When I first learned about No Child Left Behind (NCLB), I thought it was a good idea, but that was before I learned more. I did not realized that the way Bush achieved such success with the plan in TX was to push failing students out of the system, before they could bring down the scores. I did not know that the mandate for states to implement the program came without federal support, and that Republicans were about to cut revenue sharing for education. Instead of going to to NCLB, the money went to No Millionaire Left Behind, the only successful Republican program. Now I know better, and NCLB is on the brink of failure.
With the clock ticking, federal education officials fear that calamity awaits.
If Congress doesn’t move quickly to change the No Child Left Behind law, they project that a whopping 82 percent of the nation’s public schools could fail to meet proficiency targets this year, facing sanctions that ultimately can include a loss of federal aid. That’s up from 37 percent last year.
Beset with a case of the jitters, Education Secretary Arne Duncan is warning of "a slow-moving educational train wreck for children, parents and teachers" — and he’s not waiting for the crash.
With Congress showing no signs of meeting a request by President Barack Obama to overhaul the law by this fall, Duncan said he’ll use executive authority to waive some requirements of the law, essentially freeing states from any harsh consequences if their schools fail to meet the federal testing requirements… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <McClatchy DC>
The question is what do we do now. In my view, the federal government needs to get more involved in education, by establishing minimum national curricula in English, Math, Science, Social Studies and Humanities. Republican revisionism must be eliminated. Funding must accompany the mandate. On the state level, states, not districts, must fund schools, so funds can be distributed equally, and the quality of students’ education does not depend on the affluence of their neighborhoods. Without such common sense changes as these, the equality of opportunity our nation claims to offer cannot exist.
9 Responses to “Children Left Behind”
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http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/booker-t-washington-high-school-wins-race-top-commencement-challenge
The above link is about one inner-city school in Memphis, TN that completely ignored “no child left behind” and engaged their children to learn. They won the 2011 Race To The Top Commencement Challenge and a visit from President Barack Obama. He also addressed their graduation!
I work in that neighborhood and I can attest to the fact that it can be done! No matter the sacrifice! Everybody needs to get their eyes on the goal and start doing it! Enough of this “no child……..” nonsense!
The government is going to have to get real and put education ahead of “defense”, if America is going to reclaim it’s greatness!
Thanks Johnny. Excellent link.
The educational system is a shambles– NCLB resulted in a marked increase in ‘teaching to the test’ not to learn– our schools are churning out ‘graduates’ without the ability to think , or the skills needed for today’s technology , never mind what it on the horizon—Children are not being taught how to learn- Funding– oh yes–big problem ,; parental involvement . involvement of communities , must be part of any effort to bring children up to where they need to be ;Not a clear black/ white issue is it ?
Black and white exists in the Republican mind set. Sane people recognize it as the concrete thinking error.
It’s another example of best intentions which failed. It’s time to reform it or shelve it.
Blue, when Republicans imposed it without financial support, they demonstrated the worst of intentions.
“If Congress doesn’t move quickly to change the No Child Left Behind law, they project that a whopping 82 percent of the nation’s public schools could fail to meet proficiency targets this year, facing sanctions that ultimately can include a loss of federal aid. ” Yeah, that’s a great idea – take away their funding so the problem gets worse. I wanna know what fucking genius thought that one up.
” In my view, the federal government needs to get more involved in education, by establishing minimum national curricula in English, Math, Science, Social Studies and Humanities. Republican revisionism must be eliminated. Funding must accompany the mandate.” If we have a Department of Education and they are not doing this, then why do they even exist? Now I love Arne Duncan to death (I actually got to work with him on a consulting project when I was in Public Accounting) and he did great work with the City of Chicago schools, but why is he not demanding this? Then all these kooky assed states couldn’t mandate bullshit like abstinence only education and the rewriting of history because it doesn’t match some dumasses view of the flat earth or the presence of Intelligent Design (what an oxymoron that is) in schools. And then don’t even start with the cuts in teachers rather than admin personnel.
I have two boys – one test off the charts and the other one tests at the median level. We had to fight to get him in AP classes even though he’s a straight A student. And they are tested to death – I swear, I don’t know how teacher have time to actually teach, much less help a struggling student, with all the testing that’s being done. It’s ridiculous.
And then there’s the genius (thank you GWB) who created this mess and then congress didn’t fund it. “We’re going to issue a bunch of ridiculous regs on the schools and then not give them any money or guidance on what to do. That’ll be fun.” Why don’t you assholes do the same thing to the banks and see how that works out. There would be marches on the Hill everyday until they gave them some money to implemented, even though they have the money to make the changes. And they’d get their money too come hell of high water, but the teachers – nope, let them figure out how to pay for this mess. They could march until the end of time and still not get their money.
It was like Sarbanes Oxley – I read that entire bill and still couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to be testing. And then they’d change the rules right up until the compliance date was set. Even the Public Accountants who had to review all this crap wouldn’t give us a shred of guidance. If I ever meet either of those two, I’m going to punch them in the face. I just tested the shit out of everything and called it a day. Oh, and our accounting group did’t have one policy or procedure documented – how can you test against something that doesn’t exist? I was ready to rip my hair out as a Director of Internal Audit. We would test things three times and they still would fail. That company was a mess too; holy crap, I never wanted to go through that again – what a friggin nightmare. And if you ever have trouble sleeping, try reading an accounting policy; what a snooze fest those are. And I’m a CPA.
“Here we’re going to give you this massive bill written in legalese (it might as been Chinese for all the sense it made), change the rules when the wind blows and it’ll take you thousands of hours to complete. But, uh, money, yeah, um, you’re on your own. All because we are lawyers and not accountants and we don’t know jack shit about accounting or how it works, so just figure it out because we don’t even know what we’re asking for because we’re too stupid.” They might as well have come out and said that and I’m sure Every Child Left Behind was the same thing – they’re lawyers, WTF do they know about education and how kids learn or anything relevant to teaching. Asshole – every damned one of them that voted for those two piece of shit bills.
Lisa, it was Bush who thought it up and DOE can’t spend funding that Republicans took away. Great rant!