NCLB - One of the Greatest Travesties of Public Education Ever!

As a Principal you pretty much get used to new & improved regulations crossing your desk from time to time. In fact, I've been at this long enough to see things come around twice. For example, the soon to be new high school mathematics sequence in my home state of New York. But "No Child Left Behind" is something completely different.

This unfunded fiasco does nothing to enhance the educational experience. It doesn't enrich the curriculum or provide for additional study of the arts. Instead, it focuses in on a very finite bottom line, as if schools were giant corporations turning out an assembly line product. Well in case you forgot, students are not widgets.

If you happen to have a large population of students who have not achieved in the traditional "academic" subjects, then you can all but forget about offering them anything of a cultural or technical nature because there just isn't enough time.

When the Federal Government compares our achievement levels against other countries they almost always fail to mention the following;

1. Most other countries in these comparisons have a school year that is longer than 180 days and a school day that is longer than 7 hours.

2. In many countries students must pass rigorous examinations to continue in an academic school setting past the 8th grade.

3. The school curriculum is set at the national level and not at the state or local level as it is here.

4. In other countries, instruction is only provided in one nationally recognized language.

5. Lastly, in other countries, educators are well respected and properly compensated members of their respective societies. Therefore, it is much easier to attract and retain qualified people interested in the field of education.

Nothing bothers me more than to have to tell a student who shows an interest in music, or art, or technology that we had to cancel those classes to provide another remedial English or Math or
Social Studies section.

If you want schools to do more than provide a longer school day and a longer school year and we can get it done. Otherwise, allow NCLB to expire and let the educators go back to teaching a well rounded curriculum and not just to some ridiculous test.