EDITORIAL – “Childrens do learn,” says prez

George W. Bush needs to have at least one positive thing attributed to his administration…. George W. Bush needs to have at least one positive thing attributed to his administration.

Just one.

He’s trying desperately to make that one thing No Child Left Behind, which will soon be up for reauthorization by Congress. But in his attempts to explain the law’s success, he’s only showing how much it has failed.

“Childrens do learn,” Bush said Wednesday in a speech praising the success of No Child Left Behind.

So Bush isn’t a wordsmith. Sure. But does America really want to take advice on how to reform the public education system from a guy who tacks an “s” onto the end of a word that’s already plural?

Nope. No Child Left Behind, while it had bipartisan support in its conception, hasn’t lived up to the hype.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., even went as far as to say, “this administration has dropped the ball on education reform,” according to an article from the Washington Post.

No Child Left Behind requires across-the-board progress from all students, but it doesn’t address the financial disparity between suburban schools and rural or inner-city schools, and the use of standardized tests doesn’t allow school districts to adapt to their own unique set of circumstances.

Furthermore, funding should not be positively tied to performance. It doesn’t make sense to pull funding from schools that aren’t doing well on standardized tests. It only adds to the problem.

Though charter schools have proved to be successful in some areas, all they do is put a small Band-Aid on a gaping wound. For every charter school that opens, another under-funded public school loses money. Privately funding education isn’t an option: We shouldn’t be in the business of making money on the education of our children.

Another problem with No Child Left Behind is its focus on improving math and science achievement in America’s schools. While we’re certainly not opposed to children learning more in the fields of math and science – we know we’re way behind other countries in these fields – we think that there should still be a tremendous importance placed on the teaching of English (ahem, President Bush), the humanities, art and music. Math, science and technology are extremely important subjects, but it’s crucial that subjects like English, history and the arts don’t fall by the wayside because they aren’t featured prominently on standardized tests. It’s especially important because the leader of our country was obviously “left behind” in the English department.

It’s easy to poke fun at Bush and the obvious ridiculousness and hypocrisy of a man who can barely speak trying to be the spokesperson for educational reform, but Congress should take a serious look at No Child Left Behind’s shortcomings and make an attempt to fix them.

It’s the government’s fault that public education isn’t working and the government’s duty to make it work, and the current regulations under No Child Left Behind are not the solution.