While President Bush is pleading with Congress to reauthorize his "signature" No Child Left Behind Title I public school 2002 law, barely a word is spoken of its corresponding enabling of taxpayer financed private charter and voucher school expansion.

Aimed specifically for "low achieving children in our nation's highest poverty schools," NCLB first brought cheers from bi-partisan political and education fan clubs. But this happened only after its privatization strategists edited the "school voucher" decoy from the original text.

Relying solely on high-stakes testing as a measuring stick for "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) since its onset, the most vulnerable student population in the country became NCLB initial guinea pigs. Focusing on highly populated urban central cities with the largest school budgets, rates of poverty and students of color proved easier to gather most test data for NCLB driven AYP. Although the final AYP punishment of closing alleged "failing public schools" was years away, the conservative, pro-privatization "think-tanks" and talk shows instead pounced on the initial year's low test scores with venom. Equally noteworthy, this same cadre became official cheerleaders for voucher and private charter school alternatives for their education "free marketplace" political agenda.

Initially expecting support from the education department, instead public school superintendents and school staffs faced disdain, threats and ridicule – first from education secretary Rod Paige, and now continuing with Margaret Spellings. Obviously, the nation's education department had been seized by "free marketplace" education zealots seeking tax dollars for its coffers and less interested in leaving "no child left behind." To accomplish this, their hidden schema was "no public schools left open." Meantime, unlike their peers still teaching learning skills in virtually all-Anglo middle class suburban public schools, Title I public school teachers were reduced to "teaching to the tests" to achieve student AYP. Fearing the worst, and to save their jobs, Title I school superintendents had no choice except to capitulate to the nefarious NCLB high-stakes testing law.

Disgruntled by non-stop negative propaganda from test results, inner-city parents – already confined by socioeconomic siege – searched for charter or voucher schools available nearby. Expecting admittance options similar to public schools; however, they soon realized some had strict requirements and additional expenses too. Faced with downsizing enrolments, some city public schools were eventually forced to close. In turn – principals, teachers and other staff were laid off. In some states, others even started their own public and private charter schools – whether really qualified or not.

By now, the privatization-driven NCLB "fox guarding the hen house" high-stakes test ploy has been fully exposed. Privatization has been the Achilles heel of the education department, Social Security and other federal agencies since President Bush was elected. Heck, he's even paying private armies to fight in the War in Iraq. It's truly incredible many in the education establishment are still debating and comparing "test results." Maybe they're profiting from testing, similar to their college colleagues that were getting kick-backs from student lending institutions. Meanwhile, its list of critics keeps growing.

"Not only has high-stakes testing largely failed to magically swing open the gates to successful learning, it is questionable in many cases whether the tests themselves are anything more than a shell game," reported op-ed columnist Bob Herbert in October 9 New York Times titled "High-Stakes Flimflam." He added, "If teachers, administrators, politicians and others have a stake in raising the test scores of students – as opposed to improving student learning, which is not the same thing – there are all kinds of incentives to raise those scores by any means necessary."

Quoting Dr. Daniel Koretz, a professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, he agreed. "We've now had four or five different waves of educational reform that were based on the idea that if we can just get a good test in place and beat people up to raise scores, kids will learn more. That's really what No Child Left Behind is."

"Five years ago, President Bush and many others who had little understanding of the best ways to educate children were crowing about the prospects of No Child Left Behind," wrote Herbert. "They were warned then about the dangers of relying too much on test scores." Well, Bush is the same guy who had also been "warned" by professional military advisors of the political and military dangers of invading Iraq too.

There appears to be another style of "reality" going on within White House circles –way outside the norms of "checks and balances," whether it is NCLB or other political issues. This was addressed by Harper's Magazine national correspondent Lewis H. Lapham in his recent "Notebook" report in the November 2007 issue. It alluded to comments made to a New York Times correspondent in 2004, by suggestion it possibly being recently departed Bush political advisor Karl Rove. Guys like you, he said, "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

NCLB is not worth the "curtain call." No longer should it be "the fox that guards the hen house" either.