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05/17/2005:

"How Many Schools Left Behind?"

by Jessie Muldoon
By JESSIE MULDOON

THE NO Child Left Behind Act is the Bush administration's deeply flawed legislation that claims to be the solution to the many problems of public education. Signed into law in January 2002, it won bipartisan support--most notably, from liberal Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy.

NCLB promised to close the achievement gap between middle-class suburban students and those at under-funded inner-city or rural schools. Bush and others spoke of accountability and equity, but the critics of NCLB saw through the rhetoric for what the law really is--an attempt to privatize education and transfer the responsibility and cost of educating our children from the federal government to individual and often impoverished school districts.

NCLB is built around the use of standardized tests--with the promise that gaps in testing will be gone by 2014. Progress toward this goal is to be measured by Average Yearly Progress (AYP) scores, with sanctions imposed on schools that don't make the annual goals.

The law promises parents that their children will be taught by "highly qualified" teachers and allows them to request a transfer to a different school. The law opens the door to vouchers and charter schools, threatens to privatize services currently provided by unionized public school employees and welcomes faith-based groups into school programs. But the real centerpiece of NCLB is standardized testing.

...ONE LITTLE- known provision of NCLB requires high schools to turn over names, phone numbers and addresses of all students to the military, or risk losing NCLB funding. Parents have the right to opt out, and many school districts have organized to educate students and families of their rights.

In Montclair, N.J., schools tell parents about the requirement as soon as their child enters 9th grade and follow up with letters home and reminders. The school district reports that at last count, 92 percent of families had requested that their child's information not be sent to the military. At many high schools in the Bay Area, teachers have organized similar opt-out campaigns.

With the military regularly falling short of its recruitment goals, this NCLB provision is becoming even more important to the Bush administration. The movement to kick recruiters off campuses is a natural ally to the teachers' unions and parent organizations opposing No Child Left Behind.
Full: counterpunch.org