JOURNAL ARTICLE
Diane Ravitch is a professor of education at New York University. She has extensive background in education policy, having been counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander and assistant secretary of education from 1991 to 1993 during the George H. W. Bush administration. Ravitch is also the author of ten books and numerous articles on education; her most recent book is The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (2010). In this article, published in the journal Education Review in 2010, Ravitch makes a case against certain components of the No Child Left Behind Act and argues for the importance of neighborhood schools. Important words and phrases have been italicized in this reading. Look up those you do not know, and write the definitions in your personal vocabulary list.
What do you already know about the No Child Left Behind Act, or what have you heard? Freewrite for five minutes, writing down whatever you know or have heard about it. Or, if you don’t know anything about it yet, write down some educated guesses based on the name: What do you imagine an educational policy called No Child Left Behind would be about?