is typical of the cynically-named federal legislation that exemplify the 1990s and 2000s. Please note, too - it is not really a Republican initiative; Democrats bear equal blame for it. The best thing for our country and our children would be to scrap the entire Act and return to a system of locally controlled public schools - with, of course, some basic federal and state legislation to prevent egregious abuses of the system, as well as some federal and state grants to provide for school districts with limited financial resources or extreme or unusual needs.