Leave no student behind … or else

Frontiersman editorial board

The Mat-Su school district, along with districts all over the country, is now trying to make sense of a federal law that seeks to rate teachers in an effort to improve education for all students. The law is called the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001." The basic premise, that all students should be guaranteed a quality education, is nothing new. The president's administration says the difference with this program, which they call the most sweeping education reform since 1965, is that it applies measurable standards to students and teachers to ensure that schools are meeting their requirements.

The carrot -- and there must always be one -- is that schools that don't measure up will no longer receive federal Title I funds. Not all schools receive these funds, but for those who do, it could cause significant problems.

Improving the quality of education for all students is something nobody is likely to argue with. It's been a campaign promise since the beginning of time. Where we get bogged down is in the details. One side says you can only improve education by measuring its success, and the other side says you can't measure academic achievement for all students with one yardstick. One side says you can't solve the problems by simply throwing money at them, the other says, true, but you can't solve them by taking money away, either. Details.

One interesting thing about this legislation is that it allows states to set their own standards. The Title I funds come from the same pot, but each state will decide how well students must perform to dip into that pot. While it does seem wise to insist that teachers are qualified, and that schools meet their obligations to all students, to threaten funding cuts and then allow states to decide their own standards to avoid those cuts seems a bit weak. The tendency, one would think, would be for states to measure where they already are and set their standards very close to that -- giving this legislation a loud rhetorical bark and very little realistic bite.

The law also gives parents the power to pull their children from "failing" schools and move them to "passing" ones. This is plausible in high-density areas -- like where they write federal laws -- but how can that be applied in places such as rural Alaska? If your town has only a few schools, it makes more sense to help those schools improve rather than move students to … where?