The federal No Child Left Behind Act is like a toothless Doberman pinscher — it tries mercilessly to strike fear into the hearts of school districts across the nation, but without any actual enforcement of the law, its bark is clearly worse than its bite.
Now schools such as Evanston Township High School are considering the possibility of dropping funds tied into the act in order to be free of the law’s restrictions. Earlier this year ETHS failed to meet the law’s Annual Yearly Progress — a measure of the school’s progress in areas such as graduation rates and test scores. ETHS, which receives Title I funds for low-income and minority students, is under threat of losing these funds if it continues to fail the Annual Yearly Progress standards.
Although Superintendent Allan Alson of ETHS made it clear at Monday night’s meeting that the district has not yet made a final decision, the mere fact that they’re considering a voluntary exemption from the law exposes the underlying problem. Why are schools trying ways to escape the long arm of this supposedly sweeping education initiative instead of finding ways to accommodate it?
Signed into law in 2000, the No Child Left Behind is touted by the Bush administration as a groundbreaking effort to hold schools accountable for their failing students. But with little funding and even less enforcement, the law is proving to be nothing more than growing set of inconveniences.
In an effort to give local authorities more control over how the law is implemented, the No Child Left Behind Act allows lawmakers and school districts at the state and local level to execute the specifics of the law. In theory, this idea makes sense — after all, no two school districts are the same and a nationwide enforcement would be unfair. But in practice, the vagueness of the national law is its Achilles’ heel.
The primary problem with the No Child Left Behind Act is no one knows what the law means. Starting this month — four years after the law was originally enacted — representatives from the Department of Education are traveling around the nation to help schools understand how the law could potentially affect them. The administration should probably be more concerned with funding the actual law instead of funding more people to explain the law.
The Department of Education’s effort is a classic example of the complete inefficiency and bureaucracy that plagues this law, which is more focussed on the paperwork that teachers and administrators normally despise. The law requires school districts to comply with its guidelines by creating additional annual goals and submitting extensive records to be scrutinized by the state. And while schools are wasting reams of paper and teacher’s precious time recording every tiny detail of school performance, the real problems are never addressed.
The No Child Left Behind Act is nothing but a half-hearted attempt at extensive federal education reform. It’s easy to say that local authorities are the ones in charge of executing the law, but without extensive funding and enforcement from the top down, the law is merely a guideline.
ETHS and other schools should remove themselves from the No Child Left Behind Act, if only to indicate clearly to the federal government that this law is hurting schools, not helping them.
The facts remain the same: public education in the United States is far from its goal of serving every student. Dropout rates are still on the rise, minority student achievement is still low and some schools can’t even afford new textbooks. Evanston isn’t the only school district that can’t afford to be ambiguous about education reform — we need laws and lawmakers willing to tackle the real problems facing schools today.
If widespread education reform is the ultimate goal, our schools need a law with a lot more bite than bark.
Deputy City Editor Malavika Jagannathan is a Medill junior. She can be reached at [email protected].
