No Child Left Behind: How is it hurting science?
By Christopher MooreA while back I briefly discussed some of the problems I had teaching in the public school system here. I’d like to broaden the focus today and talk about how the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) not only hurt me, but is hurting science.
Here’s what the blogsphere has to say about NCLB:
The Unreasonable Man has this to say:
My biggest problem is not the fact that it is under-funded, because throwing money at a problem doesn’t always fix it. My biggest problem with it is that NCLB, by its very design, will not fix the education system. I have very strong doubts that it will even accomplish one of its main goals, which is to identify the system’s problems3.
Communists hate NCLB. Here’s a quote from the Communist Party Platform:
The Bush administration eliminated $8 billion in funding to public education after creating new, costly mandates in the “No Child Left Behind” act, which undermines public education in favor of vouchers for some children to attend private or religious schools. Every child should have the best possible public education.
Lisa Snell, director of the Education and Child Welfare Program at the Reason Foundation, wrote a wonderful article about NCLB for the October issue of Reason:
Like every junior high school student in Camden, New Jersey, 12-year-old Ashley Fernandez attends a school that has been designated as failing under state and federal standards for more than three years. But low expectations were the least of this seventh-grader’s problems. In 2004 Ashley’s gym teacher became irritated by his unruly class and punished all the girls by putting them in the boys’ locker room. Two boys dragged Ashley into the shower room. One held her arms and the other held her legs while they fondled her for more than 10 minutes. The teacher was not present, and no one helped Ashley.
Ashley’s principal, who has refused to acknowledge the assault, denied her a transfer out of Morgan Village Middle School. Since the gym incident, Ashley has received numerous threats, including repeated confrontations with male students who grab her and then run away. When Ashley’s mother began keeping her home from school, she got a court summons for allowing truancy …
This situation is exactly the sort of problem that George W. Bush’s much-ballyhooed No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was supposed to address. As the president said in a January 2001 press conference introducing the law, “American children must not be left in persistently dangerous or failing schools. When schools do not teach and will not change, parents and students must have other meaningful options. And when children or teenagers go to school afraid of being threatened or attacked or worse, our society must make it clear it’s the ultimate betrayal of adult responsibility.” …
Since the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, less than 2 percent of parents nationwide have transferred their children to other public schools. Teachers unions, school administrators, and journalists have argued that the low transfer rates prove parents do not want more choices and that they prefer their local schools. But while parents have more information than ever about the quality of their children’s schools, in most cases they still have no way out of a failing institution.
Here’s how NCLB is supposed to work: If your child’s school is failing, then you can send him/her to another school in the district. Here’s the problem: The federal dollars do not follow the student and good schools are already full.
As Snell points out “better-performing schools have no financial incentive to admit low-performing children.”
In practice, children are offered transfers only to other Title I schools. Since most Title I schools are mediocre performers at best, parents have a choice of schools that are only marginally better. Furthermore, the school districts decide which schools parents will be allowed to “choose”; often they offer only one or two alternatives.
Now the Communists I talked about above got it wrong. NCLB is FAR from being a voucher program. All it does is shuffle kids from one failing school to another that is farther away.
Real school choice would allow parents the option of sending their kids to any public or private school that will take them, and their tax money should follow.
Now our friend the Unreasonable Man has another gripe about how NCLB is unfair to teachers. And in a sense he is right. But the real problem is that the entire program is a huge waste of money that accomplishes absolutely nothing.
Higher standards? Most states had adopted some form of standardized testing long before NCLB.
School Choice? Hah!
Teacher Accountability? I assure you, if the students don’t pass, they’ll just make the test easier. So why bother.
Now how does all of this effect science? When our schools are failing how can we expect to groom good scientists?
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