Millions of students in California and the nation are being left behind by the so-called No Child Left Behind Act as a result of its flawed one-size-fits-all approach to learning, warns CTA in a new radio ad campaign based on a revealing study about the federal government's massive underfunding of the law's mandates.
No Child Left Behind is a nice slogan, says CTA President Barbara E. Kerr, but the law fails to acknowledge that not every child learns the same way or at the same rate.
She says in the spot, "It requires all kids to progress at the same time and in the same way. It encourages teaching to the test instead of meeting individual needs. It wastes resources on standardized government tests and bureaucracy without providing the resources needed to make schools successful."
What students really need is quality teaching in uncrowded classrooms with current materials, adds Kerr. "So, if Washington politicians really want to leave no child behind, they'll find a way to give schools more resources instead of more red tape."
A new report from NEA shows a $32.6 billion shortfall in 2003 federal funds to fulfill the law's mandates nationwide. That means 5.3 million disadvantaged children are deprived of assistance, and school districts can't hire 16,000 teachers they need.
In California alone, the law actually leaves behind nearly 753,000 disadvantaged children it's supposedly designed to serve. The shortfall also prevents the hiring of 1,586 new teachers needed to reduce class size and give California students the one-on-one attention they need. Also being shortchanged are 1.2 million English language learners, 382,291 college students and 373,731 preschool children, according to NEA estimates.
The full NEA report, "No Child Left Behind? The Funding Gap in ESEA and Other Federal Education Programs," is posted on the CTA website.
New bipartisan polling data from NEA shows that voters nationwide overwhelmingly believe that the federal education law's one-size-fits-all approach hurts kids, that schools should be evaluated by more than just standardized test scores, and that federal school funding must increase.