Submitted by admin on Thu, 2007-03-15 08:00. ::
Congress will soon decide whether to renew President Bush's signature education program No Child Left Behind, the goal of which is to bring every public school student to grade level in reading and math by 2014.Though leaving no child behind may be a worthy goal politically and socially, some are questioning whether it is an obtainable one.
Robert Linn, co-director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA, recently told the Washington Post, "There is a zero percent chance that we will ever reach a 100 percent target." Maybe not, but the poet Robert Browning said that our reach should always exceed our grasp. By expecting more, we get more from our institutions and ourselves than if we were to "settle" for less and get less.
Still, after five years of the program, the statistics are not encouraging. According to the National Assessment of Education Progress, between 1992 and 2005, there has been an increase in the percentage of 12th-grade students who read below the basic level, to 27% from 20% since the previous assessment. Only 23% of 12th-graders are performing at or above math proficiency levels. As usual, the figures are worse for black and Hispanic students.
I asked the secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, about this. She told me that half of the states waited until the 2005-06 school year to do an annual assessment, but that 70% of the nation's 90,000 public schools "are meeting the requirements of NCLB. But for 1,800, which are chronically year after year failing our kids, something more dramatic has to happen."
That "something more" has included local government takeover of some school systems. In New York and Chicago, as well in the state of Florida, which Ms. Spellings describes as a "leader" in education improvement, "interesting things" are being done. Washington, D.C., is also debating whether government should take over its poorly performing schools.
Ms. Spellings said "the state of affairs" in Washington schools is "not encouraging." Ms. Spellings cited one major reason for underperformance I had not considered. When I was in school, she noted, I was taught mostly by bright and accomplished women.
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