Bush education policy to miss goals: Harvard study

[kpete]

Bush education policy to miss goals: Harvard study
Wed Jun 14, 2006 4:49am ET

BOSTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush's signature No Child Left Behind education policy is failing to close racial achievement gaps and will miss its goals by 2014 according to recent trends, a Harvard study said on Wednesday.

It said the policy has had no significant impact on improving reading and math achievement since it was introduced in 2001, contradicting White House claims and potentially adding to concerns over America's academic competitiveness.

Bush's No Child Left Behind Act was meant to introduce national standards to an education system where only two-thirds of teenagers graduate from high school, a proportion that slides to 50 percent for blacks and Hispanics.

The study released by Harvard University's Civil Rights Project said national average of achievement by U.S. students has been flat in reading since 2001 and the growth rate in math has remained the same as before the policy was introduced.

more at:
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-06-14T091230Z_01_N1370671_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-EDUCATION.xml

[Avalux]

1. Gee - what a surprise.

No Child Left Behind was not designed to actually teach children and promote improvement for minorities. It was designed as a funding vehicle. Living here in Texas, it pains me that my children take these tests and their performance is directly correlated to the amount of funding the school will receive. Minority schools that don't perform well don't get funded and just slip further down the ladder. How is that supposed to change anything?

Teachers and administrators are forced to spend the entire school year teaching kids how to take a test that will keep the school afloat instead of teaching them to learn.

So I coulda told these Harvard guys what the results of their study would be.

[leftyladyfrommo]

2. And how much have we wasted on this one?