The Failures of No Child

The Failures of No Child Left Behind: Federal Imposition on Local Needs American education is designed, in intent, to accommodate the varied needs of students of all social, racial, economic and intellectual backgrounds by using practical instructing approaches that cultivate individual strengths. Particularly, educational theory has very gradually shifted from steadfast implementation of standard text to more Socratic means of class participation and individual contribution to larger group goals. Essentially, this is a response to valid concerns that standard text and examination approaches have been biased to certain cultures and ideologies not necessarily familiar to or espoused by members of a student body. This is not to say that such political necessities have eliminated the use of text. Rather, the perspective presented by these sources is, in the more progressive atmosphere of today's high school, intended to be supplemented by study and test materials composed from non-traditional perspectives. Moreover, texts are supplemented by activities, discussions, debates and outside research assignments, all of which give students the opportunity to step away from conventional classroom fare and employ their unique talents to understand more intimately the topics in question. This progressive approach to education, though more widely accepted by those in the educational profession all the time, is directly obstructed by the conditions promoted by No Child Left Behind. As with the vast majority of policies by the current administration of President George W. Bush, this is an approach to a subject which directly eschews prevailing professional opinion, popular sentiment and rationality on how best to confront America's failing schools. The program, which is centered on the premise of imposed standardized testing dictated by categorizing score assessments, is rife with the kind of material homogeneity and evaluative uniformity that are directly counterintuitive to the increasingly diverse needs of a student body. Here, we consider the educational implications of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which leaves our schools deeply compromised by the impractical commitment to federalized testing standards. The overlapping authorities of federal, state and local governments are directly implicated by the legislation, which requires that the latter two dedicate their resources to meeting the demands of the former. This is an approach to education which directly contradicts tradition Republican philosophy on the entitlements which are to be allowed states and local governments in shaping policy affairs with relative autonomy. NCLB is, to the contrary, a federal program which gives the national government a broad and sweeping degree of mandatory oversight over performance metrics and content approach in education. For states and localities which must contend with their own unique sets of challenges pertaining to learning capabilities, cultural variances and economic restraints (to name just a few), the diminished level of control means a diminished ability to respond to individual learning needs and assessment demands. In particular, the incursion of a greater emphasis on standardized testing has tied the hands of many school districts which have more traditionally approached teaching and assessment standards based on the opportunities availed by local public governance. The importance of community leaders, parents, local agencies and even local businesses in pushing forward the needs of students through an allied strategy has been largely undermined by a the less nuanced interests of standardized equivalency testing. Indeed, public governance is a deeply complex and layered undertaking, especially in the context of local officiating. Where local government agencies are concerned, the responsibilities of civil administration, legislative oversight, public service and commercial regulation are collectively made all the more challenging by the relationship necessarily shared between local government structures and their counterparts at the state and federal level. This dynamic plays in to the responsibilities and power-broking of all public agencies, which must balance the pressures placed upon it by policy, public interest and popular demand with resource availability, organizational reach and geographical relevance. This condition requires a strategic pursuit of effective partnerships within which public agencies of shared interest and goal can help one another further common or overlapping causes. This is particularly in public education, where issues of economy and priority have consistently diminished the quality and opportunity available in our schools. However, the interests of NCLB seem less interested in allowing districts to navigate their distinct challenges than in distributing desperately needed resources only in the forms which remote federal standards dictate. Indeed, NCLB is largely a program underscored by a focus on testing and student profiling. Therefore, the above noted method, comprised of parameters for evaluation testing, is coupled with a promise to pay lesser levels of individual focus to students in need. Once individuals, demographics and minorities have been identified as being in particular need, individual classroom performances should draw the attention of instructors and administrators, who should be seeking to ensure that all students are able to perform at the most basic level. Where such is absent, a testing regimen would be underscored by close administrative scrutiny. However, the emphasis on the meaning of testing evaluation as opposed to interactive performance has helped to further degrade America's lagging public schools. To this extent, it is asserted in Darling-Hammond's (2004) text that "over the last decade, the achievement gap has widened, and graduation rates have also begun to decline for the first time in this century" (p. 3). Darling-Hammond also states that due to negative legislative changes in the last few years, the distribution of quality in education has been widely uneven from state to state. While overall academic performance in some parts of the country presents a positive outlook, other parts of the country lag behind in terms of literacy, graduation rates, and rates of students ascending to higher education. Yet, the need to adhere to standardized-testing centered strategic orientation, such as that legislated by the federal No Child Left Behind program seems to enforce an unrealistic equivalency standard across these settings. Schools are now required to achieve certain grades and standardized test scores, even as cultural, social, and individual distinctions create a variance of levels of individual suitability for this type of academic diagnostic. As a result, many students have been inappropriately relegated to special education settings, where they are allowed to languish without the individual attention they require to achieve at acceptable standards. Unfortunately, the majority of students impacted by such scenarios are those from minority cultures, underscoring one of the core failures in the nature of the current legislation. The inherent inequality of NCLB is underscored by this increasingly more unbridgeable chasm between hegemonic and minority ethnicities in the United States. The negative condition is reinforced however by a set of practices within the educational training structure which favor the courtship of non-minority instructors both to Masters programs and to suburban schools. As part of a cyclical pattern which institutionally prevents our minority populations from being loosed of such a negative spiral, students beholden thereto are either locked into curricula which are given a financial short-shrift and are thus, armed with fewer qualified teachers, or are committed to districts where their cultural and ethnic perspectives are not being accounted for. This is a circumstance which regrettably continues today, with the current presidential administration's No Child Left Behind initiative imposing further dependence upon the diagnostic testing and grade- evaluation policies which have long been an appendage of established educational patterns. The new education standards are given over to a "fundamentally punitive law that uses flawed standardized tests to label schools as failures and punish them with counterproductive sanctions." (Neill, 1) Sadly, this is a system which appears to be intensifying an imbalance which is already devastating to the future interests of minority communities by diverting funds to those schools whose teaching populations tend to reflect the limited diversity within higher socioeconomic classes. Just as this is a deeply ingrained extension of some of the most negative root impulses of American culture, it is likewise an issue which can only be rectified through root action. If minorities are to ever be given equal footing in the race to influence, political representation and economic balance, they must first be given fair recognition within America's educational system. In order for educators to achieve this necessary level of integration, however, the emphases which are part and parcel of No Child Left Behind must simply be repealed. As it comports with most other aspects of the Bush Administration which is several months from exiting office, No Child Left Behind should be considered a failed policy by a failed presidency. As in so many areas of civic importance over the last eight years, our schools have seen a dramatic declination in quality and accountability. The resolutions which impose greater uniformity in an area where theoretical presumption states greater need for individual attention are both regressive and discomfited with the current demands of a floundering American educational system. This would be a good area for Republican leadership to renew its commitment to the rights of states and localities in the face of federal imposition.