How to Fix the No Child Left Behind Act

© Dr Gary D. Lemmons, July 27, 2008

Over the past several years, I have used this weekly column to comment on the infamous No Child Left Behind Act, championed by such intellectual giants as George W. Bush and Edward “Teddy” Kennedy, America’s two most famous reformed drunks.  I have pointed out that the legislation, while having a meritorious motive, is fundamentally flawed by the ill-conceived logic that every child, regardless of circumstances (intellectual, social, emotional, or economic) can achieve the same level of progress in school as the most gifted or the most resourceful.

A lot of folks do not realize that here in Georgia, we were ahead of the curve in the No Child Left Behind saga.  A full year before George Bush and Ted Kennedy appeared together in Washington, D.C. to tout their fatally flawed law, then, Georgia Governor Roy Barnes signed into state law the A+ Education Reform Act of 2000 here in Georgia.  In many ways, our local law was more challenging than the national legislation.

Governor Barnes went on to disrespect teachers, ignore the pleas of professional educators for reason and judgment in the reform of public schools, and to conduct himself in an arrogant and haughty manner toward anyone connected with public education.  He was sounded defeated in 2002 by Sonny Perdue, first Republican governor of Georgia in over 130 years.

Both the No Child Left Behind and the A+ Education Reform acts seek to improve education by holding the educational bureaucracy (teachers, administrators, superintendents, boards of education, etc.) accountable for achieving the goals established for students.  Success in achieving these goals is measured (at least here in Georgia) by student performance on the Georgia Criterion Referenced Competency Tests, administered at all grades K-8.

One can argue that there is a lot more to educating a child than can be determined from a “bubble in the circle” paper and pencil test, but assuming that we yield to the “lord god of high stakes standardized testing,” how about if we establish some realistic goals for children?

The way to “fix” the No Child Left Behind law is not to do away with it or to fail to hold teachers and administrators accountable for the progress of their students.  Rather, it is to establish realistic goals toward which students and teachers may strive.  Instead of expecting all students to reach an arbitrary level by the end of each grade (regardless of however many mornings daddy has slapped mama before the child leaves for school), our expectation should be that the child will make significant progress from where she or he begins toward where she or he needs to be.  Under our current system, a third grade teacher, who receives a child performing on the kindergarten level and who moves that child to the end of the second grade level by the end of the school year, is still considered a failure although the child has made significant academic progress!

Of course the sure way to reform American education would be to require the several members of the 50 state legislatures and the 535 members of the Congress to take the Georgia 8^th Grade Criterion Referenced Tests in Reading/Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies.  I suspect that once the results were in and we picked ourselves up off the floor from our uncontrollable laughter at their performance, we might could get down to some real educational reform.