Roland C. Eyears

No Child Left Behind? - Adults Say the Darndest Things

As published in the current edition of Our Town

Two politicians recently put in their two cents worth on George Bush's No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 the administration is trying to peddle to hostile audiences nationwide.

The big flap is over Education Secretary Ron Paige's remarks at a meeting with governors at the White House on February 23. Confirming the obvious, a spokesman stated, "He said he considered the National Education Association to be a terrorist organization." Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI), in for damage control, explained that the secretary was frustrated by the NEA's resistance to the law. She also referred to his comments that the NEA appeared more concerned about its 2.7 million members than about educating children. Well, of course it is.

This law allows states to set their own standards. Schools in high standard states such as Louisiana and Wyoming are more apt to be put on a watch list and sanctioned. South Carolina schools, with an accountability system in place since 1998, are just too good. This year over 75 percent of their students failed to improve at the required rate. Texas, with much lower standards, was fine at 8 percent. Last fall 30 percent of Utah's schools were labeled "needing improvement," which mandates expensive measures and can even require removal of staff. Some schools have flunked because a single student did not attend on test day to make the 95 percent minimum participation. Full funding from Washington? The secretary says yes. Many others calculate that some components may not be funded above 10 percent. Here and there one can find schools able to reject federal money and save the tangle of red tape. It's a small wonder more than a dozen states have legally challenged this meddlesome violation of states' rights. R.L. Linn, co-director at the Center for Research, University of Colorado, thinks it "will collapse of its own weight."

As Houston's school superintendent, Paige had boasted of impressive improvement rates. Yet in a NY Times analysis, students re-tested on the Stanford Achievement Test and new Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills scored a fraction of the rate claimed. Further, there are accusations of massive underreporting of dropouts, overstating college-bound numbers, teaching only to the tests, and excluding language impaired students from national assessments.

The minor flap relates to remarks about the law by Ohio's Governor Bob Taft. He stated, "What we're trying to do is to make sure every child can succeed in a competitive world economy, which means every child graduating from high school and more and more of our students going on to college, either 2 year or 4 year. That's what it's going to take to make America competitive."

Bob, you're so wrong it's scary. The government-run secondary school system has become an educational teeter-totter. On one end is an expensive sports program taxpayers are told must not be cut back, lest droves of kids will drop out. I recommend we wave goodbye to those non-students. On the opposite end are criteria that are quietly tweaked to increase or, at least, maintain graduation rates as standards drop. Even Rumanian kids whip ours in real tests. Ours is a failed system.

None of this will make us more competitive, because it won't create jobs here in America. It's a hard fact that nobody needs a HS education to stuff action figures, even if the job were here instead of China where the official hourly minimum is 30 cents and not everybody gets it.

As for higher education, it has been a dozen years since a comprehensive study revealed that the average bachelor degree graduate was nearly equal in academic achievement to the typical high school graduate of 30 years earlier.

I salute our young people who study the hard curricula, such as math and engineering. But they're up against it, too. India has two million English-speaking, graduate engineers ready to work for a quarter of U.S. rates. Tens of thousands of Chinese PhDs, many trained here, now conduct basic and advanced research for "American" multi-nationals.

Under the standards of this 700-page law, 28 percent of the nation's 93,000 government schools are flunking. What will happen when that percent triples? Well, folks, if you can't meet your responsibilities, Washington will have to take direct control. It's for the children.

It is widely assumed that education will be a major issue in this fall's elections - again. A truly educated person should assume it will be the same old blather and that again nothing will get better.