The Orbis

Suppose you go to a doctor for a routine cancer screening.  The doctor finds a malignant tumor, but instead of providing treatment, he gives you a bottle of aspirin and tells you to cure yourself.

Fortunately, Americans can generally expect better healthcare, but the situation is actually a rough analogy for the education reform that has taken place under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).  I say it’s a “rough” analogy because the education bill in many ways actually makes less sense than do-it-yourself cancer treatment.

The word “Orwellian” has been tossed around frequently to describe the names of the Bush administration’s policy proposals, and NCLB exemplifies how the titles of Bush’s pet bills directly belie their effects.  The No Child Left Behind Act has, in fact, left many children behind because it creates problems where there are none and then does not provide viable remedies where there are problems.

Under NCLB, public schools across the nation must administer standardized tests in math and reading to students each year.  Schools that do not meet the designated proficiency standards are labeled as failing.  Each school reports scores from its subgroups – classifications of students based on native language, family income, and other factors.  A subgroup is comprised of at least 40 students.  If less than 95 percent of students in a single subgroup show up to take the test, the entire school fails.  An entire school could automatically fail if the wrong three students miss school on test day.  Under many circumstances, the NCLB standards can horribly misdiagnose a school.

If a school receives a failing grade two years in a row, parents gain the option of transferring their students to higher-performing school nearby.  The two-and-out strategy fails for two reasons.  First, it sets an unrealistic timeframe during which a failing school is expected to show progress, especially since the government leaves the burden of determining strategies and allocating resources for improvement to individual states facing budget crunches.  Kind of like the doctor with the aspirin.  Second, the policy of school choice naturally leads to a concentration of students and overcrowding in a region’s top-performing schools while underachieving schools are left to wither.

The tests also represent a flawed approach to educational reform.  The tests only cover basic skills in easily measurable subjects such as math and reading while ignoring other disciplines.  Schools must devote more class time to preparing students for tests that measure a narrow range of skills, thereby detracting from important disciplines for developing minds and bodies such as music and physical education.

The fundamental flaw with NCLB is that it measures schools but does not mend them.  Its primary solution to fixing underperforming schools involves simply shifting students around without addressing factors that contribute to low academic performance such as substandard teaching and insufficient classroom materials.  John Kerry has lambasted President Bush for not properly funding NCLB, but the funding for NCLB is not the problem.  NCLB is flawed at its core.  The federal government should scrap it and go back to the drawing board.

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