Our stand on NCLB
With the school year well underway, I thought it would be timely to write about the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) bill and address some of the reasons why Promise the Children continues to work toward it’s reform.
With the school year well underway, I thought it would be timely to write about the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) bill and address some of the reasons why Promise the Children continues to work toward it’s reform. I am constantly reminded how this issue really gets people going about “whose side are you on”? We are affirmatively on the side of the children who we feel are being “left behind”. I would like to use this space to further define our position. Here I go…
First, I will start with our mission statement: to empower Unitarian Universalist youth and adults to advocate for a better quality of life for our nation’s children and youth, focusing especially those in low-income families. Yes, we are a UU organization, but our work is for the benefit of all of our nation’s children, not only UU children. Promise works with UU congregations, advocacy groups and other concerned citizens to advocate for quality pre-school and public education, living wages, affordable childcare and housing, and the prevention of hunger and homelessness. Our goal is to help Unitarian Universalists articulate a social justice vision and use political strategies to achieve greater justice in their communities and nation.
A major issue that Promise has embraced in the past year is the NCLB Act. One doesn’t have to be either for or against this legislation. On the contrary, we are in favor of the theory behind the Act. In theory, every child deserves an equal education. And while we applaud the theory, there is more and more substantiated proof that this law is failing those children who need it most. Our mission with regard to NCLB is to address the area of this bill that desperately needs reform. Our goal is for quality and equity in public education for all children.
One could make the argument that NCLB has exposed the inequities in education particularly for urban children, English language learners and those with special needs. This point is well taken and as an educator, I would agree with the need to level the playing field for all children regardless geography, language barriers, or handicaps. This is, after all, public education...for all children. However, while NCLB has managed to expose the inequities, the mandates for dealing with the inequities have proved disastrous for these populations.
Time and again we have heard of children getting lost in the mandated testing cycle. Urban children are particularly at risk for failure (and ultimately dropout) as classes are overcrowded and under served to begin with. Add to that the limited resources needed to assist these challenged students in passing the mandated assessment exams and you are left with a disturbingly high failure statistic. This statistic is read as underperforming, but it actually is the children being undereducated. That is why we support reforming test mandates and to examine and accept other forms of evaluation.
This also holds true for the English language learner who does not speak the English language. How can a child be tested for assessment in a language that he or she is not proficient in? Again, this situation often presents itself in urban settings where resources are not available to adequately tutor these students to be assessed, yet they are held to the same standard as their English speaking peers. They too are being undereducated.
Finally, there is the child with learning difficulties. These problems often go undiagnosed particularly in areas where early intervention is not a priority or an option. The earlier that we get to these children the better but it often does not happen prior to mandated testing. Then we are presented with a child who cannot perform and needs diagnostic testing to determine the level of disability. Unfortunately, this child has now entered the mandated assessment cycle of continuous failure.
All of these scenarios depict children from compromised populations but they exist in every public school in America. And every public school in America must adhere to the mandates dictated by NCLB or risk losing accreditation or worse, closure. Here in Boston, the oldest high school in America, The English High School, is at risk for closure. Low test scores and a high dropout rate are major contributors to this dilemma. It is reasonable to link these failures to the demands of NCLB. What will this do to this community? Where will these children go to be educated?
These are some of the reasons that Promise the Children so strongly supports and works toward a reexamination and reform of the NCLB Act. We also support reform for the part of teachers who are expected to give high numbers on assessments to prove how well they are educating their students. More often than not, subjects deemed of lesser importance such as the arts and physical education are put to the wayside for drill tactics used to pass the test. While we applaud these educators for their efforts to accommodate a failed system, we recognize that the system has failed and we work to have it reformed.
I know that our readers are from a myriad of professions and I also know that day by day, many of us are realizing the inequities that are evident in this Act. NCLB should be reformed. It needs to be fully funded which will include mandated money for teacher training, accessible tutoring for children with learning difficulties, and revisions in testing mandates and forms of assessments. We need to recognize that a teacher’s goal is to educate our children, not to simply help them pass a test. That is the belief of this UU organization...working for all of our nation’s children.