While education policy has been a heated topic for the last decade, I wanted to look at recent government programs from a naming perspective.
During the Bush administration, the significant education move was the No Child Left Behind Act. After a while, people abbreviated the act to NCLB or “nicklebee.” By the time Obama came into office, nicklebee had a lot of baggage due to its reputation as a punitive law for schools rather than one that rewards progress. So, Education Secretary Arne Duncan pushed to restructure and rename the program. This actually sprouted a crowd-sourcing contest for name alternatives, including:
- The Act to Help Children Read Gooder
- No Child’s Behind Left
- Double Back Around to Pick Up the Children We Left Behind Act
- The Teach to the Test Act
- The One Size Fits Every Behind Act
And some serious ones:
- Successful Schools for a Strong America Act
- Advancing Thinking in School Act
- Opportunities for Academic Excellence Act
- The Successful Schools, Successful Children Act
Although the act was ultimately renamed “The Elementary and Secondary Education Act,” we at Catchword came up with a few of our own ideas:
- Nicklebee Got Us Into a Picklebee Act
- The We Teach Failures Act (WTF)
- Uniform Thinking for Uniformed Kids Act
- We Manufacture Test-Taking Robots Act
- Beat the Creativity Out of Our Children Act
- The “Race to Nowhere” Act (which happens to be our name for the educational documentary “Race to Nowhere”)
What are some of the NCLB nicknames you’ve seen used?
