No Child Left Behind leaves part of the answer behind

As Alaska wrestles with the president's No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), many of the unique challenges facing or state have become evident. Sen. Lisa Murkowski convinced U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige to visit some of Alaska's remote schools to witness some of those challenges. As a result of the visit, and other efforts by Murkowski and others, the federal government has provided written assurance that children who don't meet the federal standards in those remote schools will receive tutoring and other after-school services to help them come up to speed.

Alaska has always struggled to provide quality education across the entire spectrum of its schools. NCLB has created new challenges, and some of the requirements of that legislation are simply not realistic here. For instance, the act requires that each teacher be degreed or pass a rigorous exam in each subject he or she teaches. In some of our more remote schools, the entire faculty may consist of three teachers, teaching every subject. It's clear that those teachers will not posses the mandated credentials in every subject they teach.

The spirit of NCLB is good. It requires accountability on behalf of students and educators, alike. One of the problems with the act is that such intense and inflexible standardization can never produce the consistent results targeted.

NCLB applies strict demands upon the results schools must achieve -- with severe consequences if they fail -- but it does not provide a level of guidance or support commensurate with those demands. It is clearly a well-intended effort to address the challenges facing our schools, but it places the burden upon states and local districts without providing any of the tools to tackle that burden -- and without ample consideration for the diversity of our communities and the people who live in them.

It is true that our schools are tasked with perhaps the most important job any society can perform. In keeping with that, there should be a high degree of accountability, both upon the schools themselves and upon students and their parents. It is also true that there are serious gaps between what our children should be learning and what they are learning. It will take more than sternly stated standards and requirements to achieve that end, however.

We first must determine why our schools are failing to meet our expectations. To do that, we'll have to agree upon what those expectations are. Once the stumbling blocks have been determined, there will clearly be a requirement for all of us to step up to the plate and work to improve our educational system.

The administration insists we can't solve the education problem by "throwing money at it." While that is true, we certainly can't solve it by starving it of funding, either. Even half of what we spent on the war in Iraq would go a long way toward bringing our schools back to where we want them.