​No Child Left Behind (2001) and its follow-up, Every Student Succeeds Act (2015), epitomize the folly of politicians creating feel-good legislation. The titles of these federal monstrosities certainly sound as if every child benefits from their reforms.
Not so.
The numerous requirements in these two boondoggles blurred the lines between mission and compliance.

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ESSA compelled educators to forgo an earnest implementation of instruction in favor of the much more rewarded activities of gathering data and compiling reports. Documentation became the arbiter of success in a teacher's career. If our politicians thought all this paperwork would be done outside of class time, they were sadly misguided.  Once teachers close that classroom door, they have the luxury of deciding what happens inside it.

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In 2012, my principal made it clear that my evaluation would hinge largely on how I reported my teaching activities.  Verification of that information did not figure into the equation.  All that mattered in this new normal was my intent, based on how I wrote it up.

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With stakes this high, is it any wonder that  teachers began to  spend

more time on reports than on instruction?  

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No one seemed to care how close to the truth any of it was, and once we all realized that, temptation loomed large. ​

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Even before that, however, our school systems began to disingenuously report on student achievement and their own intent for improvement through something NCLB had dubbed “Adequate Yearly Progress”.

Delving into the requirements of AYP leads to a dismal conclusion:
it could never be a straight-forward or earnest process. A singularly distressing aspect is that the obligatory assessment results can lawfully be mitigated by exemptions such as special ed or English-language-learner labels, homelessness, and poor home environment.

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Think about that.

Recent stats show that only 41% of 4th graders are testing on grade level for reading. Yet even that figure was obtained by removing certain scores from the mix.

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Education must be fixed in this country, but that can’t happen until we fix the mistakes of past legislation and realize that any future education legislation cannot rely on documentation, something the teachers’ unions have exploited heartily.

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CHAOS in our schools provides the back story on this little known aspect of our failed schools.