Chapter 2 Excerpt

Children Left Behind?

Critics are very quick to blame public schools for students who lack motivation. They say public education isn't "reaching" these kids. I remember a talk show I saw on TV a couple of years ago in which the host and a guest representing some educational reform group wrapped up a segment on public education by saying that low test scores weren't the fault of students or their parents. It's everyone else's fault: state legislature’s, teachers’ union’s, school board’s, etc. While statements like these may sound good to the public, they are false, and don’t help to bring about the "high standards" in public education that this program supposedly promoted.

The popular belief that it's the school's fault if a student isn't performing well became public policy in 2002 when President Bush signed into law the latest program for national educational reform. Both Republicans and Democrats supported this bill, and the very name of the program, No Child Left Behind, makes it hard for me to be open-minded. The clear implication is that low-performing students do poorly because people in those schools have been neglecting them, or, in other words, leaving them behind. And how can we remedy this situation? By identifying "failing schools," with their negligent educators, and punishing them, of course!

There are a number of wealthy suburbs surrounding the Twin Cities area in Minnesota—communities like Edina, Apple Valley, Eden Prairie and Lakeville. The NCLB program is set up in such a way that nearly every public school in America will eventually fall into the “failing” category, but my guess is that these schools will be some of the last ones to do so. On the other hand, I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the inner-city schools of Minneapolis and St. Paul will be designated as failing schools very quickly. When that happens, the NCLB program will encourage us to shake our heads and say, "Boy, all those teachers and principals and everyone else working in those schools must be doing lousy jobs!"

I hope our school in Warroad won’t fall into the failing category any time soon, but we do have our share of low-performing students. Our school has tried everything we can think of to help them, and we spend far more money, time, and attention on them than on anyone else. Most of the phone calls we make and letters we send to homes involve these students. So do many of the meetings we attend after school hours. We have special education and individual education plans. We’ve tried having basic classes, and we’ve tried mainstreaming. Some of us have tried mastery learning, some of us have tried cooperative learning, and many of us have tried to incorporate other teaching methods into our classes. We believe that some of these changes have made our classes better for all of our students, and some of them have helped to bring along some students who weren't performing well. Nevertheless, we all continue to have some of those low performers who do almost nothing to help themselves. I know that I speak for a lot of other teachers when I say that it's not a matter of our leaving them behind; it's a matter of it being impossible to get them to come along.

Students perform poorly not because schools don't care about them but, in the great majority of cases, because the students don't care themselves. It's impossible to say exactly why any particular student decides that education isn't important, but if we look too hard for the reason, we forget who is ultimately responsible for that decision. If we really want to improve education in America, we need to start by making it clear that the student, more than anyone else, is responsible for his or her own education.