According to a Harvard study,
U.S. President George W. Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind education policy is failing to close racial achievement gaps and will miss its goals by 2014.
This shouldn’t be news. It indicates (at least) three things.
- Teachers’ voices aren’t heard. Teachers know that students with special needs, and students without the skills or background necessary to master course material aren’t going to suddenly “shape up” just because there’s a consequence. The news coverage of an academic study that says the same thing that classroom teachers all say indicates the lack of public credibility that teachers have. I wonder why that is?
- Education critics and policy makers have misidentified the problem and prescribed the wrong solution. Education reform that focuses on a single test score as a measure of success is wrong-headed and ignorant of real-world conditions. The real achievement gap is what education critics have assumed to be the effect of poor education. The unequal distribution of wealth and opportunity among racial and ethnic minority groups is the real achievement gap; and it isn’t going to be closed by schools alone. The problem is rooted in historical causes and requires basic political reform. Measure that!
- Parents won’t solve the problem. The news story is written for a mass audience that includes many, er…parents. But which parents are reading this news? Maybe we need to get those “other parents” to work on this. This is like news that tells us obesity is a health problem. It’s obvious, for some people. Hmmm….Reminds me that facts aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
Someone should fix this. Teachers? Sure, absolutely. Teachers, alone? Absolutely not. Raising the bar without a training program that makes a new level of success possible won’t help a high jumper. We should look at fitness before performance in school.
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