The cliché “If at first you don’t succeed, try again” seems almost irrelevant as California’s education system faces, yet again, dour tribulations in public schools. The attempt to improve standardized test proficiency in public schools through the No Child Left Behind Act is a failure.
Now, many schools face federal sanctions if they do not clean up their acts and start turning mediocre students into genius test-takers.
To compound the problem of implementing NCLB, sufficient funds to help increase proficiency are non-existent. Rather than picking out of the jar of billions of dollars in federal funding for education, the money is absent, or used for more important issues — like the war in Iraq and the $700 billion bailout plan.
Relying solely on funding allocated by states to school districts nationwide, many low-income neighborhoods are in peril. If schools are receiving inadequate funds, the chances of achieving high-test scores are very slim, which will result in public schools being placed on probation.
To mirror the dilemma, most teachers in urban districts are paid below national poverty levels.
The up side to a child’s school being placed on probation is the liberty to transfer to another school district that does meet the proficiency level. Normally, it’s against state law to enroll a child outside of their resident district. However, if the child lives in a low-income area where schools are performing below expectations, exceptions are allowed to place them in a middle-class school district.
But NCLB requirements are still tantamount to “teaching to the test.” It’s akin to the metaphor of teaching a monkey to ring a bell for a banana. If you don’t ring the bell — you get no banana.
The idea of increasing proficiency levels each year without matching funds is ludicrous. No wonder 9,800 schools are at “strike one” when evaluated for their proficiency compliance. Nearly one in four students don’t graduate high school each year, according to The Associated Press, even though NCLB mandates that state dropout rates improve, or else.
The state average of proficiency percentage points annually has been four since the establishment of NCLB, taking no consideration of the economic status within the school districts. At the rate schools are going, by next year there would be hardly any public California schools open because of federal punishment, especially in impoverished areas.
Children are not becoming less intelligent. They are being victimized by a trend of “dumbing down.” The pattern seems to be to track low-income and minority children into trade schools or menial employment instead of into universities and rewarding careers.
One-third of minority students are failing to get diplomas and many are not prepared to enter college, with many of the ones who reach the university being forced into remedial courses.
How does the government intend to increase a student’s proficiency by the 11 percent NCLB recently demanded, while schools barely operate on shoestring budgets?
With the economic hardship facing the country, it is imaginable that only a handful of hundred dollar bills are going into inner-city after school programs, creative arts or music programs.
The key to education is making it challengeable, not impossible. By upping the ante in a sensible manner and providing money to implement rather than decimate, perhaps proficiency levels will eventually reach the 100 percent mark. But what children are currently being trained to be proficient in won’t equal a well-rounded education.
Janira Romero is a junior journalism major and a contributing writer for the Daily Forty-Niner.
