From the perspective of a parent who has a disabled child. I see a fundamental flaw in the No Child Left Behind Act. by Taliesin
(libertarian)
Saturday, February 2, 2008
I'm writing this as a parent of a child with mental disabilities. My son was born prematurely yet otherwise healthy. This changed in a matter of weeks as he suffered a brain hemmorhage. The resulting bleed destroyed large areas of his brain, forever altering his potential. To put it simply, he cannot function to an average mental capacity.
This applies fundementaly to the No Child Left Behind Act. The principal of our school approached my wife and me one day asking if my son could come in for extra tutoring. This was to try and raise his score for the purposes of the NCLBA. The overall score of the school determines funding and the scores of mentally disabled children factors into the score the same as any other child.
Well, we told the principal that we weren't going to force this extra burden on our son. His IQ is roughly 50. No extra time is going to dramatically improve his test scores. My son is in classes for children with special needs, others in these classes all over the country are also tested in the same manner. The NCLBA makes no distinction between a child of below average intelligence, and someone of average intelligence.
This makes me wonder about the intelligence of those who wrote the NCLBA. Effectively they have told schools to make retarded people smart. Medical science can't do it, but our public schools are apparently up to the task. This is clearly a demonstration of the flaws of "one size fits all" politics.
So please, Big Government, if you insist on instructing our children, by all means do so. But until you find the magic cure for missing 25% of brain matter, don't expect everyone to be a genius. If you can't figure that out, then sit down, shut up and return to your Constitutionally limited capacity. Bigger things are clearly beyond you.
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I agree 150% with your comments. I ,too, delivered a child prematurely, and as a result, she had an IQ that fluctuated between 55 and 56. She attended school at a different time in history, and thankfully wasn't required to learn how to find the volume and surface area of a rectangular prism, but rather learn how to recognize danger signs in the community and how to ride the bus, and other IMPORTANT things she would need to be aware of when she became an adult. One size did not fit all back then, and she did learn appropriate things during her 17 years of public schooling. She resided at the lower end of the Bell curve. NCLB must be re-examined. One size and one script will not address the needs of all children. To the writer of the above article, keep up the good work you are doing with your child.
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