and i got out for a run

He had me at "create better tests." It's not quite a memoir but here's my six-word take on NLCB: "Please fix. We're all in hell." Curious: Who's up for Margaret Spellings' job? Seven years ex post facto, saying things like (and this is paraphrased) Now we know more about education and high-school dropout rates than we did before and Now [that we have, for years, been implementing demoralizing sanctions and placing automatons in schools most in need of heart-driven leadership] we can start patting teachers who really have been making an effort all this time on the back ... and my fave (a direct quote):

I think it’s the President’s most significant domestic achievement. Period. Name something else that has changed the national conversation on something so significant in such a far-reaching and significant way. Love it or hate it, No Child Left Behind has been a huge “game-changer.”

To me, and to so many others, actually, NCLB has been a game-maker. Allow me to offer one way millions who have suffered under the law would counter Spellings' rhetoric:

I think it's the President's most counterproductive domestic effort. Period. We can't stop conversing about how stupid and out-of-control the whole thing is. We can't wait to repave every road that's been trampled by the Bush Administration's far-reaching "federal footprint" on education. Love it (seriously? Who?) or hate it, No Child Left Behind has been one huge screw-up after another.

Spellings may never have met a parent who does not want his or her child on grade level by 2014, but I have never met a parent who wanted their kid taught, for six hours a day, how to read the minds of standardized test scorers who will only consider answers that are placed, literally, in the small box on a test booklet page that may contain no stray marks.