Despite the villainy of Pedro Garcia, the environment in which he started his task in Nashville was not favorable to even an ideal CEO. So while the local leaders would like to attribute all problems to him, some came from outside the state.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was the most intrusive national control of education ever enacted in the United States. It set up an impossible conundrum which was designed--with the passage of twelve years--to make every public school in America appear to be a failing school and then entitle the students to flee, at taxpayer expense, to private or charter schools.
First, test scores must gradually rise to an impossible level of perfection. Something that has never been done in the human race.
Second, more students would have to be kept in school, or statistically the school would be labeled as a "drop-out factory." This conflicts with goal number one, because the usual way to get test scores up is to have only the most able students take the test. Conversely, as less able students are kept in school longer, and forced to take the test, the average test scores will go down.
Third, as more students are kept in school, the discipline problems would increase, causing increased violence and risk the label of "persistently dangerous" in schools that had certain kinds of crimes.
With massive increases in funding, the goals could come closer to being met. But no amount of money would allow school people to accomplish the goals as they were stated in 2001. Of course, the money never arrived because of other political priorities.
It may be politically impossible for any Director of Schools to tell the truth about the impossible goals of the federal program without being labeled as elitist or racist. But the impossibility of the goals remain. Garcia chose to use "funny" statistics to put off the inevitable day of reckoning. Yet it would be hard to find any other school system in the country where the same trickery is not going on. The only hope for public education is to change the national law to reflect realism. That, according to Congressman Jim Cooper, will not happen for at least one more year when we have a new President.
So while Pedro Garcia is scapegoated, and deservedly so, Nashvillians should look at the bankruptcy of the ideas and the groups who supported him throughout his tenure. Garcia really did represent well the anti-teacher, the anti-public education, and the anti-intellectual forces that still exist in Nashville. It will take more than one vote by the Board of Education to clean up six years of injustice.