No Child Left Behind

According to a Fox News report, the No Child Left Behind concept has proponents on the left and the right. The left, generally the NEA, wants to do away with standardized testing. The reason for that position is that the teachers’ unions don’t want teachers held to account for student performance, or their own, for that matter. It is a symptom of the desire of the left that no one should bear personal accountability for their own success or failure. It is always somebody else’s fault.

The right, on the other hand, wants closer local control of school system. Under NCLB the Federal Government decides what works and what doesn’t. It is an anathema to the general states rights position of conservatives who want the Federal Government’s participation in local issues minimized if not eliminated.

The problem with that concept has been highlighted in the last year by the situation in New Orleans. The ineffectiveness of local and state governments prior to and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that they are no better at running programs and ignoring the pressures of politically influential forces than the Federal Government. As long as local and state governments operate on patronage systems in which the unqualified are given positions within the government based on political affiliation rather than merit, programs are doomed to failure. The root of success or failure of NCLB is the question of responsiveness of government to local concerns of parents and students.

Granting that the Feds are generally less responsive than municipal authorities, it only takes attendance at one school board meeting for the citizen to discover that parental concerns figure only marginally into the deliberations of local officials. Exacerbating that problem is the participation level of parents. Schools loaded with at risk children whose home life is influenced by drug use, crime, gang activity and parental irresponsibility suffer from parental apathy as well. If parents don’t care about student achievement, to whom does it fall to ensure improvement in education and accomplishment of the goals laid out in NCLB?

No mandate from on high will correct the educational failure of students whose parents don’t care. Youngsters from such families face insurmountable difficulties. Their actions must contradict the apathy of their parental units, the pressure of peers to disregard benefits of education, and the unresponsiveness to government officials to their essential needs for engagement and security. To ask a second grader to oppose those oppressive social pressures to treasure and excel in education is unrealistic and unreasonable. They are not equipped emotionally or psychologically to accomplish those activities.

Remediation may well be the only answer for these children. Should they survive their socio-economic circumstances into young adulthood, resources must be made available for them to recover the fundamentals of education ignored in lower grades. The ideals of NCLB have a much better chance of success if facilities for this kind of remedial learning are made available to those who finally have the physical, emotional and psychological capacity to ignore governmental unresponsiveness, parental apathy and oppressive peer pressure to secure the benefits of education for themselves.