The result of the "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) legislation is just more bureaucracy, plain and not so simple. The good intentions of the law signed in by both parties in 2002 have merely added another layer of red-tape in an already defunct and disparaging public education system. The law, instead of raising academic excellence as it was intended to do, has instead shifted the focus of educators to 'teaching to the test' rather than focussing on individual needs of individual schools and children. Truly what has happened is a lowering of academic standards, exclusion of minorities in testing groups, decrease in emphasis on history, science, geography and civics and increase in reading and math in order to claim that the law has been satisfied. Is this what America was seeking?
In an illuminating commentary Paul M. Weyrich, Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, calls for an end to the "No Child Left Behind" agenda that President Bush intends to strengthen. He flat out calls for the end of NCLB in another commentary, "No Child Left Behind" Should Be Left Behind.
By handing over local control of our public education system to federal government, it's our families and kids who lose out. Individuals in local communities need to join forces and call upon thier local, state and federal representatives to step back and look at what has come from a HUGE bureaucracy that has lost sight of the rights of taxpayers to exercise choice and direction of their children's education.
What they are getting now are teachers who are forced to 'teach to the middle'. They are pressured to accept that you can't reach all kids, so you have to just shoot to the center and let go of those who cannot be raised by the standard curricula. Teachers are also pressured to advance children who are not ready BECAUSE of the NCLB law. This is exactly what the law was NOT intended to do!
Our public education system is a monopoly that, like any monopoly, serves itself and no other. This monopoly is run by powerful teachers unions, education bureaucrats and public school administrators working so hard at protecting their status quo that there is little hope of improving/reforming our public education. There are many great teachers out there who are not allowed to teach because they are forced to meet the criteria of the monopoly whose income is threatened when they fail to make the grade on nationally standardized tests.
America needs to completely reform our educational system with a multi-faceted solution--not a one-size-fits-all piece of legislation that traps teachers, parents and children in a defunct and failing school environment.
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