w e l l ~ B L O G ~ t o ~ y o u ~ t o o !

29 July 2004
Getting on my political bandwagon...  
There was something I heard on NPR : Morning Edition for Thursday, July 29, 2004. There was a call to reform the "No Child Left Behind" Act. Seems that there is a good percentage of schools across the country that are failing. Of course, that could be due to the fact that there are 40 odd ways to fail, but only one way to succeed.

Of course, it wasn't surprising that the Act failed, or at least there are many schools considered failing by the terms of the Act. See, the No Child Left Behind Act was designed to improve inner-city schools, going on the whole urban vs. suburban debate. Guess what? There is another category of school out there that was going to fail with what Bush proposed and enacted: Rural schools.

I wager many of the failing schools come from rural districts like the one I went to school in. I'm talking about very-small town America: the towns that aren't even large enough for a McDonalds or a Starbucks.

Mr. President, the school I graduated from was one of the larger school districts in New York State--geographically. The school district was in four different counties, and made up of five different rural villages several miles apart. The closest private school was a half hour to 45 minutes away--longer in different reaches of my school district. There was only the one non-religious private school. Oh, and only one religious private school as well.

Your vouchers wouldn't work well there, Mr. President. There's just the problem of getting kids where they need to go. There aren't busses to bring them back and forth, here, there, and everywhere. It's not like city school districts, Mr. President.

Rural public schools are a completely different ball of wax than inner-city schools. There are no suburbs to take refuge in. There are no hosts of private schools to bring vouchers to. There is only one option. What happens when the only school within an hour of your house gets a failing grade? What happens then, Mr. President?

Those are the Children Left Behind. The children in schools where the art teacher can only be paid half-time, or teaches art for all twelve grade. The children in schools where there is no budget for 'special education' or 'gifted and talented' programs. The children in schools where teachers and administrators wear different hats every day just trying to play catch-up to get the kids bussed to where they needed to go!

These are the Children Left Behind, Mr. President. They are the children who have no other option other than the regional public school. Your Act made no considerations for school districts that have 'THE elementary school', 'THE High school' or even someplaces 'THE school' for mulitple towns, not just named for the streets they're on.

Those people who don't know how to reform the education act? Well, look at the rural schools. If you can find a way to give them more money. They're the schools who barely have enough money to educate the kids in the first place. They scrimp and save every penny to try to wring the best education possible with what resources they have. It's not like they're being wasteful--it's the simple truth that they can't afford to buy new books or new supplies. It's just not in the budget allotted them. So when they fail, they get less and less money.

Think about that when you think about No Child Left Behind, because, Mr. President: you are leaving children behind.

Liz the Mischievous renovated @ 09:46