DOI
doi: 10.18278/jpcs.6.1.7

Summary
The article presents the reasons why the US education policy issued in 2001 by president George W. Bush failed. In the USA, no state was able to meet the thresholds sets by the “No Child Left Behind Act” (NCLB), and this occurred because the policy failed to acknowledge the complex dynamics of the educational system. The author, after making a brief historical account of US educational policies, shows the three main aspects that make education a complex system:
1. “The complexity embodied in the classroom”
According to the author, the highest complexity in education arises from the student-teacher relationship. This relationship calls in action many factors that go beyond the mere perception of education as a “transfer of knowledge”.
2. “The intertwined complex systems that impinge on education”
Schools and the education systems, in general, are not independent from their external environment. Thus, when it comes to intervention in education, it is important to remind the role that communities and cultures play in the educational system.
3. “The very nature of education system as a change agent”
Finally, changing the educational outcomes requires changing the components of the education system. To do this, teachers need to attend professional development.
All these components point to the “self-organizing” nature of education, showing that there is no direct causal relation in its elements, but rather, a complex one. In conclusion, the author points to the 4 reasons why the NCLB failed:
1. It failed to take into account the self-organizing nature of learning.
2. It did not consider the emergent properties of classrooms.
3. It placed its consequences at the state and district level, which have low impact on learning.
4. It did not recognize the intertwined nature of school, community and culture.

Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
The article presents in a rather fluent way the different components that make education a complex system and elaborates convincingly the reasons why previous educational policies failed to meet the expected results. It is relevant for the Complex Systems Knowledge as it presents an interesting account of “complex system thinking” lying at the intersection between political science and educational science. Moreover, it provides further support for the adoption of more grassroot, bottom-up approaches to policy development.

Point of Strength
- Fluent and easy to read;
- It presents an application of complex system thinking beyond its traditional subjects, as the article is more discursive and based on “soft-sciences”;
- It clearly presents the elements of complexity involved in the educational system.