Detroit News report on NCLB

[George Sheridan <learn@jps.net>]

Exclusive Report: No Child Left Behind
Critics: School law hurts kids
Thousands do not receive promised academic aid.: State fails to check 
compliance with federal rules.: Strong schools flunk for nonacademic reasons.
By Christine MacDonald and Maureen Feighan / The Detroit News

The No Child Left Behind Act, called the most far-reaching education reform 
in 35 years, promises to boost student achievement and parent involvement. 
Instead, the federal law is riddled with problems for Metro Detroit 
students, parents and educators, a Detroit News analysis found.

Two years after Congress passed the law, thousands of local students are 
not getting services they were promised, the state has not monitored 
whether schools are complying with the law and locally and nationally, 
schools are still landing on the failing list by the hundreds.

It's not just schools with low achievement scores struggling to keep up.

High-performing schools in some of the area's wealthiest communities have 
been labeled as "failing" because not enough students took the tests used 
to measure whether schools are meeting the standards.

[More] http://www.detnews.com/2004/specialreport/0402/29/a01-77649.htm

About this series

TODAY: The federal No Child Left Behind Act has drawbacks that pose 
challenges for parents, students and educators.

MONDAY: The future under the federal education law includes more tests for 
students, stricter guidelines for teachers and higher odds of schools being 
labeled as failing.

Education either...is used to facilitate integration of the younger 
generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity 
or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women 
deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate 
in the transformation of their world.

        - Paulo Freire