Each of these elementary introductions to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) captures the imagination, drawing the reader-most especially the naïve reader-into a scenario painted in broad brushstrokes by its rhetoric. The Essex text prompts a reader to reach for pom-poms and chant "Give me an N! Give me an L! Give me a C! . . . " (Though admittedly the cheers seem pointless, since in the Essex version of NCLB there couldn't possibly be anyone in the stadium not rooting for the home team.) The Hess and Petrilli text soon transports the reader aboard The Black Pearl with a crew of political Jack Sparrows navigating the ship of American education into new reform waters, charting areas where educators and their state leaders have been too craven or uncaring (or both) to travel.

Despite the rhetorically created drama of the texts, however, millions of American students and educators are not actors in someone else's play. What any reader who turns to an NCLB primer needs isn't drama, but information. Clear and correct information. Both books fail readers on this count, Essex's more spectacularly, but Hess and Petrilli's perhaps more insidiously for its professed objectivity.

The Essex text is such a poor rendering of the law that it would not merit a serious review, except for one critical point: it is being distributed for free. Anyone visiting a Pearson booth at a professional conference can pick it up as one of several of Allyn and Bacon's "What Every Teacher Should Know About" series of booklets. As a marketing ploy, the publisher will bundle one of several such booklets free with any of its education texts-thus making it likely that this particular booklet will receive extensive distribution among teachers and prospective teachers. It is, moreover, all too likely to be perceived as a trusted source because, as the back cover notes, all booklets are written by "best-selling authors." Essex himself has written frequently (and well) on school law. However, NCLB is not a typical law: it has dramatically increased federal involvement in education, declared invalid a mountain of educational research done by generations of respected educational researchers, equated "learning" and "test performance"-in short, has transfigured the entire landscape of American education and generated widespread and fierce opposition by groups as diverse as the Civil Rights Project, the National Council of Churches, Business and Professional Women/USA, and over 100 others (http://www.edaccountability.org/Joint_Statement.html). It is not possible to have even a rudimentary understanding of NCLB without understanding something about the many concerns that have wrought such determined opposition; these include (but are hardly limited to) politics, epistemology, school finance, social equity, corporate greed, human motivation, and American bigotry. Essex appears to understand none of them or their relation to the written document that constitutes the legislation.

His gushing tone is readily explained by a quick check of his references-all three of them. One is a document titled "Dispelling the Myths of No Child Left Behind"; its authors are affiliated with The Education Trust and clear supporters of NCLB. However, the actual source of the document isn't included in the citation-suggesting the researcher didn't know or care where it came from. The second offers no specific document title but includes the U.S. Department of Education with the National Education Association listed in the position of publisher. The third is a reference to the 2003 NAEP Math Assessment. Clearly Essex didn't look past pro-NCLB sources for information and barely looked at those-nor does he have a sufficiently knowledgeable understanding of education (not to mention citation basics that let interested readers check his sources) to note the apparent idiocy of the citing the country's largest teachers union as the publisher of government documents. (The "ED Publications" identification that appears in the author position is most likely a reference to Ed.gov, a government website that appears in an electronic search for the term.) Certainly no one familiar with research, let alone educational policy, vetted the draft manuscript.

The booklet is so poorly researched and prepared that it seems a shame to waste so much space and so many words on it-except for the likelihood that so many readers are likely to encounter it. Given that a major publisher is distributing it for free "to help prepare teachers for their first years in class," an earnest caution against relying on this piece for any serious purpose is imperative. Please do pass this warning along.

The Hess and Petrilli primer is, at least, a more serious effort as part of the Peter Lang Primer series. Acknowledging in the introduction that "reasonable observers will disagree" about whether NCLB is a good law, the authors end the introduction with what may be a good faith claim:

Our aim is to explain the law more fully, outline its features, and explain its implementation so that you, the reader, can reach your own verdict. (p. 2)

Nicely said-but the road to hell is paved with good intentions

To begin, the claim of neutrality is a bit hard to accept from these particular authors. Petrilli served in the Bush administration and was an architect of the law; he is currently with the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation (an organization Rethinking Schools Online describes as "a conservative research group populated with former officials of the Reagan and Bush Administrations and headed by Reagan's former assistant education secretary Chester Finn"). Hess is Director of the conservative American Enterprise Institute and executive editor of its publication Education Next. While savvy readers will recognize the authors' political connections and ideological commitments and read with a critical eye, less experienced readers are likely to be more trusting and susceptible to uncritically accepting their world view.

To be fair, the authors make some effort to deliver on their promise. Chapter 1 ends with a five-paragraph discussion of major criticisms of the law (p. 23-25). These scant five paragraphs, however, follow twenty pages of political and legislative history . . . and they precede a twenty two page chapter on "NCLB Testing, Accountability, and Choice." Within that chapter, a single four paragraph section addresses "Concerns About Testing Requirements" (p. 40); the fourth paragraph begins "In response to such concerns, Secretary Spelllings announced in November, 2005 that up to 10 states would be allowed to develop accountability systems that consider the progress of students over time" (p. 41). The message appears to be that there have been concerns, BUT the Secretary has been responsive and has adequately addressed them-despite the fact that 40 states continue to face demands of the original legislation.

Concern about the amount of space devoted to objections to the law might be dismissed as quibbles, since no book can do everything and a primer can do less than most. Fair enough. The reader who wants balance can look up the references that the authors have included for the major criticisms they summarize. I would stand down from my criticism if that were the case, and if the major emphasis of the book were truly and simply to summarize the law's provisions. But that is not the case. While criticisms (perhaps understandably-perhaps not) are given short shrift, the cheerleading for the law is on a level with Essex's, if in far more sophisticated ways. Specifically, the rhetoric of the text makes swashbuckling heroes of anyone involved in promoting NCLB while educators are cast in the opposing role of villains; in addition, a major force potentially affecting their interaction (the United States Constitution) is left entirely out of the script.

Consider rhetorical choices the authors made. The legislation and the accountability system are "ambitious" (not extensive-or suffocating); there is a "new world of federal educational leadership" (not a new level of federal involvement-or intrusion); aims are "far more dramatic" (not far more detailed-or unrealistically far-reaching). Repeatedly, praise for the law is inherent in word choices that stress ambition, leadership, daring, drama. Concurrently, educators are consistently depicted as the root of current problems. Incredibly, the discredited yet seminal report A Nation at Risk is cited as a positive influence for sparking recent decades of school reform-necessary because educators don't appear to care about quality: "In bold, urgent language, the report charged that American schools were tolerating mediocrity" (p. 11). Without the first four words, the sentence is information; with them, it's a political position masquerading as information, reinforcing the image of conservative crusaders as bold and brave defenders of excellence. More of the same appears throughout the text, especially as justification for federal intervention:

…in the years after A Nation at Risk, states began to set standards….The hope was that teachers would align their lesson plans with these standards and that teachers, students and administrators would strive to meet them…[I]mproving the system required policymakers to get the incentives right for educators and for students. (p. 28)

The law's authors hoped that public outcry over lackluster scores will force schools to raise their sights and focus on students who have been left behind. (p. 33)

These sanctions are the "teeth" of No Child Left Behind. They are the mechanisms by which the federal and state governments attempt to coerce low-performing schools to improve. (p. 43).

In the picture being painted here, educators aren't interested in striving for quality unless a policymaker steps in to provide some incentive; clearly they are not intrinsically interested in their students' welfare or in helping them meet ambitious standards (which come only from outsiders). Educators have low expectations, don't care about students who don't do well, and must be shamed or otherwise punished into doing better. Without policymakers to turn things around, educators and students appear determined to stay on course for hell in a handbasket.

According to these authors, the NCLB rescue plan is based on the Texas model promoted by George W. Bush as governor, which purportedly produced "impressive gains," especially for minority students who made "huge strides" under the plan (p. 29). Support cited for that claim comes from an article published in 2000 by The Rand Corporation, yet another conservative outfit. However, also published in 2000 in Education Policy Analysis Archives-two years before NCLB was signed into law-is an article titled "The Myth of the Texas Miracle in Education," which presents a statistical analysis demonstrating that the vaunted Texas gains were no more than mathematical sleight of hand. In addition, a whistle-blower in Houston has given extensive first-hand testimony documenting that the miracle was in fact mirage. While it may not have been possible for the authors to address every criticism of NCLB, they might have refrained from presenting highly questionable claims about the purported Texas miracle as demonstrated fact. Given that the popular television news show 60 Minutes conducted an extensive investigation into charges of manipulation in 2004, it is widely known that the Texas miracle has been challenged as fraudulent. To present the claim as if it had never been challenged is, at best, misrepresentation-especially since scholarly challenges began as early as 2000.

One more instance of verbal manipulation of reality should provide more than enough evidence that this text cannot be trusted as a source of information sufficiently objective to allow readers to make up their own minds about the merits of the law. Article 10 of the United States Constitution makes clear where government responsibility for education lies: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Since education is not delegated to the federal government nor prohibited to states, responsibility for it clearly lies with the states. And yet, time and time again, the text suggests that the federal government has willingly allowed states to run their own educational affairs, like an indulgent daddy, stepping in only when the states proved ineffective. Passive voice for verbs comes in handy here. The authors say that "schooling has always been primarily left to state and local control" (p. 8), as if it were a choice the federal government made; similarly, "Federal oversight was restricted to ensuring that assistance was spent for its intended purposes, while questions of performance, student achievement, and school improvement were deemed the province of the states" (p. 27); the federal government had practiced a "hands-off approach" toward teacher education (p. 70). When NCLB was implemented, according to the authors, it marked a "radical change in federal policy" (p. 27)-presumably one in which daddy decided to take the wheel after indulging junior for too long.

However: the federal government does not now and never has had authority over education because, by virtue of the 10th Amendment, the states have such authority. What Hess and Petrilli surely understand-while many readers will not-is that in fact, the federal government has not chosen to stay out of education but was excluded from it constitutionally. It has no legal right to meddle, and so the only choice it has ever had is to help fund schools or not. In portraying NCLB as a simple policy change, the authors again misrepresent the factual situation. Any school can decline to participate in NCLB by deciding it can live without the federal funds it would forfeit. There has not been a policy change: there has been the attempted imposition of a punishing system that tries to fiscally bludgeon schools into complying with demands the federal government has no right to make. The authors surely know that, but readers equally surely won't learn it from the text.

This is a brief review, not intended to be comprehensive; there is much more to criticize. The bottom line here is this: this book cannot be trusted. Does it clarify features of the law? Yes. Does it offer at least some recognition of criticisms? Yes. But the authors' enthusiasm for the law seeps through their word choice, and their world view is evident in their portrayal of heroes and villains. Moreover, the way they offer their hotly contested versions of critical realities as simple, self-evident truths are deceptive at best. From a trusted publisher, and in a book that begins with an assertion of neutrality, the text's potential manipulation of the naïve reader is dangerous, whatever good intentions may underpin the work.

Suggested Readings:

FairTest. What is the "No Child Left Behind" Law? Available at:  http://www.fairtest.org/nattest/What_is_NCLB.html.   (This site also offers several other relevant articles well-worth browsing through.)

Haney, W. (2000, August 19). The Myth of the Texas Miracle in Education. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 8(10). Available at:  http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n41/.

Neill, M., Guisbond, G., Schaeffer, B. with Madden, J. and Legeros, L. (2004, May).   Failing Our Children. Electronic version. Accessed September 4, 2007 from  http://epsl.asu.edu/epru/articles/EPRU-0405-62-OWI.pdf.

Nichols, S. and Berliner, D.C. (2007). Collateral damage: How high-stakes testing corrupts America's Schools. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.