The Associated Press released an alarming statistic today.
The number of schools labeled as “failing” under the No Child Left Behind Act could skyrocket dramatically this year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Wednesday.
The Department of Education estimates the percentage of schools not meeting yearly targets for their students’ proficiency in in math and reading could jump from 37 to 82 percent as states raise standards in attempts to satisfy the law’s mandates.
The public education establishment has failed to teach kids to read and do math – the only mandates in the Bush era law. The law states that educators should have all students proficient in reading and math by 2014. The associated press then adds, “..a standard now viewed as wildly unrealistic.“[1]
So it’s not challenging, hard, difficult or near impossible – its wildly unrealistic to expect our kids to come out of the federally-regulated public schools and actually .. read.
In a confusing swirl of trying to fix what they broke, Obama’s Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan and members of Congress from both sides of the aisle first admitted that the law was broken, then fought over how they could really fix it this time. Of course, the Obama administration couldn’t possibly resist one more chance to blame Bush for another failure
“No Child Left Behind is broken and we need to fix it now,” Duncan said in a statement. “This law has created a thousand ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed.”[1]
..
Both Republicans and Democrats agree the law needs to be reformed, though they disagree on issues revolving around the federal role of education and how to turn around failing schools.
The truth is .. the federal government can’t and should not be doing this. Regulation after regulation, standardized test after standardized test and the kids aren’t doing better. We bus them around to try and make it look like the worst schools are getting better while brining the top performers down to the lowest common denominator.
It’s time to let charter schools show the big government failures how to teach kids the basics of reading and math- they just might also be taught real history and critical thinking. Than again, perhaps if our educators weren’t spending all their time protesting for the far left-wing extremist agenda, more than 18% of schools wouldn’t fail.
sources:
[1] https://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gPmjfDMN5nHOpeSIZYLwkVfKAHGQ?docId=c7dc0757afd54b5ca2836c00de44535f
