Failing.

The email arrived from the superintendent yesterday afternoon.

Our district failed to make Annual Yearly Progress according to No Child Left Behind.

Yes.

We are a failing district.

Our students go on to Maine South in District 207. I hear they didn’t make AYP either.

And New Trier High School on the North Shore, with a college acceptance rate of over 98% and where they spend over $25,000 a year per student: Failure according to NCLB.

Will our school (among the top 50 performing elementary schools in the state) be closed? Will I be fired along with the rest of our staff? Will Arne Duncan and President Obama support our firing explaining that we are teachers who accept and created a culture of low expectations?

Will we be featured in a new documentary financed by Bill Gates?

Will we be turned into a charter or privately managed?

And why have we failed?

Have we not tested enough?

Is it because we have a union contract?

Do we not have enough accountability.

Is it the parents’ fault?

Is it because we have not yet written our Power Standards?

Is it because my Smartboard is on back order?

Do we need to publish the names of our shamed teachers in the local paper?

Of course, all this is nonsense.

Yes, we failed to make AYP. And nobody around here worries.

The schools that get punished as a result of NCLB are not on the north shore of Chicago or in Park Ridge. And they never will be.

And that is the real failure.