No Child Left Behind. Who would have ever thought that four simple little words could cause so much consternation?
No sooner had the initial results come out this summer, then the whole world seemed to erupt in anger. Maybe anger is too soft a word. How about fury? Rage?
Major city newspaper editorials are almost unanimous in their condemnation of the program. President Bush and Secretary of Education Rod Paige are regularly vilified on radio and television interviews and talk shows. Educators insist that the program is unfair, unrealistic and simply represents another unfunded mandate that will result in already scarce resources being taken away from education our students, to be used instead in administering the tests, or simply teaching the tests.
| Imagine if your kids were doing poorly in school. What would you do? You’d probably start with the basics: make sure they did their homework, make sure they understood their class work, make sure that they got a good night’s sleep, make sure that they attended all of their classes and, when they did attend a class, that they behaved themselves in that class.
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When the Kansas City Star, my local newspaper, published the results this summer, I can’t honestly say that I was a bit surprised at the results. I’ll bet you really weren’t, either, when your local newspaper printed your school district’s results.
Every year, Expansion Management magazine publishes its Education Quotient TM, which compares school districts around the country in terms of results, rather than on spending or good intentions. And every year, I catch flack from school superintendents, mayors, chamber of commerce presidents, and economic developers when their cherished school district doesn’t do well in our study.
We all want to believe that our local schools are among the best in the country. We know, and like, all of the teachers and administrators, and we ourselves are also products of those same schools. After a while, we grow accustomed to the results our schools produce and assume, somewhat wishfully, that we are setting the standard of excellence for the rest of the country to catch up to.
It’s not surprising that we get angry and upset when some outsider has the temerity to suggest that our local schools, far from being the best, might actually be among the worst. It’s a tough pill to swallow, and most communities would rather remain in denial that face the fact that their local schools are in crisis and that, if they don’t do something soon to fix it, 20 years from now countries like China will be exporting their low-skill, low-wage jobs to the U.S., rather than the other way around.
Do you think that’s far-fetched? According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 26 percent of our nation’s 8th graders tested “Below Basic” in the 2002 Reading Achievement tests. In the District of Columbia, it was 52 percent. In California, it was 39 percent.
That about that. In our nation’s capital, more than half of the eighth graders can’t read. In California, the state with the largest economy, the state synonymous with high technology, nearly two in five kids in the 8th grade can’t read!
A child who can’t read by the 8th grade stands a very, very good chance of becoming an adult who can’t read.
What can we do about it?
Well, the first step is to recognize, and accept, that we have a problem. The next step is to accept that we can’t buy our way out of this one, and as long as we continue to insist that more money will solve the problem, we won’t even begin to make a dent in our education underachievement crisis.
The Washington, D.C., public school system spends more money per pupil than does almost any other district in the country, yet more than half of its 8th grade students can’t read. Do you really believe that more money will improve that record? In the Army, we called that “reinforcing failure.”
Each year, after we collect our Education Quotient TM data, I compare the highest achieving districts with the other districts. I break them into five groups, or quintiles, based upon achievement, and then I compare the five groups in terms of per-pupil spending and student-teacher ratios, as well as beginning and average teacher salaries.
In most cases, the worst-achieving districts spend more and pay more than do all but the top quintile of districts.
Imagine if your kids were doing poorly in school. What would you do?
You’d probably start with the basics: make sure they did their homework, make sure they understood their class work, make sure that they got a good night’s sleep, make sure that they attended all of their classes and, when they did attend a class, that they behaved themselves in that class.
You’d probably sit down and talk to them about the importance of education to their future. You’d probably stress the importance of always doing one’s best.
You’d probably do all of that, and more, and you’d do it on a daily basis, day-after-day, week-after-week, year-after-year.
It’s called parenting, and all kids need it. Teachers can’t provide that and teach, too. That’s our job as adults and as parents. We need to do more of that on a societal level. We need to set our standards and insist that they be met.
If your school did poorly in the No Child Left Behind program, don’t shoot the messenger. Every year that we waste arguing about education politics, the more kids we condemn to a life of poverty on the economic margins of our society.
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