Back to the Bush era with No Child Left Behind

Education has taken another hit from superficial federal requirements – despite the fact that it could have been avoided.

The U.S. Department of Education announced on April 24 that Washington will be the first state to lose its waiver from the No Child Left Behind Act, according to an article by The Huffington Post.

For the first time, the Department of Education is retracting one of the waivers it offered to states in order to help them sidestep the outdated rules of the No Child Left Behind Act. The purpose of these waivers is to exempt states from conforming to the most tedious parts of the inherently flawed No Child Left Behind law – a law that was supposed to be rewritten seven years ago, according to The Washington Post.

As a result, Washington will now be forced to comply with all parts of No Child Left Behind Act. Due to the restrictive nature of the law, this means virtually all of the state’s public schools will be deemed as failing since they did not meet the established performance goals, according to an article by The Washington Post.

Critics of the law argue the performance goals of the No Child Left Behind law are so ambitious that they have crossed into the realm of the impossible. The goals call for the vast majority of students to score “proficient” in math and reading by 2014, an objective all educators deemed impossible to achieve.

Unfortunately, without the federal waiver excusing the schools’ failed performance rates, “school districts will have to set aside 20 percent of their Title I money in the coming 2014-2015 school year for tutoring and other academic help,” according to an article by The News Tribune.

This lack of flexibility concerning the way schools spend their funding will result in important programs being cut. The Tacoma public schools superintendent predicts the district will have to divert $1.8 million of its $9 million in Title I funding in the coming school year, most of which currently funds preschool programs and low-come neighborhoods, according to the same article by The News Tribune.

Much of the blame has been placed on Education Secretary Arne Duncan, seeing as he made to final decision to pull Washington’s waiver, despite the fact that he has called the No Child Left Behind Act “fatally flawed” and “in need of an overhaul by Congress.”

In a letter Duncan sent to Washington state Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn, Duncan explained that while returning to full compliance “is not desirable” and will not “be simple,” he is still going to force Washington state to do it anyway, according to the same article by The Washington Post.

Rather than place all of the blame on Duncan, the responsibility should be shifted to the federal government, which continues to uphold an expired, outdated and inherently flawed law for education requirements.

Education should be a state responsibility. The only influence the federal government should have in education is empowering states rather than coercing them.

However, thanks to Duncan and the incompetence of our federal government, Washington state is being forced to return to standardized testing, limited funding, and harsh consequences.

The state has officially returned to education laws of the Bush era. And yes, it is as scary as it sounds.

– Ashley Lynn Fisher is a junior English major from Gig Harbor. She can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the staff of The Daily Evergreen or those of Student Publications.