"Reality Left Behind" -- Another Excellent Editorial

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

REALITY LEFT BEHIND: "NO CHILD" PROGRAM NEEDS REFORM

Bradenton (FL) Herald Editorial
January 12, 2006

Democrats who now control Congress have taken steps to strengthen ethics 
rules and to cut runaway spending that has thrown the federal budget 
horribly out of balance during the last six years. They're working on 
raising the minimum wage. And they must wrestle with President Bush's 
bid to send more troops to Iraq in a "surge" aimed at suppressing 
insurgents long enough for Iraqi troops to take control of Baghdad and 
other hotspots.

But one important domestic item that has made few headlines is the No 
Child Left Behind Act. This misguided bit of political meddling into the 
education process is up for renewal, and Congress should either 
drastically reform it or kill it off before it does more damage.

Bush's NCLB Act is based on the flawed premise that a school's 
performance and success in educating our youth can be measured solely 
through a test that basically assumes one size fits all. But any 
educator knows that this is contrary to the real world, where children 
come to education from vastly different places and learn in vastly 
different ways.

Yet NCLB expects educators to push all children through at 
pre-determined levels at the same time and penalizes with sanctions 
those who are unable to do so. The failure label that attaches to both 
students and teachers as a result of NCLB can be more harmful to future 
academic success than the factors that caused failure in the first 
place. It doesn't take many messages about failure to cause a student to 
simply give up.

Certainly, it is a noble goal to commit to leaving no child behind, 
academically. But it is almost criminal to set up a system that expects 
students to perform at the same levels regardless of their differences 
and then condemns those schools not meeting that level without exception.

Like the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test, NCLB is treated as a 
pass-fail system instead of a diagnostic tool to track student progress. 
That's because it was designed by bureaucrats for political purposes 
rather than by professional educators who understand how to teach.

NCLB also is flawed as an accountability gauge because it ignores the 
single most important factor in a child's life: the home and family 
environment. How can a child be expected to concentrate in class when he 
or she may have little or no adult supervision at home, or faces 
domestic violence on a regular basis, or even has no home to go to? 
Their primary focus is survival, not NCLB or FCAT.

A whole-family approach such as that being tried at Samoset Elementary, 
where parents are encouraged to attend night classes for English 
competency or GED advancement, will bring better results in the long 
run. Most kids will watch their parents and key adult role models for 
clues about behavior. If they see them reading books and taking classes, 
they are more likely to model that behavior.

All members of Congress should spend a week in a classroom back home 
that would likely "fail" the NCLB regime before they decide the 
program's future. Talk with that teacher. Meet each student and see how 
much many of them care. And then think about what will encourage them to 
stay in school and learn: an "F," or a program that invests in finding 
the best education plan for their future.