To the editor:
“We're drowning in information and
starving for knowledge.” -Rutherford Rogers. No Child Left Behind is a catchy
name; it has you imagining groups of children with their teachers looking out
for them, making sure they learn everything they need to move to the next level
of education. The truth is not so romantic and can actually devastate our
society.
This policy was implemented in my
hometown’s schools after I graduated high school. It had been tossed around my
school district for years and I heard my parents discussing it which is what
brought it to my attention. I didn’t understand it then but the name made me
want it. Uninformed as I was, it sounded perfect. It meant not failing a class
or being held back. It meant making sure all the kids did well on tests and
papers.
A few years after I graduated, one of my
older sisters, Becca told me about how the policy made it difficult for her to
give students their earned failing grades. At her middle school, they posted
grades online allowing parents and students to see them as soon as tests and
assignments were graded. Within minutes of posting grades, Becca would be
inundated with emails and phone calls from parents full of arguments like, “You
have to pass them eventually, so just pass them now!”
While I don’t have any specific examples
of personal experience, I do have my daily interactions with young people
between the ages of six and 25. The children of my friends enter 3rd
and 4th grade without being able to read or do math at that level. People
I speak to in online forums for parents write like they are still in middle
school and cannot express themselves in a way that shows they earned a high
school diploma. Teenagers and young adults who hold jobs at my local businesses
speak like they learned English just last year when they’ve grown up right here
in Utica, NY.
I have always been one for proper spelling
and grammar because it is the language we speak and the way we communicate with
those around us. Without good communication you have a breakdown in basic
systems including familial and romantic relationships. When faced with
ignorance, I try to gently teach the correct way to spell words or express
ideas and feelings. Sometimes I’m met with disdain and name-calling and other
times I’m met with outright hostility. I’ve asked those hostile people why they
choose to remain ignorant and usually I get sarcasm or more hostility. Even
intelligent people can look stupid if they haven’t been taught in a way that
they are able to learn all that is being given. That applies to more than just
English. It applies to knowing the history of the world we live in, the science
behind the workings of the world, social studies of the people who populate it
and the math we use every day to do simple tasks. The most important thing to
remember is that ignorance is not stupidity. Ignorance the absence or lack of
knowledge, it is not a name to be called in an argument. Ignorance is the
result of an education that caters to laziness like No Child Left Behind.
One reporter, Sheena Dooley from the Quad City Times in Illinois, talks about
how many states are lowering their own academic standards. She reports, “Iowa
and Illinois are among numerous states skirting a federal law meant to boost
student achievement by lowering the target scores pupils must meet, according
to a recently released report. Researchers at the Policy Analysis for
California Research, a nonprofit organization, said that lowering standards
inflates the number of pupils who pass state tests. Those tests are used to
judge the performance of a school, as required under the federal ‘No Child Left
Behind Act.’” (Dooley) While allowing states to set their own standards that
are approved at a federal level is a step in the right direction, it should go
further. Setting the state standard low so that low income, underachieving,
urban schools will pass robs other students of higher goals and more education,
especially when teachers aren’t allowed to teach more than what is on those
tests. Letting specific districts set goals that are approved at state and then
federal levels would go even farther to ensuring a more fair assessment of the
education that students are receiving and would allow them to tailor their
goals based on the needs of local students.
The same reporter also talks about the gaps
in her state’s scores compared to the federal standards, “The study compared
fourth-graders' results on state tests with those on the National Assessment
for Educational Progress, or NAEP, a federal test used to measure student
performance across all states. In Iowa, researchers found gaps of 38 percent
and 45 percent in the number of students who passed reading and math,
respectively. Illinois mirrored those figures with a 35 percent gap in reading
and a 47 percent differential in math.” (Dooley) Illinois is not the only state
lowering their standards to make sure their students pass, however. It’s hard
not to want to do that when the school’s funding depends on passing those
standardized tests, but public school funding is a separate topic. These
statistics show that because of lower goals, Illinois and Iowa are graduating
students with a lesser education than those from other states with higher
goals.
Upon my recent decision to become an
educator myself, I did some research into the subject in order to get a little
more involved. I realized the real-life implications are perilous. While my
sister refused to give in to those parents, some teachers don’t want to fight
parents or don’t have the strength to continue the fight for their students’
education. These teachers will give passing grades to students even though they
haven’t learned the material. While this hasn’t affected me personally yet, I
definitely foresee this being a problem. Since I am a parent and will be an
educator in a few years, I will be actively involved with this issue for the
rest of my life.
Being a parent, I understand the desire to
give my child everything. I understand wanting him to have lots of friends, to
be accepted and not to be held back or failed in a grade. I know the desire to
prevent him from feeling disappointment, unworthiness and other negative
feelings. However, his ability to spell common words, do basic math, know the
history of the world around him and understand the scientific workings of that
world are more important than a few bad feelings. As parents we equip our
children with the tools to deal with disappointments and failures and the
desire to make their own place in the world. As educators we give them the
knowledge to go out into the world to make that place. When you get to college,
you get it right or you fail. At your job, you don’t get endless chances to get
a task right, you get fired. As a soldier, you get it right or you can die.
While this issue hasn’t yet affected me
personally, I know it will affect me when I start to teach, and when my child
starts attending school. You can help prevent or fight against this policy
through PTA meetings, contacting the school board and getting together with
other parents and teachers who want to end this path towards a “non-education.”
No Child Left Behind creates ignorant adults without motivation and entire
generations of unskilled workers. Without highly educated people, who has the wherewithal
to run a country or further our study of the universe around us? I once thought
it sounded like a smart idea, to make sure lessons were taught until every
student grasped the concept. Now I know it’s about pushing our youth through
years of schooling with a piece of paper at the end that is becoming more and
more worthless. An unearned education is not an education at all, merely a 12
year prison sentence to be suffered.
Sincerely,
A Future
Educator of Your Children
Works Cited
