Leaving Children Behind

I wonder who came up with the now infamous legislative misnomer "No Child Left Behind." I'd like to think it was someone who was well-meaning, someone who meant it. The political cynic in me is afraid they knew all along that it would be a shield from criticism of a crummy piece of legislation. Really, who can argue with not leaving children behind? I'd also like to think it was truly a bi-partisan debaucle, just so I don't have to blame the Republicans for one more thing, but it smacks of an example of that kind of "conservative compassionate" attempt to hold a visable hand out to help while using the other hand to block the funding of programs like Head Start, affordable housing and health care. Because make no mistake about this--children are being left behind from conception and no amount of blaming schools is going to catch them up to where they deserve to be.


I'm not completely uninformed about this subject. I am the mother of four children who have all attended public schools, and I have been a public school teacher for nearly a decade. In fact, I have worked professionally with children of one age or another since I received my degree in Child Development 30 years ago. I've worked with developmentally delayed preschoolers, hearing impaired students in grades K-12, autistic students, gifted teenagers and plain old run-of-the-mill middle schoolers, whatever that means. I've taught students who came from affluent, two-parent families and students whose parents were in prison. I've taught children who were abused and students who were abusive. It's not our public schools which are leaving children behind; there are many ways a child can be advantaged or disadvantaged; there are many avenues for a society that wants to help.


Because of the condition the ecomony is in, some changes are going to be made to many tax supported programs on both a federal level and a state level. Rumors of cutting programs are running rampant. Schools are not immune and teachers know that there will be less money to go around. Cuts do have to be made, but when politicians stand in front of cameras and talk about not leaving children behind and then refuse to fund the sort of programs that would keep them from being left behind in the first place, maybe it's time to acknowledge that it may be the lawmakers are the ones who are behind.