2 Million Left Behind

When Georgie's education program, the No Child Left Behind law, was passed a few years ago, it was touted as the tool that would save our schools. Because of this law, schools test more than 25 million students annually in reading and math. All of these scores are to be included in measuring a school's performance. Schools are also required to report scores by catagories such as race, poverty, english proficiency, migrant status, etc. If a school fails in any catagory, then the whole school fails. Failing schools may be penalized by extending the school year, changing the curriculum, or replacing teachers and administrators.

Is it working? Probably not, since there has been no real progress in education the last four years. Now we begin to see why. The Associated Press recently did an analysis of the program, and they found that nearly 2 million students were left out of the count when it was broken down into catagories. The vast majority of the students left out are minorities.

According to the AP, a loophole in the law allows schools to count fewer minorities in the racial catagories. The loophole allows schools to ignore scores of racial groups that are too small to be statistically significant. How small is too small? This is determined by each state with the approval of the federal government.

The size of the exempt groups vary from state to state. For instance, Maryland tests all groups with at least 5 students resulting in a rate of less than 1 in 100 who don't have their scores counted. On the other hand, Oklahoma excludes any group of 52 or less students resulting in a rate of 1 in 5 students whose scores are not counted. At least 2 dozen states have excluded groups of at least 30 students. About 1.9 million students were not counted [about 1 in 14].

How are we supposed to measure the achievement gap between white and minority students, if nearly 2 million minority students are left out of the count? This only gives us a false impression of schools doing well. I do not believe for a minute that this is being done to benefit students. It is being done to hide how poorly our schools are teaching our students, especially the minority students. I don't think there's any doubt that these small groups would be counted if they did very well on the tests.

It looks like the republicans have done it to us again. This time they told us they would fix our schools. Now we find out all they did was to hide the problems. Leave No Child Behind has turned into Leave 2 Million Children Behind! This is unacceptable.