by Paige Adams, M.A., J.D.
Freelance writer

“It takes a village to raise a child.”  This Ashante proverb has, in recent years, become the battle cry of politicians seeking political gains.  The outcry stems from the steady decline in the American public education system.  As a result, America continues to lose its competitive edge internationally causing us to import scholars from the European West and the Far East.  In an elusive attempt to conquer the challenges of low performing public schools in America, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was signed into law. From its inception, NCLB gave the false impression that it was a panacea to correct the ills of public education.  While the concept of making everyone in the education system more accountable seemed like a logical treatment for our children’s low performance, it failed to properly diagnose the cause of the illness: poverty; schools lacking proper resources; lack of parental involvement and other social ills that our children face prior to stepping inside the school doors. Thus, many of our students have already been left behind and the schools and educators are not being supplied with the appropriate means to bring them up to task.  The prescriptive results of this legislation, is  increased testing of students and the requirement that teachers obtain higher level degrees only to be paid far less than their counterparts of equal or lesser educational status.  This merely over medicates the wound that continues to be infected.

The sad reality here is that far too many students do not read or write on their grade level but have been falsely pushed through the system to meet some government standard.  These children are thereby left behind and given false hope year after year as they bear the grunt of being statistically labeled and experimented upon through over testing.  Until NCLB addresses this lack of educational preparedness on the lower levels, starting at kindergarten, the public educational system will never advance.  It’s time to give our students a hand up in education instead of an unsanitary band-aid.