We can’t Afford No Child Left Behind

Back in 2007, the Heritage Foundation published a report on the cost of No Child Left Behind. Here is a synopsis of their findings:

---

In October of 2006 the Office of Management and Budget reported that No Child Left Behind increased state and local governments' annual paperwork burden by 6,680,334 hours, at an estimated cost of $141 million dollars. For some reason Washington didn’t seem upset about that.

A number of states have published reports estimating the cost of complying with No Child Left Behind. For example, the state of Connecticut found that the state government would spend more than $17 million in 2007 to comply with NCLB. Virginia estimated that state implementation costs totaled approximately 20 million per year. If we exclude those states with the courage to tell Washington to keep their money, the average cost per state of $15 million per year comes out to a whopping $675 million. So why was the report from OMB a miniscule $141 million? Was it because someone gave Bush Jr. the calculator? Or is the answer something far more Machiavellian? You’re right, it is. In the summer of 2007 I attended a legislative conference in Philadelphia attended b y hundreds of state representatives from across the US. One of the speakers was President Bush. His speech contained mostly fluff, but buried within the rhetoric was an absolute conviction that NCLB was going to continue to be forced upon the unwilling states, regardless of the cost. Unfortunately it seems Obama agrees with that sentiment. No Child Left Behind has created a culture of insipidness within our public school system. This culture stems from the school boards and filters on down through the administration. Even though the majority of teachers hate the program, they are forced to either go along or lose their job. School Administrators only look at the dollars. I know, I’ve spoken with those in my state. Many claim that they do care what happens to the children, but when push comes to shove every decision comes out with dollar signs on it. I have yet to read about a single superintendent or principle willingly sacrificing a portion of their paycheck to improve the quality of education in their school. To be fair, most of them are not given a choice. They too are trapped within a system that has been carefully crafted by the left for the past sixty-plus years. Why else would programs that have proven themselves every time they’ve been used be scrapped in favor of what essentially boils down to babysitting? Washington claims that every child not only deserves to go on to higher education, but that they all have a burning desire to do so. Yes, I’m sure if you ask the average 4th grader what they want to be when they grow up the vast majority are going to list a profession that requires an advanced degree. Fireman, cowboy, soldier or movie star won’t even be in the mix. The real truth, backed by NEA’s own statistics, is that less than a third of high school graduates will apply and be accepted to a four-year college. Of those accepted, less than a third will finish that education, even if given an extra year. So, based on numbers they themselves are aware of, why is the federal bureaucracy so dead set on promoting a program that fails miserably? And why do they continuously buck against a program that excels every time it is tried? I’m talking about vocational education. Yes, I mean shop classes. The cost of implementing NCLB has all but eliminated vocational education. In the Clark County School District, one of the largest in the US, you can still find classrooms fully equipped to teach auto shop, wood shop and home economics in the districts middle schools. Not one of them is being used for that purpose. Some are not even being used as classrooms, even though the schools are overcrowded. In many of the high schools, vocational education has been cut back drastically because of budget concerns. It seems the district, just like Washington, won’t pay attention to its own data. Not too far from my home stands one of the first Career and Technical Academies in the nation. It used to be called VoTech High School. Now its called SECTA. Even with the name change, SECTA remains one of the highest performing schools in the nation with an average 98% functional graduation rate. The naysayers on the school board claim the numbers are because the school gets to pick and choose its pupils. But in reality it is because the staff and administration at that school work together as a team to make sure the education is made relevant to the students. They learn the core subjects such as science, english, history and math as they apply to a profession, not just boring, overworked theory. There is a young man who attended VoTech with an emphasis on plumbing. In middle school his teachers labeled him as unable to grasp concepts beyond addition and subtraction. After high school he went into the navy as a plumbers mate. When he revisited his alma mater he explained what he was doing in the navy to his old teachers using advanced calculus to illustrate concepts. Not bad for a labeled failure. Using some more NEA stats; one of the most successful groups in college is that made up of mature returning students. Believe it or not, that group makes up a good percentage of teachers, especially those in the Career and Technical Academies. So why the push of NCLB? Many of my fellow conservatives don’t like my derision of G.W. Bush. Too bad. Bush was a lousy President who did everything he could to destroy our country’s sovereignty. Consider the attempt to remove the border between the US and Mexico, the attempt to sell sovereign base authority to a terrorist nation, and the support of an educational bureaucracy that no one likes outside of the feds. There is more than enough evidence that NCLB is yet another avenue the left is using to reduce the strength of the United States as a country. If they can get us to graduate more illiterates than not, the socialist revolution will succeed without a shot being fired. Bush had no problem with that. So what can we do? One plan would be to allow states to opt out of the NCLB program. These states would be able to work out an alternate agreement with the federal government. Under this agreement, the states’ representatives would have broader authority to consolidate existing federal programs with state programs to work out their education funding. Of course, this assumes the states CAN work out school funding. That’s another column. Another plan is to use what has already been proven to work, vocational education. Make the core classes relevant to the students. Allow them to use both their minds and their hands. Bring back real detention. Don’t allow those students who want to disrupt the classroom to do so. Put them somewhere away from the other students where they only get the three R’s, no sports, no recess, until they prove they are able to rejoin civilized society. Get rid of the diversity nonsense and teach real citizenship. Allow teachers to teach what they know. Don’t force them to pull double duty as secretaries for the administration. The average teacher day, believe it or not is about 10-12 hours, not 6. And there is no such thing as a 3-month vacation. Just because there are no bottoms in the classroom chairs doesn’t mean the job stops. It takes a minimum of 2 ½ months to set up lesson plans for the next year. Of course, pulling off such a plan would also require dumping NCLB. How about that?