If the government would just realize that there should be No School Left Behind, and then let the schools work, no child would ever be left behind. Schools need one thing from the government: fair support, on the federal, state and local levels.

The post by Harriet Egertson on August 9 hit the nail on the head! I totally agree that the 3 things listed as part of the restructuring would be a great improvement to the NCLB law. If the initial law is so great, then why do we have so many schools failing?

Something needs to change!

My long term discomfort with much about NCLB morphed into an ah-ha! today when I read the editorial by Diana Jean Schemo in the August 9, NY Times, "It Takes More Than Schools to Close Achievement Gap." Having worked for most of my career either in schools serving primarily poor children or on initiatives designed to improve their prospects for a better future, I already know about Coleman's work and that of Entwisle and Alexander. All thoughtful educators know that good schools (starting with preschool) make a huge difference for vulnerable children, but we also know that far more than quality schooling is needed for many children to be successful.
I also realize there is bipartisan Congressional support for NCLB; however, the privatization agenda of the Bush administration and the Republican Party appears to me to be driving most of what comes out of the federal level these days. If that is considered in the context of the current push to diminish social programs, it all makes sense. If all the blame for the perceived lack of achievement can be placed on public schools, why would we need to spend public money on such things as improved housing, access to health care, and quality child care for poor and middle class families? With their faulty logic and if enough people can be convinced that life doesn't get better for poor children because of the perceived lack of quality of public education, then placing the schools under private jurisdiction is all that is needed to remedy these problems. Such a course of action would be the death of the democracy so many of our young people are currently dying over.
Unfortunately NCLB is probably with us in some form for the foreseeable future. At the very least, reauthorization should accomplish the following:
1. Place a moratorium on any further federally mandated testing. The current level is already choking the life out of classrooms. This form of assessment doesn't support good instruction which is the main reason to perform assessment in the first place
2. Change to a growth model to gauge adequate yearly progress. The current absolute standard is patently unfair to both children and their teachers. It is designed to produce failure and plays right into the privatization agenda.
3. Couple requirements for increased teacher preparation with greatly enhanced compensation. A growing number of teachers cannot afford to purchase even a starter home in the districts in which they teach. Shameful!

Clearly, the number of issues that are involved in being rated in the areas of high-quality teacher and state testing standards needs revision. Not for the sake of revision but to better tell the story of the successes, not failing because one little item is not 100% in the correct column. Personally, I despise quantitative statistics because they can be manipulated to show growth no growth or that infamous statement not statistically significant. Student portfolios, video samples of teacher's in the classroom and student presentations should be an integral part of determining a schools success and growth. We need to understand that this is the 21st century and what has worked for the past 200 hundred years in regards to educating and understanding education needs revision. The student of today has grown up with access to free information they live in a virtual and real-time world at the same time. They tolerate email but in their peer groups they communicate in a telematic world and expect telematic technology 24/7 this means the class room too! Because learners and their learning will be different, Teaching will be Different. The professor/teacher of the 21st century will be a researcher, inspirer, advocate, guide, and evaluator; in short, the 21st century professor/teacher must Make Meaning of the plethora of information that will be available. We must also understand that the curriculum will not look like it does today. Therefore, NCLB needs to be considered a plan in progress that is ever-changing to meet the demands of the student, and adjusting to societal changes. We will see more technological changes in the next twenty-five years than most can not image. We must understand that NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND means preparing them for the future no some past or current standard.

Given the current administration, I rather doubt that there is any desire on the part of any government entity to improve NCLB. Other than the extensive problems that NCLB has caused our educational systems it seems to be nothing more than political window dressing.

NCLB should be amended in the following ways:
1. Adopt national standards - pegged to the already existing NAEP test.
2. Hold districts accountable for bringing children to proficiency as defined by NAEP.
3. Eliminate the injection of parent choice as a sanction and replace it with a requirement that states take over school districts that fail to meet performance standards on schedule
4. Define high quality teaching in terms of demonstrated value-added performance against national standards as opposed to state certification.
5. Provide states with financial incentives for providing early education programs to high risk children

NCLB just caused groans of frustration! The absurd results from ridiculous comparative statistics are useless as progress indicators. There are too many "gotcha" clauses that render testing results not only incorrect but also utterly outrageous! Children that aren't tested because they are not in the stateor at the actual school (but somehow condidered in district)must count as failures - how does this measure success for those who are at the school and doing well? There are too many loopholes that frustrate initiatives to succeed. Something has to bring NCLB into the present reality!

Many excellent school efforts are clouded by faulty inclusions in their results!

I would have to agree with those who feel discomfort with the actions of the present administration in relation to education. Why is it that political groups go through the motions of asking for "input" from professional educators so that they can ignore all previous research and current professional opinion regarding education? Isn't this tantamount to asking the AMA how to cure a headache and then mandating that everyone in the United States take Ex-Lax? I will be retiring from the education profession (yes, I still consider it a profession after 35 years) soon, but I fear for education in the United States if the current path is maintained. Best of luck to those students who will have to be our future leaders. Go, Harriet! You have three great suggestions and marvelous logic to back them.

While the the goals of NCLB are admirable, the details of the law....i.e. the nuts and bolts need MAJOR revisions. We did not put a man on the moon by passing a 750 page law dictating how it was to be done! We crafted a set of goals that the nation could support intellectually, with passion and appropriate financial support.

Excellence has never been "legislated" by any government body and achieved. Our country put a person on the moon by letting those most informed and talented "figure it out" with inherent measures of accountability that were kept in the public eye for over a decade.

We have taken the above approach in the Freedom Area School District, 25 miles north off Pittsburgh, Pa. and have begun to see some promising initial results across all grade levels! We have also wrote a small book entitled , NO BAD SCHOOLS, which we believe asks the right questions of our country which have a greater potential to assist ALL students achieve the academic goals of NCLB. We are accomplishing this progress through educators motivated by their ownership of addressing the great challenges facing our current system of K-12 education that was never designed to achieve NCLB type outcomes for all youth.

The district would be happy to share our story of initial success and how it can inform educational policy making at all levels. Contact information:

Dr. Ron Sofo
Superintendent, Freedom Area school District
1701 8th Avenue
Freedom, PA 15042
724-775-5464

If No Child Left Behind is really going to not leave any child behind, we need to change our focus. One of the most frustrating things to deal with as a teacher is that politicians and other people who spend little to no time in the classroom setting are the ones enforcing all of the policies and expectations. If we are to have realistic expectations and policies for schools and teachers, we need to hear from the experts. It is very easy for onlookers to say what they would do if they were in certain situations but it's quite different when you are right in the middle of the situation. The government and others in power put all of these unrealistic expectations on teachers and students and when they are not met, we say the system failed or the students are failing. The experts are the ones who deal with the reality of teaching and learning on a daily basis. If our country really wants to how to be successful in effectively educating our children, we need to listen to the experts - the teachers and the learners.