No Child Left Behind? Hardly.

I’m very worried that many school systems, including the Rantmeister’s own Madison Local School District, have decided to make sure that ‘no child is left behind’ by never even getting into the car.

Watered-down curricula, inflated GPAs and declining standardized test scores have been in the news the last few weeks. From The Washington Post:

“The mismatch between stronger transcripts and weak test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the nation's report card, resonated in the Washington area and elsewhere. Some seized upon the findings as evidence of grade inflation and the dumbing-down of courses. The findings also prompted renewed calls for tough national standards and the expansion of the federal No Child Left Behind law.”

We’ve seen somewhat-impartial evidence of this phenomenon through hosting 13 exchange students…the students uniformly have said the American schools are easy compared to schools in their homelands and note that their fellow students have nowhere near the body of knowledge (related post here) about core subjects which they possess.

We’ve heard that:

*U.S. students know nothing about geography, languages or other countries.
*The U.S. schools are terrific because they grade on a curve, have minimal homework and offer interesting subject matter removed from the core subjects.
*Madison’s four-block scheduling system results in a lot of wasted/homework time at the end of the extended class period.
*Watching a lot of movies in class is entertaining, but not necessarily educationally valuable. (Current student just watched The Bourne Supremacy in German class…presumably because there is some German and Russian dialogue included.)
*The U.S. schools are a breeze, with one notable exception - Mrs. Kilpatrick’s American Literature class at Madison elicits the most groans and complaints that the course is too demanding. This, in my mind, shows she is pushing the students to put forth their best work.

NCLB efforts have focused on testing at both the state and national levels to assure some level of achievement. Now, much of the school year is expended in preparing for these tests, teaching the test materials to the exclusion of other material and further eroding the body of knowledge imparted to our kids.

It’s understandable…teachers and school districts are rated based on how their students achieve on these tests. The community wants to be able to trumpet its pride in an “excellent” rated district, attracting new business and residents.

But all of this is smoke and mirrors where it really counts – in the real world competition with students from other countries. The fact is that students from the United States, our future, are lagging behind students from other developed countries. I do not say they have inferior potential or capabilities…merely that they have not been educated to the same level as other developed countries.

I blame a host of factors for this problem, including:

*NCLB – As not all children are created equal, in order for no child to be left behind, those children who learn at a faster rate must necessarily be restrained or ignored, unless separate educational facilities are maintained.
*NEA – Makes it difficult to fire inferior teachers, insists that teachers be rewarded for longevity as well as achievement. Has also made it difficult for non-teaching degreed people, who have achieved success in various fields outside the classroom, from returning to the schools as instructors.
*Must have good grades for good college – This pressures teachers to demand less work and massage grades to provide a nice Bell Curve of grading distribution to protect them from criticism by school administration and parents. There is little support from parents for the ‘tough teacher’ who demands high quality work and is stingy or uncompromising in awarding grades.
*The best and brightest students have not, historically, gravitated to teaching. They’ve gone into the more financially rewarding areas of engineering, medicine, law and business. How can teachers be expected to motivate, challenge and demand the best from students when the students’ capability may be a standard deviation or two above their own?
* School administration – Superintendents and principals, of necessity, are political beasts unlikely to buck the system by unilaterally instituting higher standards for teachers and students. Their livelihood depends on tangible results…and plummeting GPAs are unlikely to win them any friends.

The solution? I don’t know…perhaps privatized schools or vouchers would diminish the NEA’s power and less reliance on high school GPA as a college entrance requirement would remove one of the barriers to tougher standards. Ironically, less standard testing would probably be a boon to higher-achieving schools, which could then concentrate on teaching students rather than teaching the tests.

No child left behind? Hardly. We need to find a better solution soon or it will be our nation’s future which is left behind.