|
Student Union
Helen Park |
No Child Left Behind
leaves out students’
duty to do their bestNo Child Left Behind, the education reform act introduced by President Bush mere months into his term, is a very good act if everything works out the way it should. Every student will be proficient in math and English, or should be, by the year 2014.
A detailed plan and schedule is laid out for schools and teachers to follow, along with the consequences if schools fail to meet the criteria every year. The results of student testing during the last school year came in several weeks ago. Only 95 of 280 public schools in Hawaii met the standards, with 30 percent of the students passing the English section of the Hawaii State Assessment test and 10 percent passing the math portion.
Ninety-five out of 280 is about 33 percent, meaning if this were a major class assignment, two-thirds of the students would have flunked. It's fair to say that, in this case, Hawaii has flunked. With the bar being raised every year until 100 percent of the students pass both sections of the test in 2014, how will our schools fare?
It is impossible to tell with only one set of test results; we'll have to accumulate a few more years of test scores before being able to tell whether Hawaii's students are headed in the right direction. If the schools, administrators, teachers and students get going, however, the future seems bright.
Notice that I included students. NCLB holds mainly schools, administrators and teachers accountable for a school's performance and skims over the students' responsibility. I think that is a mistake. Students are the most important part of this whole business. According to NCLB, though, schools, administrators and teachers can do whatever they need to improve, but if the students do not show progress, then it becomes the school's fault, the administrator's fault and the teacher's fault, instead of the student.
The old saying that "you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot force the horse to drink," comes to mind. A student can be put in the best environment for learning, but if he or she does not want to learn, he or she probably will not learn. The student also could learn only enough to pass the test.
I believe students should shoulder most of the responsibility for their learning. After all, it is our job, albeit required by law and unpaid, to learn. Like employees of any job, we should strive to do our best.
If each student is self-motivated to do his or her best, the progress of individual students would add up to a better overall score for the entire school. This is much more effective than trying to pull the whole school forward at once, which may lead to children being left behind. Not literally, of course, because NCLB presumably would not allow that, but students could get by learning only as much as they have to pass the test and then be released into the workforce under qualified, despite earning diplomas.
I am not saying NCLB should focus solely on methods to motivate students, but I am surprised the act passed over student accountability almost completely, as if students are pawns being used in a great war waged between schools and the government.
If accountability for student learning is forced upon administrators, teachers, and schools, I think students should be assigned equal responsibility. Having no specific directions for students in NCLB, the students could easily sabotage the whole system by purposefully not doing the best they can, no matter how well the system would have worked if the students had been mere drones who had no minds of their own.
Helen Park is a sophomore at McKinley High School. She is a staff member with The Pinion, the school's student newspaper.
Join the Student Union
Student Union is a forum for Hawaii's teenagers to tell the community what's on their minds and in their hearts. It appears every Thursday, starting today. We welcome opinions of no more than 700 words on any topic. Please include your name, address and phone number. E-mail to letters@starbulletin.com, fax to 529-4750 or mail to Student Union, Editorial Page, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, Honolulu, HI 96813. For more information, contact Jeff Finney at 529-4735 or jfinney@starbulletin.com.
