While in the past, education has always been a major issue in presidential elections, this year it has been pushed to a back- or at least a side-burner. Nonetheless, it has not been entirely disregarded. The main point of contention in the education arena is the oft-cited No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2002. Most agree that the act is quite sound in principle, but has not been carried out in a satisfactory manner.
For instance, according to one group called Common Core, NCLB forces schools to focus on reading and math to the exclusion of everything else. As an example of their concern, consider this: in January, they conducted a phone survey composed of 33 multiple choice questions pulled from a federal test administered in the 1980’s, to 1200 17-year-olds. What they found may seem rather shocking. Twenty-five percent of those surveyed could not identify Hitler as the chancellor of Germany during WWII, and more than half didn’t know when we fought the civil war. This constitutes a major problem, since NCLB encourages teachers to “teach to the test,” focusing solely on preparing students for the standardized tests that make up the school’s own report card, rather than teaching fundamentals of history and literature.
No one contests the point that reading and math skills are important, but they are not the whole picture. It’s small wonder that so much of the world’s opinion about America has fallen, when so many of our citizens, youth or not, have no idea where we came from or how we got here. Foreigners know more about us than we do. It’s unacceptable. Another blunder made by the lawmakers is a confusion between “qualified” teachers and “certified” teachers. Some claim that certification may be unnecessary, and cite the success of programs such as Teach for America, that send college graduates to troubled schools. Requiring certification makes it much more difficult for schools to attract energetic new teachers, who have much to offer.
On the other hand, there are many misconceptions about the NCLB act that make it out to be worse than it is. For instance, many people believe that NCLB represents an unprecedented extension of federal power over schools. This is not so. Complying or not is a decision left to the individual states, it is not compulsory. NCLB is not even a new idea. Under Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 was much the same thing. Another misconception is that the NCLB Act is woefully underfunded. Most of this belief arises from the fact that the law was authorized in Congress for far more money than has ever been actually appropriated. This is an artifact of our congressional system, and viewed in this light, nearly every program passed by Congress is underfunded.
The bipartisan Commission on No Child Left Behind has come up with a list of 75 specific changes and improvements that need to be made. One of the main improvements is a more rigorous voluntary basis of educational standards. Another has to do with how the states go about collecting the data to report on their progress. Most states have little or no systematic process for collecting this data, which in turn leads to poor reports and causes the law to lose even more of its intended effect. While ensuring that no child is being left behind, we must also ensure that we are not dropping crucial components of education in order to make the grade.