Note: The Eagle is proud to introduce a new feature on the Opinion Page: Every other week, conservative columnist Josh Kraushaar will go up against liberal columnist Corey Parker. Let the bickering begin.
Perhaps the slogan "No Child Left Behind" fills hearts with pride and righteousness, but President George W. Bush's initiative of the same name conjures an image of cruel contradiction that smacks of Orwellian doublespeak. While Bush and the Department of Education state that "schools will be held accountable for improving student achievement," they aren't giving public schools any ammunition to fight off the pressure gun that's cocked to schools' heads. Bush publicly lauds his pet project, yet he wants to slash funding to the program by allotting it $6 million less than the appropriation passed in Congress.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is supposed to ensure equal access to education for elementary and secondary school students, which would benefit low-income families and students who are forced to attend run-down, under-funded schools. However, Bush advocates vouchers for private schools while decreasing DOE funding, which undercuts aid to poor public schools. This seems to be another manifestation of 'protect the rich and ignore the poor' that America has suffered from in recent tax and labor policies. If private schools need help, they should seek it from private sources. States across the nation from Alabama to New York don't have enough money to pump into floundering school districts, and requiring those districts to improve on standardized tests while cutting funding for facilities and technology will not increase the learning capabilities of any child.
Poor and low-achieving public schools still have to meet the same standardized testing requirements of wealthier schools, but another key component of NCLB makes it very difficult for low-achieving schools to do this. The 'choice' section of NCLB puts more emphasis on magnet schools while ignoring the deficiencies of low-achieving schools. If one school's achievement rating is not up to par, students are encouraged to move to better schools where they can get a better education. While this may be beneficial to students who are chosen to go to a magnet school, the achievement rating of the poorer school may go down. The low-achieving school will receive sanctions instead of more funding, giving it even less of a chance to improve its facilities and teaching staff and achieve higher test scores.
NCLB calls for mandatory annual standardized testing in grades 3-8 by 2005-06, but the education proposals, according to the minority representative of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, do not require that all teachers will be qualified by 2005, nor do they require that all children reach acceptable proficiency levels in the next 10 years. To hold schools accountable without providing them the necessary tools to improve student test scores is unreasonable and counter-productive to education. Standardized testing, moreover, does not teach anything - it is merely one flawed way of evaluating the level of education a student has received, and doesn't account for learning disabilities or for students whose first language is not English. Common standardized tests like the SAT have been criticized for their cultural bias, and immigrant students who have just arrived in the country have no option of taking these kinds of tests in their native language. Additionally, teachers have to shelve their curricula to teach students how to pass standardized tests, thus taking away valuable class time and learning opportunities, sacrificing them to the worthless altar of statistical vanity.
In addition, NCLB has limited funding to AmeriCorps, after-school programs and the Safe and Drug Free Schools State Grants. Cutting AmeriCorps funding makes it much harder for poor, low-achieving urban schools to acquire new and talented teachers. In poor, urban neighborhoods, after-school programs are vital to improving the conditions of public schools and neighborhoods - which leads to the reduction of after-school violence and drug use - and are also valuable in increasing student interest in school. Keeping schools safe and drug-free is also essential to improving the quality of education in schools, and if no effort is made to clean up these schools and provide a better learning environment, test scores will never go up. Bush tried his system out in Houston and failed miserably, and so far there hasn't been any evidence that his system works on the federal level. But perhaps students will now be able to pronounce "nuclear" and "terrorism" correctly.
Yet even if NCLB wasn't flawed, it still wouldn't receive enough funding to function properly. It isn't only liberals who think that $87 billion could be spent in a more productive fashion than the occupation of Iraq. Bush has used the war on terror as a convenient smokescreen for his atrocious domestic policies, and sadly it looks as though he'll continue to get away with it. Instead of helping students improve their education and secure a brighter future, soldiers are dying daily in a foreign country. Perhaps Bush should rework his slogan to "No Soldier Left Behind." Maybe then the children who aren't getting adequate education in poor public schools wouldn't drop out and join the army. Then the kids who are getting the short end of the stick in poor schools wouldn't be getting the long end of a rifle in the Middle East. But either way, they'll still be publicly nurtured and praised while privately left behind.
Corey Parker is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences.
