REAL OR BOGUS SCHOOL REFORM
Children who cannot read or compute are sentenced to economic and social death in our country. Yet only 39 percent of the nation’s White, 15 percent of Latino, and 12 percent of Black 4th graders can read at a proficient level. Only half of White, 19 percent of Latino, and 13 percent of Black 8th graders can do math at a proficient level.
The Administration’s No Child Left Behind Education Act (NCLB) promised America’s children that we will ensure that every one of them is able to achieve at high levels and can leave high school prepared for college, work, and adulthood. But the President’s budget history has turned this promise on its head by consistently cutting K-12 education funding. As the Department of Education’s own numbers have shown, the President has cut spending on major “No Child Left Behind Act” programs by more than $680 million in one year alone, causing 39 states to suffer significant reductions in federal funding for education.
Federal cuts have come at a time when states and school districts are already in major fiscal distress. The Council of Great City Schools surveyed districts across the country and found significant cuts to educational services in most major cities. Birmingham, Alabama is but one example, a city that eliminated 550 teaching positions, closed nine schools, and reduced the number of summer school sites from 68 to 12 just a few years after the passage of NCLB. Boston has increased class size by three students at every level and will cut each of its schools’ funding by 10 percent.
By dramatically underfunding his own education reform, the President has reducd what should be real reform to a system of measurement and punishment. I fear, too often, classroom teaching has been reduced to trying to prepare students for the questions on the tests rather than real learning. This is not the education we want for any of our children.
Education should offer the opportunity to transform young people into thoughtful adults who have not only mastered certain content, but who have also gained lifelong skills to help them understand and become engaged more deeply in the world. This means providing a curriculum that allows them to discover and use their many talents, hiring and retaining high quality teachers who can make subject matter relevant and exciting, and modernizing our schools so children feel safe, valued, and able to learn. Yet President Bush has cut teacher quality budgets by more than $250 million, and has refused to fund school modernization programs—although the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the quality of America’s school facilities a “D-” compared to all other public works projects. Faced with mounting pressure to perform and reduced budgets, many schools are narrowing their curricula to focus on the subjects covered by the performance tests¾reducing or eliminating time spent on subjects like science, social studies, art, and music.
Money isn’t everything when it comes to education reform, but schools sure need it to provide the things that are. No standardized test will reduce class size, provide teachers with majors or minors in the fields they teach, fix the air conditioning in the summer and the heat in the winter so that children can concentrate on what is being taught, or bring back a library that was closed in the last round of budget cuts so that low-income children have the opportunity to read at home. Testing and accountability are necessary, but it is cynical to ask for improved performance on assessments if we don’t also give students the opportunity, through expanded resources, to do better on those assessments. It makes no sense to say that we are going to test students so that we know who is failing, but then after we’ve identified those failing students, deny them the resources to do better.
Education needs to help all children discover all of their talents and strengths in ways that endure far beyond test day. The No Child Left Behind Act purports to believe that all children can succeed in school and in life. But the current accountability system won’t get us very far if superintendents, principals, teachers, and parents don’t have the tools to provide every child with real learning opportunities. After all of the rhetoric and promises, millions of children across the country are still going to be left behind without the education they need to succeed.
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Marian Wright Edelman is President and Founder of the Children's Defense Fund, whose mission is to Leave No Child BehindÒ and to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.
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