The Chicago Tribune is reporting that despite an over $20 billion a year federal “effort to boost student achievement, average reading scores for the nation’s 4th graders haven’t budged, and 8th graders’ scores have declined.” In math testing scores continue to “rise modestly.”
President George W. Bush, spinning the results, said that they show “a system that measures and focuses on every child is a system that can help us, and achieve a goal that we really want in America, and that is every child learning to read … and add and subtract, and no child being left behind.”
Of course no one’s left behind if everyone is stagnant and in decline. Remember the old saying about “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king” - it seems applicable.
Even supporters of No Child Left Behind are having their doubts. Ross Wiener, a principal at the Education Trust, which has generally supported No Child Left Behind, said, “We’re definitely not seeing the progress that anybody had hoped for.”
Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, which monitors the effects of No Child Left Behind, said that closely looking at test results shows greater gains being made in the years before the law was enacted. He wonders, “is No Child Left Behind slowing the increases?”
People continue to look at No Child Left Behind and treat it as a serious attempt to improve education. It isn’t. Remember the “Houston Miracle” that became the “Houston Debacle”? No Child Left Behind sprung from the poisoned fruit of that tree. When something looks and quack like a duck, it usually is a duck. Get rid of No Child Left Behind before it gets rid of quality public education in this country.
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