Why now after a decade is the federal government rewriting No Child Left Behind? Why is Florida now asking for a waiver? Well friends it’s because the draconian measures built into the bill are about to hit suburbia. Plus the bill has already done its job of forcing free market solutions on inner city communities. Is NCLB going to reverse the last five years, close all the charter schools and send the kids shipped out of their neighborhoods home? Of course not, the damage there has been done and now just before it can hit the white schools in the suburbs it’s going to be stopped.
For a decade now we have crammed our inner city kids into a one size fits all curriculum regardless of ability, desire and aptitude and then passed them through without the abilities (discipline, a work ethic and academics) they need to succeed. Then we wondered why they did poorly when they hit high school and there was no place left to pass them to. Here s the rub, when they did poorly, NCLB required that they had to ship them out of their neighborhoods or into charter schools and because of all the requirements assured there would be a constant revolving door of teachers for those few that remained at their home schools. Right now there are literally thousands of kids that could be attending the north side intervene schools but aren’t.
Then in Jacksonville when you couple above with KIPP and Teach for America a generation of inner city kids is being handcuffed just as they are starting out. Kids in poverty already face some many obstacles to overcome and now the DCSB wants to saddle them with ineffective schools and novice teachers too. Wow!
Where is the outcry, the protest, can somebody at least say, um maybe that’s not what we should be doing? Does the black community not care? Do they not understand what has been done and is continuing to be done to them?
We are doing these children many of who have so little a disservice.
It is a shame.
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