>
>
>
>  > NO CHILD'S BEHIND LEFT: THE TEST
>>  By Greg Palast
>>
>>  New York -- Today and tomorrow every 8-year-old in the state of New
>York
>will take a test. It's part of George Bush's No Child Left Behind
>program.
>The losers will be left behind to repeat the third grade.
>>
>>  Try it yourself.  This is from the state's actual practice test.
>Ready,
>class?
>>
>>  "The year 1999 was a big one for the Williams sisters. In February,
>Serena won her first pro singles championship. In March, the sisters
>met
>for the first time in a tournament final. Venus won. And at doubles
>tennis,
>the Williams girls could not seem to lose that year."
>> 
>>  And here's one of the four questions:
>>
>>  "The story says that in 1999, the sisters could not seem to lose at
>doubles tennis. This probably means when they played
>>
>>    "A   two matches in one day
>>    "B   against each other
>>    "C   with two balls at once
>>    "D   as partners"
>>
>>  OK, class, do you know the answer? (By the way, I didn't cheat:
>there's
>nothing else about "doubles" in the text.)
>>
>>
>>  My kids go to a New York City school in which more than half the
>students
>live below the poverty line. There is no tennis court.
>>
>>  There are no tennis courts in the elementary schools of Bed-Stuy or
>East
>Harlem. But out in the Hamptons, every school has a tennis court. In
>Forest
>Hills, Westchester and Long Island's North Shore, the schools have
>nearly
>as many tennis courts as the school kids have live-in maids.
>>
>>  Now, you tell me, class, which kids are best prepared to answer the
>question about "doubles tennis"? The 8-year-olds in Harlem who've
>never
>played a set of doubles or the kids whose mommies disappear for two
>hours
>every Wednesday with Enrique the tennis pro?
>>
>>  Is this test a measure of "reading comprehension" -- or a measure of
>wealth accumulation?
>>
>>  If you have any doubts about what the test is measuring, look at the
>next
>question, based on another part of the text, which reads (and I could
>not
>make this up):
>>
>>  "Most young tennis stars learn the game from coaches at private
>clubs.
>In
>this sentence, a club is probably a
>>
>>    "F   baseball bat
>>    "G   tennis racquet
>>    "H   tennis court
>>    "J    country club"
>>
>>  Helpfully, for the kids in our 'hood, it explains that a "country
>club"
>is a, "place where people meet." Yes, but WHICH people?
>>
>>  President Bush told us, "By passing the No Child Left Behind Act, we
>are
>regularly testing every child and making sure they have better options
>when
>schools are not performing."
>>
>>  But there are no "better options."  In the delicious double-speak of
>class war, when the tests have winnowed out the chaff and kids stamped
>failed, No Child Left results in that child being left behind in the
>same
>grade to repeat the failure another year.
>>
>>  I can't say that Mr. Bush doesn't offer better options to the kids
>stamped failed.  Under No Child Left, if enough kids flunk the tests,
>their school is marked a failure and its students win the right, under
>the
>law, to transfer to any successful school in their district.  You
>can't
>provide more opportunity than that.  But they don't provide it, the
>law
>promises it, without a single penny to make it happen.  In New York in
>2004, a third of a million students earned the right to transfer to
>better
>schools -- in which there were only 8,000 places open.
>>
>>  New York is typical. Nationwide, only one out of two-hundred
>students
>eligible to transfer manage to do it.  Well, there's always the Army.
>(That option did not go unnoticed:  No Child has a special provision
>requiring schools to open their doors to military recruiters.)
>>
>>  Hint:  When de-coding politicians' babble, to get to the real
>agenda,
>don't read their lips, read their budgets.   And in his last budget,
>our
>President couldn't spare one thin dime for education, not ten cents.
>Mr.
>Big Spender provided for a derisory 8.4 cents on the dollar of the
>cost
>of
>primary and secondary schools. Congress appropriated a half penny of
>the
>nation's income -- just one-half of one-percent of America's twelve
>trillion dollar GDP -- for primary and secondary education.
>>
>>  President Bush actually requested less.  While Congress succeeded in
>prying out an itty-bitty increase in voted funding, that doesn't mean
>the
>extra cash actually gets to the students.  Fifteen states have sued
>the
>federal government on the grounds that the cost of new testing imposed
>on
>schools, $3.9 billion, eats up the entire new funding budgeted for No
>Child
>Left.
>>
>>  There are no "better options" for failing children, but there are
>better
>uses for them.  The President ordered testing and more testing to hunt
>down, identify and target millions of children too expensive, too
>heavy
>a
>burden, to educate.
>>
>>  No Child Left offers no options for those with the test-score mark
>of
>Cain -- no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding.  Rather, it is
>the
>new social Darwinism, educational eugenics: identify the nation's
>loser-class early on. Trap them then train them cheap.
>>
>>  Someone has to care for the privileged. No society can have winners
>without lots and lots of losers. And so we have No Child Left Behind
>--
>to
>produce the new worker drones that will clean the toilets at the Yale
>Alumni Club, punch the cash registers color-coded for illiterates, and
>pamper the winner-class on the higher floors of the new economic
>order.
>>
>>  Class war dismissed.
>>
>>
>>  **********
>>  See a clip of the actual practice test at www.GregPalast.com
>>  **********
>>  Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best
>Democracy Money Can Buy. Read his investigative reports at
>www.GregPalast.com
>>  ============================================
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-- 
Babacar Camara, Ph. D.
Associate Professor
Comparative Literature, Black World Studies, French
Miami University-Middletown
4200 East University Boulevard
Middletown, OH 45042
(513) 727-3358
(513) 727-3462 Fax