I recently posted a hilarious item that asked what would happen if basketball leagues were run in accordance with the rules of No Child Left Behind.
John Thompson asks what would Major League Baseball look like if it were conducted in accordance with the requirements of Race to the Top and the School Improvement Grants.
Why this sudden interest in sports analogies? My guess is that education policy has become so insane that he only way to explain how wacky it is is to transfer its rules into a different context. These days, policymakers will say outrageous and absurd things about education and no one calls them on it. Transpose the same ideas to a realm where the public understands what is happening, and the absurdity stands out in sharp relief.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well, sports analogies seem to work better than Jeb Bush dairy analogies.
I am not sure that I understand the relevance of these analogies to education. Do the authors mean to indorse the extreme tracking that prevails in professional sports? Slight differences in abilities as children result in massive differences in resource allocation between the better and worse athelete. Is this what we want for education?
Let’s not extend the analogy beyond what the writer intended. You know quite well what the intent of author was. I know you like to play devil’s advocate, but in this context, you sound slightly silly.
I think the authors intent was to ridicule NCLB by applying those standards to sports. I do not find these analogies effective because 1) they slide from proficiency to excellence (the basketball team must win the state championship to be considered proficient) and 2) requiring students to learn a particular sport is so clearly not the same as requiring the student to learn reading and mathematics that it destroys the analogy.
NCLB is a disaster of monumental proportions. No other legislative body in the world has ever mandated 100% proficiency.
No analogy is too extreme to expose this nutty and intolerable law.
If it is working, why are the demands for “reform” (e.g., privatization) growing louder by the day?
I, of couse, am making no claim about the effectiveness of NCLB. I just think teaching a student to read is essential, teaching a student a jump shot is not. The fact that it sounds crazy to require every student to be a competent basketball player does not mean that it is crazy to require every student be a competent reader.
Should the word baseball be basketball?