Monday, April 24, 2006

'No Child Left Behind' should be left behind

This editorial from Middletown Connecticut gets it...

...deeply disturbing facts remain. The stakes are exceptionally high and schools that don’t measure up can lose funding, accreditation, and even have their faculty removed and application of the law is arbitrary and capricious at best. Again, according to the Harvard Civil Rights Project, NCLB is, ‘the most expansive assertion of federal power over schools in American history.’ Any attempt at such sweeping reform, especially in education, which is historically the purview of each individual state, is going to be impractical and unwieldy.

My sense is that before NCLB collapses under its own weight into a state-by-state free-for-all, the federal government ought to acknowledge the shortcomings built into the five-year-old law and convene a task force comprised of local educators and state officials. It is only in this way the law can be refocused to provide productive education for our public school students with minimal regulatory overhead, and sufficient funding to provide adequate administrative oversight.

Only a recommitment of this caliber would truly lend itself to the stated objective: no child left behind.

Hear, hear!

No comments: