In reviewing the article entitled “Learning for the 21^st Century” produced by the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills ( a partnership comprised mostly of corporations), I was disappointed at how closely the recommendations for change hewed to the dominant paradigm as brought about by No Child Left Behind, a federal program which emphasizes assessment, set curricula, and penalties for under-performing schools. I realize that the article must be considered in the context in which it was written, in 2002. At this time, No Child Left Behind was a relatively new program. However, educators and academics alike were already railing at the program at that time as misguided in its focus on rigid assessment of knowledge acquired through rote learning, and the manner in which that assessment severely limited educators’ ability to expand students’ horizons beyond this strict curricula. With the tests to teach to, and funding so closely tied to assessment results, no school could afford to take chances with straying from the routine.

The authors suggest that No Child Left Behind is “a good start” but then immediately stress the importance of engaging educators. It is my understanding, from conversations with my peers in the ITEC program who work as public school teachers, that No Child Left Behind has done nothing to engage educators, their creativity, or their natural abilities to adapt curriculum on the fly to suit the knowledge, capabilities, and desired learning directions of the students. Instead, it forces them into delivery of rote curriculum that cannot stray from the subject matter that will be tested.

No Child Left Behind is fundamentally at odds with the 6 steps for learning that the author outlines in the article, and therefore the two programs are mutually exclusive. The article recognizes, and enumerates, all the skills that are necessary to “Teach and Learn in a 21^st Century Context” and “Teach and learn 21^st Century Skills,” but fails to give any really concrete examples as to how this 21^st Century Context, emphasizing globalization, technology, and creating a framework for future learning, can be integrated into a program that emphasizes rote learning, subsequent assessment, and penalties for schools who don’t assess well .

I’m not questioning accountability. I’m not questioning assessment. Both have a role in education; quality control exists for a reason. But when quality control is utilized in the business world, it is used to support design and development, and not vice versa. With No Child Left Behind, it seems the curriculum has been designed in reverse. Design and development exist only to fulfill the dictates of QC (the desired outcome of the standardized tests.) The cart is not only before the horse, it is sideways in the ditch.

I understand working within the confines of the “system,” and within established guidelines, and I understand that sometimes the easiest way to get your ideas heard by those in power is to frame them as an addendum, rather than an overhaul. However, in this case, this acquiescence to No Child Left Behind, a program almost universally reviled among educators, is to fall short of the radical changes which are actually needed in our public schools. Our students need to be taught to think, not simply to memorize. They need to be taught to adapt on the fly, not fall back on a small and strict subset of knowledge. They need to be taught about adaptation, and imagination, and creativity, and intellectual freedom—all concepts which are squeezed out of the day-to-day interactions of educators and students in a structure which places so much value on the test results of a few subsets of knowledge. Evolution in the classroom, including preparation of our students for the challenges of the new century, starts with the abolishment of No Child Left Behind.