plan do and review

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 has very admirable goals as stated in an article on the education.com website. Who could argue with it being desirable to offer equal quality education for diverse economical, social, racial and ethnic backgrounds and even to be inclusive of students with disabilities? I know of absolutely no one who would argue that such a plan would be desirable. The No Child Left Behind Act was the first initiative of former President George W. Bush, and that is not surprising since Laura Bush was a former educator and school librarian. And I'll admit that when I first heard of the No Child Left Behind Act and its goals I thought it was a great idea also because in addition to the previously stated goals they indicated they wanted well-prepared teachers in the classrooms as well as a system to measure the achievement of students. However, a legislative bill is a process just like any other plan.

Passing legislation regardless of how difficult it may seem even when it has bipartisan support is the easy part. The newly passed bill has to be written (and as Nancy Pelosi has recently said, "It has to be written so you can find out what is in it.") As humorous as it may sound, it is true. No bill gives details into its implementation. And it seems more often than not when it comes to government programs the old cliche "the devil is in the details" is quite accurate. It took over two years to write the details of how the program would be implemented and work. As of June, 2003 the states and districts were still working out issues concerning accountability, teacher quality, public school choice and supplemental services, etc. When it takes that long to write the legislation you just have to know it has potential for being a monster. And that it has.

I think adequate time has passed that reviews are in order. Actually many have not waited the 10 years since the passage of No Child Left Behind to give their reviews. As early as 2004 the NEA, the largest teachers union in the country, said the program was out of focus. In 2005, the Utah State Legislature authorized their schools to ignore No Child Left Behind mandates that conflicted with the states own testing regimen. In an article on the ASCD website dated November, 2006 titled The Impact of NCLB by Amy M. Azzam, Deborah Perkins-Gough and Naomi Thiers says the legislation's negatives include lack of funding, lack of staffing to carry out the accountability requirements, teacher stress and low morale.

Now, closer to home, I am the lay pastor of a small church (average attendance less than 50) in southern Ohio, we have 5 public school teachers in the congregation, 2 high school and 3 elementary school. We often engage in current event discussions with concerns about the future of our nation, community and family. Education is at the heart of many of these discussions and rightfully so. They say that their opinion, and almost a unanimous opinion many of their colleagues, is that No Child Left Behind is an absolute failure and a waste of quality teachers' time and the educational systems' valuable resources. That hardly qualifies as a scientific study but why isn't the Department of Education and/or our legislators doing a review and correcting the course of, or better yet repealing, this destructive legislation? The future of our country is at stake and a decade of precious time has passed and the clock is still ticking. If you share the sentiments of this article please contact your legislator and demand action.