Bush reforms not making the grade

Today's Chicago Sun-Times:

Snip:

Here we are, just days into the 2003-2004 school year, and parents everywhere are filled with questions: Will my son like his teacher? Will my daughter finally figure out long division? Will President Bush see the error of his ways?

Chances are good that your son and his teacher will get along fine and that your daughter will work out her math problems. But the president? I don't have as much hope. Bush's No Child Left Behind law is wreaking havoc on public schools everywhere, and there is little reason to believe that things will get better any time soon -- unless, of course, schools manage to save themselves by ratcheting down the standards for student testing and teacher qualifications.

This law, with its mom-and-apple-pie title, is supposed to ensure every kid in every public school is learning as much as his or her peers across the country. Nice idea in theory. But, as is too often the case, this nice idea is turning out to be not so nice in reality.

Consider the experience of Chicago Public School students: 365 of the 600 schools were labeled ''failures'' under the federal law. Bush's solution? Give the 270,000 students who attend those schools a chance to transfer to higher performing schools. Again, a nice idea in theory. The reality is there were only 1,053 slots available at better schools. With such pathetic odds, only 19,000 even bothered to apply.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/richards/cst-edt-cindy10.html

Their students' performance was so low previously, that they can easily fulfill the requirements for the next few years. It's the schools who previously showed good student performance that have the big headaches. They may not be able to improve on past records, so will be in default.

Every school has the same questions and same answers. A previously rated poor school would be under the gun to improve drastically while the good performing school would do well. Logic would dictate this anyway.