Crass Dismissed: Petition Calls For Scrapping ‘No Child Left Behind’ Act — Interview With Dr. Philip Kovacs, Educator Roundtable Organizer

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. Dr. Philip Kovacs wants teachers and their school districts to have more control over their classrooms.

Among other things, so do the 20,000-plus signers of an online petition calling for the end of the No Child Left Behind Act.

The petition issued by Dr. Kovacs’ group, The Educator Roundtable, has taken on a life of its own in the last three weeks.

Without any mainstream press, the petition grew to over 12,000 signatures in the first week of its release.

Thus far, nine education-based organizations have also partnered with the Roundtable. They include Vermont Society for the Study of Education, Authentic Learning Network, No Child Left, Florida Coalition for Assessment Reform, k4teens, Leave My Child Alone!, Marylanders Against High-Stakes Testing, New Democracy, and Coalition for Better Education.

Since the Act was signed into law with bi-partisan backing in 2002, teachers have grumbled about the lack of control they have endured, while others have been so frustrated that they have left their profession entirely.

As one teacher wrote on the petition: “I am retiring early. We feel we are fleeing a sinking ship, after giving our entire lives to our students and our profession. It is a sad way to end a career.”

However, parents are also expressing fear that their children’s education has suffered under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

“I feel like my little boy is being groomed for a life on an assembly line rather than being taught how to think and be creative,” wrote a parent on the petition.

Susan Ohanian, one of Roundtable’s founders, questioned the federal government’s priorities in authorizing NCLB when she put it this way:

“When Congress passes No Child Left Unfed, No Child Without Health Care and No Child Left Homeless, then we can talk seriously about No Child Left Behind.”

The Educator Roundtable petition itself states that its signatories accept the goal of teacher and school district accountability but not “the law’s simplistic approach to education reform and how it wastes student potential, mis-allocates teaching resources, shrinks the curriculum, and threatens the future of our democratic republic by undermining public education.”

With this 16-point petition, the Roundtable is attempting to unite and organize the grumbling teachers and concerned parents to prevent the Democratically-controlled Congress from reauthorizing the Act next year.

The Roundtable maintains that it not a rag-tag group of nay-sayers but has an alternative to NCLB that calls for “formal state-level dialogues led by working educators, rather than by politicians, ideology-bound ‘think tanks,’ or business and industry activists who have little or no direct experience in the field of education.”

The Iconoclast’s Nathan Diebenow caught up with the lead Roundtable organizer, Dr. Kovacs, while the assistant professor was taking