NCLB and the social foundations

It is interesting to consider the perspective of the Social Foundations and the NCLB acts. While NCLB has yielded some results, overall, it appears to be a failure. Walk into any school and if you mention the magic four letters, the reaction you get is overly caustic, with very few teachers admitting the few positives. I will attempt to look at it from a few different perspectives, but also consider my place as a public school teacher.
Through conversation, my own readings, and my vocation I have learned that the letters SOL and NCLB take charge of many aspects of education. They strike fear into administrators, especially when the letters AYP come into play (usually due to the crackdown on out of school suspensions of discipline problems). I am already being tainted by my school perspective.
When talking with some die hard democrats and union members, I quickly realized that from their perspective, public schools are the most important social equalizer, that private schooling is for social elites and should receive no funding because “it is the public schools’ money!”, and that NCLB is simply a catalyst for the privatization of education along with the privatization of everything but the USA’s military budget (thanks to the Neo-cons). “Vouchers” are as bad as the worst 4 letter word of which you can think, and every teacher is underpaid, as are all the school staff. Because of all of the above reasons, we have no choice but to vote democrat to prevent losing our jobs, whether we are good at them or not.
It is very rare to hear the voice of a free-market capitalist in a public school, and often a very unwelcome one. This is especially true when it comes to funding. From reading , the free market capitalist sees education as an entrepreneurial dream world, and that it can be used to spend government money more effectively, and increase the earnings of those involved, especially those who do education the best. It would create a world of Anderson Consulting and DeLoitte and Touche, but instead of consulting, they would be creating educational centers of excellence, where parents would send their students to excel. The best at streamlining and maximizing both efficiency and cost would become the big box retailer of education. When one school starts dying, a successful bigger company can swoop down, take over, and reform the place. So in the eyes of the conservative free-market capitalists, NCLB is indeed the path toward privatizing education, and the deadlines couldn’t come faster! Why see private takeover as a bad thing when the private takeover comes in and can yield results!
I think I tend to be a fence sitter, it sure can be uncomfortable in certain crowds, but I dislike the bias of both sides. I was lucky to receive a private school education. My parents thought it was best for me, and K-12, I attended the same school. It offered SAT prep courses, and AP courses if I chose them. I had small class numbers, especially when it came to advanced courses, and that is a huge benefit! My parents paid for all 13 years for both my sister and I, and I think it was a good decision. I think education there was unique, and presented a communal environment that many public schools lose due to the number of elementary schools feeding into middle schools and high schools where friendships can be split from year to year depending on where a student lives.
As a current public school teacher, I buy into education as an equalizer. If privatization did happen in education, I think we would quickly see an aristocratic regime return where wealthy schools and poor schools exist. Poor schools would receive more money to pay for better teachers, but they would still be stuck with students whose parents don’t care and expect everything to be given to their child. It would not change parental responsibility, other than the fact that the parents would have to choose the school for their children.
I think the social foundations perspective gives a sense of balance to the problem of educating the masses. It sees the problems of inequality in public education. It sees the good that mass testing has brought to American educational research. It also recognizes that not every kid takes multiple choice tests well. It sees that the problem is beyond teaching methodology and insufficient school supplies, and that a primary problem is in the homes of the children. It takes culture into account and sees that consumption is of primary concern to both the government and to the majority of Americans, despite the problems it is currently causing the American economy. Are you a fence sitter too?