The education of the young people in this country is in a free fall, and it is going to be a very loud “thud” when it hits rock bottom. Current statistics show that one third of this year’s high school seniors will not graduate, with all but seven states seeing an increase in the amount of students that will not wear their cap and gown come June. Ridiculous? Absolutely. Preposterous? Could not agree more. But we do not need big words and angry politicians screaming for change, we need action.
The problem is how. Bush thinks he has the solution – No Child Left Behind (NCLB) will save every failing school system in the country, according to him. Wake up and smell the pencil shavings, Bush. NCLB is going to close every failing school system in the country because Bush’s twisted philosophy on the matter is to tear money away from schools that are doing badly (due to lack of funding in the first place) and pour that money into schools that already have high tests scores, even though they already have more than adequate funding. Hint hint; that is why they were doing so well in the first place – they can afford to keep and pay good teachers. But, the masses just humor Bush and allow him to exist in his alternate reality.
Educators, however, are done with “alternate realities.” They live in the real world – they are the ones grading the tests and making those big fat “F’s” that are on the students’ report cards that will not graduate in June, and they have had enough. People do not go into the teaching profession to fail students, they go into it because they have a passion for a particular subject/s and they want to share that with others in hope to inspire them as well.
So what is being done? This weekend every governor from the fifty states and the five U.S. territories are going to meet in Washington with hopes to come up with some ideas on how to fix these detrimental statistics. This is the fifth annual governor’s summit on education, but this is the first one that is going to focus solely on improving high school education.
It sounds like a fantastic start, but it is the finishing line that is going to be tough to cross. Many of the proposed ideas that will be presented and discussed this weekend go against the principle ideas of NCLB. Perhaps the one that will produce the most conflict is that governors want to give priorities to low-performing schools, while Bush wants to yank that priority away as “punishment” for doing badly. This conflict of interests is going to come to a head very quickly as educators fight for those failing students while Bush tries to send them packing.
NCLB was great in theory, and it is even promising when written out on paper. Once fully implicated, however, NCLB will be the end of education as we know it. As schools that desperately need money continue to see less and less funding every year, their test scores will plummet and eventually NCLB will close the school. Those students will then get shipped to another school or another district and add to the already huge overcrowding problem that exists in this country. The more students in the classroom, the harder it is to ensure that each and every student gets all the attention they need. These students fall further and further behind until they eventually drop out. NCLB is a disaster that will reek havoc on an already fragile education system, and it must be eliminated.