One of my pet gripes is that we don’t broadly appreciate how badly GWB’s No Child Left Behind law absolutely gutted civics education in America because it tied draconian “accountability” penalties exclusively to math and reading scores (1/)
People make a lot of jokes about voters thinking there's a big dial that controls gas prices in the oval office, but I think "low info voters have no idea what the government actually does" goes a lot deeper than that and they blame whoever is President for anything that annoys them.
Oh, the effects are still around today. I worked with a 1st grade teacher who didn’t teach anything except literacy for half the year because “the most important thing is they learn how to read”. The 2nd grade teacher was so lost trying to get those kids caught up. 1/2
My elementary World Language program was just cut from one of the biggest school districts in the state because of budget in favor of keeping reading and math computer programs that increase test scores. This is all a legacy of the NCLB policies. 2/2
