My Case Against No Child Left Behind

A report was released recently that reveals all but 7 schools in Beaufort County are not meeting federally mandated adequate yearly progress. In fact the report mentions that many schools in the state and even the country didn’t meet AYP.

What the hell?

Since NCLB’s inception professional educators have been warning that the program sets unrealistic goals that are impossible to meet. But those people were generally scoffed at as being too liberal or defeatists, meanwhile schools continue to focus on the bottom of the barrel (NCLB’s Achilles’ heel) sinking ever scarce resources into a segment doomed to fail no matter how much money is thrown at them.

You’ll notice that many schools not meeting AYP missed it because one particular ethnic or socio-economic group failed a certain criteria. Next year more money, more time, and more energy will be devoted to these chronically failing kids and since all of these resources are finite, that much more is taken away from the “regular” kids.

Self-serve education anyone?

No Child Left Behind is tunnel-vision at its worst, but saying that doesn’t let our schools off the hook in my opinion. Room for improvement abounds even in our overcrowded classrooms. There's a lot of dead weight within the district and it needs to be jettisoned ASAP. In fact I'd go so far to say if you got rid of the slackers, bumped up teacher pay a bit, and brought in some new (more qualified, motivated, and/or mission driven) blood, you'd likely see across the board improvement, even amongst the usual low performing suspects.

That's not to take the onus away from parents either. But you can't control the uncontrollable. Manage it? Maybe... Minimize it? Perhaps. The environment a child comes from will always be an X factor for educators.

We have to start somewhere, but NCLB isn't the answer. Not only is No Child Left Behind "feel good" rhetoric that'll never fulfill the promises it makes, it gives lazy parents an easy excuse to defer blame when their kids fail and that's a losing situation for schools, teachers, and kids.