Education: NCLB Is No Solution

Published on June 3, 2004 By stevendedalus In Politics

The brouhaha over No Child Left Behind is hallucinatory, particularly with respect to accountability and testing lacking sound philosophic principles of education by a posterior “devoutly to be wished”-syndrome. To begin with , it is presumptuous to surveil a time honored system that has developed, however imperfectly, the underpinning of extraordinary knowledge for the nation. Since its inception public education has always collegially monitored its own academic accountability through endless staff meetings, supervisory class auditing, intensive mastery of instructional methods for child-subject-oriented advancement that balances the academic with the child’s learning capability. Nor is this balance lost in teachers’ unions, which in negotiating personal advancement seldom if ever goes to the negotiating table without reflecting community demands, together with their own, to enhance credentials, curricula and individual instruction.

That said — and as in the 60s’ Title I in behalf of the disadvantaged — the problems are social and more or less the same rather than infrastructure of education per se, owing to the changes in the character and environs of the pupil generated by increasing minorities and disadvantaged. Since the 60s the solutions to this social change has been in place but funds for improvements have been left behind — now funding is still the problem with NCLB. What is worse, is that there is a horrendous conflict among vouchers and charter schools that divert attention from the primary goal to enrich the knowledge of young people in the public schools that are housed by superior credentialed teachers.

“Failing schools” do not exist in middle class suburbs — most assuredly not in wealthy districts — that in the main are segregated defacto. Also strides are made at the outskirts of metropolitan areas, in which there is reasonable integration, provided the minority remains a minority where assimilation and acculturation of the spectrum can grow naturally. The quagmire is in the segregated inner city and other schools of the disadvantaged. With ever growing poverty and diminishing middle class, segregation is here to stay, and learning there must be given undivided attention: head start for boys three years old, and four year olds for girls; kindergarten for five year old girls, and six year old boys: This will help boys, who mature more slowly, a chance to catch up and be more capable to compete in the first grade and beyond. The building blocks of curriculum must be in clear-cut sequence so that the pupil can confidently and logically develop a consistent reference. After school programs should be essentially for reviewing the day’s work and homework with adult assistance and relevant lessons by computers.

Segregated secondary education in these disadvantaged districts, must further segregate by tailoring the curriculum to sundry levels of ability — not everyone is college material — with emphasis on vocational, commercial, and technological training, along with advanced placement for promising kids who defy the curse of stereotypes.

With these measures testing will fall naturally into place as they do now in schools that have escaped the mark of shame. Only by serious, and targeted expenditures on education will “failing schools” be an aberration of an unrealistic past and present.

Comments

WiseFawn

on Jun 04, 2004

I'm afraid you might be right about segregation being here to stay. It's certainly strong here now. Why is it that education is always such a low priority when it can fix so much?

stevendedalus

on Jun 04, 2004

Same old story: misplaced priorities. For fifty years proponents have called for massive education assistance--not unlike the GI bill--and cutting down dramatically crime and the construction of prisons and in the long run paying off tenfold.

MadAsAModder

on Jun 05, 2004

Obviously the analysis of one of our uber-educators. A sure sign of teacher incompetence is the use of esoteric jargon, commonly used to "impress" upon others an intellectual superiority of the user. Challenging every lie in this piece is a waste of time, so I'll just go over a few points. If government education was made accountable by "insert mumbojumbo phrases here," how is it that so many schools managed to fail? Perhaps those "endless staff meetings" were merely long coffee breaks where the topic was "How to keep those pesky vouchers from the po' black folks." Failing schools do exist in middle-class suburbs, These schools have been turning out dullards by the boxcars for quite some time. To make the claim the writer does, he has simply been judging the situation by low standards of the inner-city schools. In comparisons with private schools, public schools are nearly uniform in their failure.

There is simply no justification for government providing education. The private sector coulld do this job more effectively and cheaper. The canard that education is too important to be left up to profit makers is absurd. Fighter aircraft are vital to the national security of this country, but our government doesn't build any. It buys them from people who do. An unlike schools we, the taxpayers, would not accept the aircraft's riveters and machinists self-accountability to assure us that the plane would fly and fight. We hold them accountable through our own accountants. Books are also vital tools for schools, would the public agree that government should write them? How about pencils and paper, should our government go into the pencil-making business? However, let's get down to business; the real problem is incompetent teachers and out-of-control administrative bureaucracy. The public may have an interest in universal education, therefore the only just choice for the government is to provide equal access to private schooling by a voucher system.

stevendedalus

on Jun 06, 2004

"insert mumbojumbo phrases here,"

It appears that the above is appropriate with respect to your own view on vouchers as the wherewithal.

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