NCLB Holding Schools Hostage

In the very near future, we will be inundated with media coverage of last year’s test results for Missouri’s public schools. The news here in South County is that 4 of our Mehlville Schools will be on the “needs improvement list” according to the standards of the No Child Left Behind. What is really important for the parents of these schools to know is that this rating is nonsense. Without going into a long diatribe about the intent and unrealistic expectations of the NCLB law, let me explain. The law breaks the children into groups, even if the title infers singularity. If a group fails to meet standards, so does the school. A group is only counted if there is a certain amount, I think it’s 25. So if School A has 24 Hispanic kids, it doesn’t matter how they do on their test. If school B has 25 and they just moved here from Brazil last year and they don’t read English so well, your school fails. If you are a parent of one of this children this may concern you, but for the rest of the parents, I wouldn’t think so much. My blood pressure can really start to rise when I think of how silly this law is. I can understand how the liberals in Congress thought that spending a lot of money on this lunacy was a good thing. Here’s what I don’t understand. How did conservatives leave their good senses long enough to pass a law that holds schools solely accountable for the education of a child instead of the child, his/her parents, the community and the school together? Change the law!