The Massive Fraud Brought About By No Child Left Behind
2nd June 2011
In Michael Goodwin’s column preceding his ground-breaking June 1 column that I posted yesterday, New York City teachers tell him that they are encouraged or required to pass 80 percent of their pupils, regardless of grades and attendance, though one teacher mentions a mandated pass rate of 60 percent. The school principals require these pass rates, because the alternative is to have the school closed by the federal Department of Education and for the administrators and teachers to lose their jobs. This is the result of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, which forces “failing” schools to close by withdrawing federal funds from them, and which defines such “failing” in terms of pupils’ non-attainment of a prescribed improvement in their grades and test results.. This means that a school with a large number of low IQ pupils will automatically be classified as a “failing” school and must be closed. So the principals and teachers, simply in order to protect their livelihood, are forced to pass students who are actually failing or who are not even attending.
In other words, government employees can be counted on to commit fraud rather than jeopardize their own jobs. Nice to know.