NCLB About To Be Left Behind

Reports this week surfaced that President Obama was prepared to end No Child Left Behind, the landmark education legislation from his predecessor, George W. Bush. While it is clear NCLB has led to many children being left behind and our public schools dependent of following its strict guidelines in order to receive federal funding, what is unclear is what is next for education.

President Obama should be applauded for attempting to improve our failing education system but if anyone thinks the next great educational reform will result in much change, they are wrong.

To begin with, no matter what plan the President puts forth, Republicans will balk at it. Why would they give up on their plan for Obama's? "But this will be another chance for the two parties to come together in the name of bipartisanship and put forth a better education system than is currently in place," you say. Actually, this is more likely to lead to another game of political chicken. If you really think the Republican Party would not shut down our public schools before signing off on a new education act then you really have not followed what goes on in Washington D.C.

With the 2012 election campaign in full swing, the president has fired a volley to all who want his job. He is telling them, "Let's hear your plan" and it better go beyond the Republicans desire for more charter schools (private schools at the tax payers expense).

With the economy still in tatters and Obama's poll numbers in decline, the president will put forth a plan that reminds voters that despite the sagging economy, he is still the candidate who has the best interest of all in mind. Let Republicans and Tea Party members argue about school prayer, tenure, and the dangerous agendas of special interest groups taking over our schools. These are mere smoke screens meant to make voters forget there is no real education plan being presented by Republican candidates.

When the president puts forth his plan for education, it will be a plan and not an attempt to force our schools to capitulate and teach all our children in an overly managed, under budgeted, and formulated manner; something the Republicans can claim credit for today. However, by the time our representatives in congress fight over what to include and toss, it will neither resemble the President's plan or lay down the real ground work necessary to improve the futures of our children. And in the end, it will be our children who lose out.

Education Reflects Our Society

The public school system is a colossal failure and our leaders have no clue how to fix it. Our public schools need to be scrapped all together and a new system needs to be put in place if we really want to see any significant improvement. Instead, the wheel keeps getting reinvented while politicians try to find another use for our schools. Today, our public schools have become nothing more than publicly funded centers for raising children.

As long as we choose to remain a society in which married couples have to work 40 hour weeks just to get by in life our schools will be used to feed, clothe, supervise, and raise our nation's children. The world is not like it was fifty years ago when kids could safely walk to and from school on their own and at the end of the day know a parent, almost always the mother, would be home waiting to talk to them about their day. Now, instead of five channels on the television or a transistor radio for entertainment, kids have unlimited opportunities to be exposed to pornography, violent video games, and useless reality television programs when they arrive to their empty houses. It's why before and after school programs are federally funded so we can limit the mind pollutants we have made so readily available to everyone.

Another problem is we have too many of the wrong people having too many children. Unwed mothers, often mere teenagers who lack a basic education or moral foundation, are bringing in too many children and are ill equiped to raise them. Their absentee fathers who ignore their parental responsibilities compound matters and by the time their kid enters kindergarten, he has been exposed to more social ills than any human should ever have to face. This is a primary reason why you see the push for mandatory preschool programs to be monitored by our public schools. It's okay for anyone to have a baby because the state has decided to raise our kids for us. The problem is, how many government programs are well run and managed? What makes us think the government will raise our children any better than they manage their budget?

By the time these children reach public school, they are not only lacking developmentally, their social skills, impulsiveness, and anger pretty much guarantee they will never succeed in school. Teaching them is not as important as managing and monitoring their behavior with the hope they get through the system without being incarcerated as a youth.

Our public schools can not be fixed until we repair the growing ills of a society caught up in the over consumption of disposable products that saturate our brains with endless advertising designed to brainwash us into thinking happiness comes from owning stuff and not from the satisfaction of doing without in order to raise the people we bring into this world. Grades mean nothing to kids who equate love with how many electronic devices their parents have provided for them because they are never around for them. Life has become a negotiation to a generation of students use to asking , "What do I get if I do this?" rather than being raised to say, "I appreciate all the help you have given me."

So the next time you hear a politician tell you how they support education reform, ask him how he intends to do it. If it is within the current frame work, one run and controlled by the federal government, then all it will do is continue to enable a screwed up society. Real education reform will not happen in this country until there is real social reform. You can't have one without the other.