摘要：At an epochal conservative American Enterprise Institute conference on NCLB on Oct. 30, 2006, Ravitch (2010) reported presenters asked whether "... major remedies prescribed by NCLB especially choice and after school tutoring were effective....The various presentations...demonstrated that none of the prescribed remedies was making a difference....Choice was not working they all agreed....choice had little or no effect on school achievement" (p. 99), and was used only by two percent of eligible students (Bracey, 2007, February). "Free after-school tutoring (called Supplementary Educational Service, or SES) fared only a bit better than choice" (Ravitch, p. 100). The other two NCLB tools, corrective action and restructuring, rarely involved state takeover of schools. "...Henig noted that for political scientists, policies imply theories. However, he could not identify any theory implied by SES" (Bracey, 2007, February, p. 475). Thus, noted Ravitch, formerly a strong supporter of choice, accountability, testing and markets, "...that was the day I realized NCLB was a failure" (p. 99). Compounding this miasma are two more NCLB components: Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) and the goal that all students will be at 100 percent proficiency by 2014, manifestly unrealistic and, an oxymoron. AYP is leading to huge numbers of schools labeled `in need of improvement'. By 2014, one wag noted that 70 percent of Minnesota's school will be failing. At the conference's end, Ravitch asked to much laughter "What reason do we have to believe that Congress knows how to fix the nation's schools?" (Bracey, 2007, February).
