New Book Analyzes Results of No Child Left Behind Act, WASL

PULLMAN, Wash.–  Donald C. Orlich, professor emeritus of education at Washington State University, has published ”School Reform: The Great American Brain Robbery,” which discusses the educational system in the nation and in Washington State in the wake of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act and standardized testing in schools.

“School Reform” criticizes current school reform efforts, in large part because of the emphasis on standardized testing. Orlich said that “testing madness” yields invalid and unreliable measures of student achievement and helps subsidize private testing companies.

The book’s target audience includes parents, educators and the general public, Orlich said.

“The WASL and all high-stakes tests discriminate against the poor, children of color and disabled children,” he said. “The Thomas B. Fordham Institute gives the state of Washington‘s reform effort and in part the WASL the following grades: English, ‘F’; Mathematics, ‘F’; Science, ‘C’; U.S. History, ‘F’; World History, ‘D’.  When such a conservative group as Fordham gives those horrid rankings, you know we have a major blunder all under the guise of ‘educational reform.’”

Orlich’s book compares state and federal data on test results, analyzes questions given to students and cites a variety of studies conducted over the years. He writes about the cost of meeting federal mandates, inconsistencies in standardized tests, errors in computing scores and questions that he believes are class-biased.

Orlich said the key to effective school reform is to determine what needs fixing and then prepare a plan. He proposes a system similar to the one in Nebraska, which uses a combination of student tests, student work portfolios, local school district standards, and all tests and standards must be appropriate to the grade level.

“My primary purpose in writing this book was to show that at the state and national levels political policy-makers are simply stumbling through educational reform based on a market-driven political ideology and a very serious attempt to privatize the nation’s public schools. The NCLB violates the Tenth Amendment to our great Constitution. Public education is a state’s right, not a federal right,” he said.

Orlich received a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Montana, a master’s degree in science education from the University of Utah and a doctoral degree in education from the University of Montana. After teaching for a number of years in the Butte, Montana public schools, Orlich worked at Idaho State University for five years and joined the faculty of WSU in 1967. During his career in education, he has been president of the Washington Science Teachers Association and the Washington Educational Research Association and has been author or co-author of 15 books, over 100 published papers and numerous funded research and staff development grants.