Globe editorial rips No Child Left Behind

The federal government's insufferable No Child Left Behind law is roundly criticized in an editorial in today's Joplin Globe.

The editorial, which bemoans the lack of talk about education from our presidential candidates, notes some of the problems with NCLB:

Official announcements are expected around Nov. 17. If the anticipated results hold, then Joplin, Carl Junction, Neosho, Webb City and other school districts will be given the state’s highest award for academic performance.

However, the award is based on the state’s system of evaluating schools, the Missouri School Improvement Program. This is the part about which we do tire of writing: Those same, potentially award-winning schools did not perform as well under the terms of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

We prefer the state’s MSIP to NCLB because it paints a more accurate, complete picture of a school district’s performance. Under the MSIP, a school district is evaluated on 14 criteria, including test scores, graduation rates, attendance and other areas.

NCLB checks only four criteria, and slaps ridiculously unrealistic performance goals on them. It is obvious that the act is broken, but Congress has done nothing to fix it.

Ever since the beginning of this year, Congress has waited for a new president to determine in which direction the act should go. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem Sens. John McCain or Barack Obama want to talk about it much.