clair073

For the last 15 years, official data indicate there have been almost no increase in reading scores, despite the fact that the main purpose of No Child Left Behind. Look at these data: The graph data, which came from the U.S. Dept. of Education, also shows the gap between reading scores of whites and blacks. There is no change in the gap.We can argue all day on the causes of this lack of improvement, but it is hard to defend all the increased government spending for education or for NCLB programs. These data were presented by Mark Seidenberg at the University of Wisconsin at the Neuro-Education conference in Aspen, Co. that I attended. His talk aimed to explain the lack of change in the gap, which he attributed to incompatibilities between African-American English with traditional English. To me, the real issue that neither whites nor blacks are improving. Whatever the government is doing, it is not working! And the answer is MORE federal intervention?

Fix Bad Federal Education Policy Congress is now going through the ritual of tweaking the No Child Left Behind law for the nation’s schools. The law is vigorously opposed by both teacher unions and the TEA party. That should tell you all you need to know about this bad legislation. Of course the reasons for opposition are quite different, but all have a large degree of validity. Teachers don’t like bureaucrats judging them and their schools, and the TEA party thinks we have too much federal government intrusion in general. The law, however tweaked by revision, is fatally flawed by its basic assumptions. Foremost is the fantasy that government should provide not only equal opportunity but equal outcome. The only way you can get all students to have equal learning is to dumb down the curricula, which is what is done. Schools cater to the lower performing students at the expense of good students. For example, over the last two decades an analysis by the Wall Street Journal revealed that t...