“No Child Left Behind,” the Bush administration’s under funded plan to raise the academic achievement of all students, is so flawed that one must question the motivation of those who designed and passed this legislation. All Americans desire quality education for their children and accountability in our public school system, “NCLB” appears to be designed instead as a means to dismantle our public school system.
“NCLB” emphasizes a narrow curriculum and wrongly assumes that all students are academically equal. It fails to account for the social causes of poor academic performance, including substandard housing, parental unemployment, and lack of medical care for preschoolers. Ultimately “NCLB” demands that every student in the nation score substantially higher than the average student by 2014. Before going to medical school I received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, but one only needs a sixth grade education to understand that, by definition, not every one can be above average. The federal government has designed a program that guarantees that schools will fail, paving the way for those advocating the public funding of private schools as a replacement.
In spite of all this, my opponent, Tim Johnson, voted for “No Child Left Behind.” Now, though, in a move that smacks of his typical political expediency, he expresses a desire to fix the flaws of this foolish legislation. I think we deserve much better representation than Tim Johnson. We should have a Congressman who does the right thing the first time, a Congressman beholden to his constituents of Illinois’ 15th District. I will be such a Congressman. Please support my campaign by visiting our website or contributing here.
The facts of No Child Left Behind
NCLB intends to make schools across the nations accountable through testing
The reality: There isn’t much evidence to support that widespread testing does help schools improve their educational programs. A study conducted at Arizona State University concluded that “rigorous testing that decides whether students graduate, teachers win bonuses and schools are shuttered, an approach already in place in more than half the nation, does little to improve achievement and may actually worsen academic performance and dropout rates.” (New York Times, 12/28/02)
NCLB intends to help all students and schools by holding them accountable for the progress of all their students.
The reality: The law classifies schools as “failures” if they don’t live up to the unreasonable expectation that 100% of their students be proficient on state exams. This requirement is made even more difficult to meet because it includes students whose first language is not English and special education students in the requirement.
NCLB intends to give families more opportunities to send their kids to better schools.
The reality: Instead of helping the failing schools, NCLB moves children to public schools that aren’t failing or to charter schools. The education at the failing schools isn’t improved; the kids are just moved away to private schools and overcrowd successful public schools.
NCLB intends to provide poor schools with resources to improve.
The reality: Although NCLB does increase funding for poor schools, much of it is wasted removing kids from their schools instead of improving them. The NCLB policies are targeting poor schools and labeling them failures rather than providing the resources necessary to improve them.
