Posted by
Andrews on Thursday, May 01, 2008 3:08:37 PM
I am of two minds about the whole "No Child Left Behind" act. Of course, as it was the brainchild of Ted Kennedy and George Bush, I suppose that would be inevitable. For that matter, had it just come from Bush I would probably still be of two minds, as he has been on the wrong side of so many domestic issues.
Well, my first problem simply comes form having a federal department of education. I am not entirely convinced that we need public schooling at all, but even if we ignore my rather radical position, I still cannot support the Department of Education. Education, if ti is going to be a function of the government, should be a state, or even better, a local matter. I know that high minded people in New York and Washington DC worry that rubes in Kansas might choose to teach their children "the wrong things", but that is actually their right. Why should the wishes of the federal government override the wishes of the local community or even the parents of those children?
But, for the moment, let us assume I concede that point, that I agree not only should the government be involved in education, but it should also be at the federal level. Still, even after making those concessions, I am unsure about the approach taken by "No Child Left Behind".
Now, if we are going to have federal funding, I cannot argue with the idea of having standards. It would be senseless to simply give money to the states and assume they would do the right thing. Federal funding requires accountability, and, in the past, states have been very bad at holding themselves accountable.
Now, the habit of adjusting tests so that student scores seem to improve was not developed simply to ensure the flow of federal money. That may have been one motive, but there were others. School boards are essentially political entities, and they are obviously subject to politicians who also have an interest in good education numbers. So even if there were not any federal funding, local schools would still be fiddling with tests and scores in order to make it appear their students were improving over time even if the opposite were true.
So I can understand and approve of the desire for a single standardized test for all students. It really is the only way that Department of Education can easily determine the progress of various school systems, short of having evaluators spend a lot of time and money physically traveling to each school and performing detailed on-site evaluations.
On the other hand, the single national test leads to a different problem, that of teaching to the test. As the test becomes the sole important measure, it also tends to become the sole focus of some school systems. Schools which are unsure of their students' ability to pass tend to teach the test to the exclusion of all else. And, as these are usually the weakest systems, it is distracting students who can ill afford the distraction.
So I can see both sides of the argument, those who argue the need for a measure outside of the control of local administrators and those who argue that the test tends to take away from the real business of educating. And both are right.
In my experience, when both sides appear to be right, yet hold mutually contradictory positions, it tends to show that the question itself may need to be examined. And in this case that is exactly right. As with the
gay marriage debate, the answer is not to side with one or the other, but to ask if either is something we should be doing.
In this case, the answer is simple. I said it close to the start, get the Department of Education out of local schools. Inf act, do away with the Department altogether. We did fine before the Department was create din the 1970's and will do fine without it. Once we remove federal funding from the equation, there is no need for a federal measure of schools, and the entire debate fades away.