An Open Letter to Congressional Leaders on Education Reform

By Rich Young

U.S. Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Michael B. Enzi, R-Wyo., the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, have asked for comments on a draft of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known in its current form as the No Child Left Behind Act. Here are my comments.

I began teaching in 1976, and taught high school as well as middle school. I later became a curriculum coordinator, an assistant superintendent, and a program director for two federal Teaching American History grants. I am deeply concerned with the future of public education.

I read the Obama administration’s Blueprint for Reform carefully, and the good news is that the proposal’s main body is strong, full of powerful suggestions and remedies for failing schools. In the document’s introductory section, however, we find proof that every writer of educational blueprints should be made to read George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” (1946). If they did this, they would not use the kind of jargon that plagues the field and stands in the...