"President George W. Bush's signature legislation — the rigidly inflexible education reform package called No Child Left Behind — has been a millstone around the neck of America's public education system since it was signed into law in 2002. Everyone seems to "get" this — except President Bush and his rigidly inflexible Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings. Lawmakers from all 50 states belonging to the National Conference of State Legislatures — Republicans as well as Democrats, including our own Sen. Emmett Hanger Jr., who chairs the NCSL's Budgets and Revenue Committee — have declared Bush's education edict unworkable and called for 40 changes to fix it..."
"Despite all this, Bush's band has played merrily on. One hundred percent pass rates — even from severely disabled children and those who do not speak English — are demanded and expected. No money is forthcoming to fund these expectations, however — not that it would matter; the demands made by NCLB are impossible, unworkable and inflexible. The law is a shining example of only one thing — why it is so inadvisable for the federal government to dictate decisions that should be made only at the state and local level."...allowing states to opt out of its testing mandates...would be good news for the entire country's public education system, which finds itself being punished for things over which there is no control — like the aforementioned 100 percent pass rates for the severely handicapped and children who do not speak English. It would be good news for the quality of education in the United States. Schools across the nation have had to scuttle programs for the gifted and talented, the arts and anything that does not "teach to the test" in order to meet NCLB's demands.
Please, Congress — make it so."
More from the Dallas Morning News.
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