I have heard this before, as I understand it, schools get held accountable for failure, and if failing get additional resources to help and if they still fail they are closed and kids move to other schools. As these weaker kids move to other schools, does this mean they drag down the other schools, or do the good schools pull them up?
There is nothing in the law that says a good school be punished or defunded because the kids are succeeding. So if NCLB fails the brighter students it is yet to be shown.
There are other factors of course, bright children may get their education despite the schools, and maybe have more alternatives because their parents probably are brighter and more successful as well. But I see nothing wrong with holding failing schools accountable.
From where do you come in this debate? Do you support the current system? Want to throw more money at it? Are you a teacher, former teacher, union member, parent of a kid in the school system? Home school? Private school? What is the solution you propose?
Wow! You want me to write a book right here on FR.
I certainly do not believe there is any role for the Federal government in education. It is my opinion that the Department of Education is unconstitutional.
I'm not sure what the "current system" is because it is hardly monolithic. Lots of kids at some public schools may come out not being able to connect Abraham Lincoln with the "Civil War," but that wasn't the case for my kids and it wasn't the case for me. (Of course none of us learned what a lowlife Lincoln was.) For my kids, especially, they got a classical education in (public) high school, including four years each of Latin, that is the sort of education the colleges should be giving but don't. (One went to UVa. The other is about to begin his final semester at Cornell.)
I'm not a teacher, a former teacher, or a union member. I think teachers' unions are especially bad for education generally.
Public schools can work, but if I were king I would probably eliminate them in favor of private schools. Home schooling seems to work well in the few cases I know about, but I'm not sure that it can ever educate more than a tiny fraction of the population.
As for realistic solutions, the first is to revert to local control. I absolutely believe that NCLB programs should be eliminated unless local school districts want to implement them.
I think that the civil courts should have absolutely no say in what happens in a public school. (Read Democracy by Decree to see that even liberals know they've screwed things up with their advocacy suits.)
ML/NJ