No Child Left Behind Being Left Behind
The No Child Left Behind Act is being left behind by some school systems,
A small but growing number of school systems around the country are beginning to resist the demands of President Bush’s signature education law, saying its efforts to raise student achievement are too costly and too cumbersome.The school district here in Reading recently filed suit contending that Pennsylvania, in enforcing the federal law, had unfairly judged Reading’s efforts to educate thousands of recent immigrants and unreasonably required the impoverished city to offer tutoring and other services for which there is no money.
“We’re not trying to make a political statement, but this law can just overwhelm a school system’s ability to meet its requirements, especially when a district is as financially stressed as we are,” said Fred Gaige, a school board member. His school system has been struggling to comply with the law, he said, even as it flirts with bankruptcy because the local manufacturing economy is collapsing.
The law, known as No Child Left Behind and signed in January 2002, seeks to raise achievement by penalizing schools where test scores do not meet annual targets. It is the most sweeping plan to shake up public education in a generation, as well as the most intrusive federal intervention in local schools. But until recently it had provoked little more than grumbling, though polls showed that educators in most of the nation’s 15,000 districts considered several of its requirements ill-conceived.
In recent weeks, however, three Connecticut school districts have rejected federal money rather than comply with the red tape that accompanies the law, and several Vermont districts have shifted federal poverty money away from schools to shield them from sanctions.
The Connecticut approach would seem to be the better one, if you can afford it. The federal money is crucial to so many school districts across the country. Of course, you don’t have to comply with NCLB if you don’t take federal money.
I believe that NCLB will collapse under its own weight of regulation and unattainable goals (like severely mentally retarded children passing a grade level examination), but a few lawsuits don’t hurt in accelerating the process.
Sphere: Related Content
January 2nd, 2004 at 4:51 pm
“The federal money is crucial to so many school districts across the country.”
That’s one of the reasons I think religious schools that accept vouchers will eventually regret doing so. The government will set standards for schools at which the vouchers may be used. What happens to a religious school that becomes dependent on students with vouchers when some standard is demanded that violates their religion?