If you read the research paper, the paper is basically proving that these measures taking place are not working as intended. Not only are they not working as intended but they have been detrimental because of how they are being misused.
Some measures certainly are not working as intended, or at the very least, not to the degree desired or argued. The AYP benchmarks from NCLB were beyond foolish, when it would have been enough of an experiment to find out if the Department of Ed could have positive impact in requiring schools to go back to the drawing board with an improvement plan. That's a debate of scale that's worth having, because in some fields of education, such top-down management can and has had a positive impact for school performance (for any number of reasons, including but not limited to, a lack of respect from school districts toward the state office). But believing you'd have 100% of students being proficient in any given subject was beyond foolish, along with the litany of punishments so rendered.
Charters have had mixed benefit, which when scaled, produces an overall effect of zero. Nevertheless, if one were to zero in on certain districts (my favorite discussion point at the moment is the D.C. Public Schools and the D.C. Charters), the positive impact of charters is really hard to argue against. Free marketers who trumpeted the miracle pill of the market dramatically oversold their cure, but it has its uses.
Nevertheless, there has been an exaggerated reaction against certain reforms because of this inevitable problem with scale or with too hard-handed compliance measures. Furthermore, there's also been this long-standing knee-jerk reaction against accountability via the form of data and data trails. Both have been dogged as some sort of 'corporatist' education model (in the pejorative sense), while what it does is give
evidence to systemic issues that would otherwise be passed off as a figment of the public's imagination. That's why I support the standardization and accountability movement's
sense for data collection and compliance with that, among other basic reforms instituted over the last 40 some years. Many of them get dogged by teachers and unions for being unfair, teacher-hating, and whatever other nonsense.
Heck, in the most extreme of cases, I've seen teachers and administration walk in front of state legislatures proclaiming that accountability and data trails exist for potentially harmful (and fatal) education practices, when in fact none existed. We were told "oh yeah, teachers have it together and can be trusted because they are professionals who care about the well-being of children [and insert the usual professional lingo platitudes]." Then of course, immediately afterwards you get someone from an agency that teachers said get the data, and that agency rep tells the legislature, "actually, there's no standard procedure for the utilization of this policy, and there's absolutely no way we are notified of its use. We only hear about it if the parent knows about us and tells us about it. In the past 6 months, we've been alerted by parents to numerous instances of use of this, and sometimes it was potentially fatal, given the health issues of the student."
But, you know, trust the teachers and their art of teaching, right?
Like I said, I trust teachers more than businessmen, but I do not give teachers as much confidence as they seem to want. There's absolutely no reason why education reform needs to be pitted against two incredibly distinct models (as you put it, social democratic v. neoliberal). Both teachers and free marketers have been grossly responsible for this. It does a disservice to education policy and educational outcomes.
