TEACHING RAINBOWS (Part 6)

No Child Left Behind

Public Law 107-110 of 2001, the $22.5 billion No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the reauthorization of the Education Act of 1965, was signed into law by George W. Bush in 2002. NCLB increases funding for education, provides for teacher recruitment / principal retention and gives added flexibility to school districts, but under the pressure of losing Federal funding if they fail. Local accountability, more testing, attention to minorities, incentives/penalties and school choice are featured. In general, many of these objectives make sense.

Maybe that’s the nature of media, but I mostly hear and read of how NCLB is failing. My problem is that the law only attempts to improve English and mathematics, with science to be added. This 3R focus is the wrong objective. What about the other 4 R’s (which I haven’t yet detailed)?

Ruben Navarrette, nationally syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group, wants to give NCLB a better chance, and offered:²¹⁴

• The deceptively named Civil Rights Project at Harvard University advances an agenda that is dangerous and backward.

• The National Education Association (NEA, largest teachers’ union), after five years trying to undermine NCLB, has decided to live with it, as long as “standards are lowered and accountability measures watered down.”

• The problem is that, like all unions backing its constituency, the NEA is not concerned about students or schools, but, only about its members, the teachers.

Time, in 2007, gave a report card on NCLB:

• Informing the public on school failure A

• Helping schools improve F

So this is another problem. The public now knows how bad schools are, but the Department of Education admits that any remedies are not working. With a Democratic Congress, NCLB could well get a name change, and will likely become gentler and kinder, with more money.

A more telling gripe comes from a teacher at Mililani High School in Honolulu, who wrote a newspaper commentary (regarding NCLB):

• He no longer waits eagerly for school to start, as “teachers and principals will be berated for failing to do the impossible.”

• He contends that the disparate socio-economic levels create and maintain the achievement gap…and there is nothing teachers can do about that.

• Of course, this is because most parents don’t care enough, or are too busy.

• Further, there is no student reward for taking the Hawaii State Assessment, that is, grades are not affected, et al, so there is no incentive to do well.

• State educational policies are not helpful at all.

In short, he pleads for a more realistic approach, as the inconvenient truth is that teachers and schools cannot eliminate the achievement gap.

-

The Dow Jones Industrials, after being down almost a 100 in the early hours, recovered to plus 21, ending at 9827, with world markets mostly down. Crude oil is at $69/barrel and gold slipped below $1000 to $999/toz.

-

There is a new disturbance south of Baha, which could go west, north or east. Typhoon Koppu at 80 MPH struck Hong Kong today, Typhoon Choi-wan is now at 140 MPH, but still expected to skirt short of Japan.

-