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By: Sergio Diana George Will hit the nail on the head when in his recent column he acknowledges that all the No Child Left Behind Act has done is made politics more important than education. (I do not agree, however, with his assertion that state and local control is better; just look at the Kansas evolution debacle and the state Regents labeling 47 percent a "passing" grade on Regents exams.) School districts in New York are showing adequate yearly progress solely based on watered-down, highly curved Regents results and minimum competency exams. Administrators claim that they are being successful by these benchmarks, yet our children continue to show poor performance on college boards and there is a considerable amount of feedback from colleges that our high school students are not prepared for the rigors of college level work. So while we continue to use the NCLB minimum competency benchmarks as to whether a school district is "failing," we continue to fail students who are not being challenged by these ridiculously low standards. So while, politically, school districts can claim that they are "meeting or exceeding" the standards, how are the children really being served by these low expectations? Better still, what does this tell you about a school district that is not meeting the NCLB standards? The day will come when we realize that we need sane, rational, national standards for education, for each grade level in the United States. NCLB does not even come close to realizing its goals when all you are doing is raising the bar and then letting children walk right underneath the bar. It makes great political theater, but in the end, it is the children who will reap the bitter harvest of this poorly conceived national legislation. |
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