Editorial

No Child Left Behind: one-size does not fit all

It was Samantha's first field experience in a kindergarten classroom in Silver Creek. She had learned about No Child Left Behind (NCLB), but had never seen the program implemented. Her supervising teacher was giving a math assessment to keep students on track for NCLB, which started testing in third grade. All of a sudden, a five-year-old boy started crying because he could not understand the questions. The child received a zero for the review and the teacher went on to the next set of lessons.

Four years later, Samantha is now a full-time teacher at the Dunkirk Head Start and is feeling the pressure of NCLB in her own classroom.

"With [NCLB], state-written lessons tell me exactly what I need to say to and do with the children. If the children don't understand a topic, there is no time to explain it further because there is an emphasis to help the children who do understand. That way, a higher percentage will pass state tests," Samantha said. "Teachers have no flexibility to design activities to motivate, encourage or assist children in learning."

Testing for NCLB in New York State - English Language Arts (ELA) in January and math in March - starts in third grade. Teachers are not given enough time to teach a whole year's worth of material by test dates. Therefore, preparation for these tests trickles down year by year to primary education. This puts more strain on children at an age when they should be learning how to be students, not actually being students like in Samantha's classroom.

According to www.ed.gov/nclb, President Bush emphasized a concern that "too many of our neediest children are being left behind," despite the nearly $200 billion in federal spending since the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). However, with NCLB the country's neediest children are precisely the students being disregarded because the program is not taking into account children with disabilities, divergent ethnic backgrounds and urban locations. The program tests children without looking at real-life circumstances and does not provide resources for needy children.

Think about it: how practical is it to ask a child to maintain a strict regiment of learning and test taking when she/he is hungry, needs glasses or a hearing aide?

On top of a lack of resources provided for low-ranking and high-need students, teachers are made solely accountable for children absorbing a certain amount of information. This rigidity is forcing teachers to teach directly to a test and is not allowing room for creative activities that build problem solving, inter-personal and design technology skills. Active engagement with other students is necessary to fine-tune students for civilized learning. By not allowing the students to learn how to be students, the country cannot expect students to absorb heaps of information.

Additionally, because NCLB mandates that 95 percent of children must be mentally and physically able to take state tests in every school, many special needs students are being place into regular classrooms, or "inclusion classrooms." This not only impedes their progress, but it places the teacher in a position where he or she must be qualified to support each special need of those individual students. If the teacher is not qualified or students do not meet state requirements, he/she can be fired. If the teacher is qualified, she/he is generally not financially reimbursed for these authorized qualifications.

NCLB has good intentions to eradicate illiteracy and the educational gaps between ethnicities. Theoretically, the program should work (however, technically, so should communism). This one-size-fits-all program does not account for real-life situations. Because the people who wrote the program have no background in education, the methods and techniques are not appropriate for all children's development. Not only does NCLB diminish alternate ways of learning (visual, audible and creative), it programs teachers to teach the same thing on the same day across the country. Children who need extra time are overlooked.

Uniformity is good. But in an educational system, uniformity needs some leeway.

Christine Givner, founding dean of the college of Education at Fredonia, explained that the first step to increasing literacy rates and education in America is to provide environments for all children to be able to learn. This way, children have the basic building blocks to become productive members of a global economy.

On top of providing an environment suitable for learning, students need to be assessed on a multi-intelligence level. While international students are increasingly being educated in a less rigid and more actively engaging system of learning, American students rank in the middle to the bottom of the comparative studies of achievement in math, science and general literacy compared with the advanced industrial nations.

Developing strong skills in English, math, science as well as literature, history and art are a better way to move America back to the top of the educational ranking. Nations that place higher than the U.S. have students who are, "comfortable with ideas an abstractions, good at both analysis and synthesis, creative and innovative, self-disciplined and well organized," according to the executive summary for the new commission on the skills of the American workforce at www.skillscommission.org. Due to the steady decrease of the American educational ranking compared with other industrial nations, members of the commission are dedicated to finding and reporting research that will change the American education system.

The federal spending of $200 billion on a system that does not work is not the answer. We need to change the system entirely. Only after tackling these primary necessities can the country raise the bar for students and teachers in a way that will leave no children behind.