NCLB leaves every child behind

Next month the Legislature will meet in a special session to consider, among other things, whether the federal government should control our public schools with the No Child Left Behind Law. Other decisions will pale in comparison to the importance of this one.

The No Child Left Behind Law is based on a false philosophy of education — the belief that student achievement in curriculum should be the main goal and purpose of education. An artificially contrived core curriculum is what teachers are required to teach, measure and report with grades and grade-point-averages. This reduces teachers to the role of robots who dutifully carry out the impossible demands of government leaders. They are expected to do an impossible thing — make children alike in knowledge and skills — to standardize them and prepare them for tests that measure only low level, rote memory kinds of learning.

Actually, the No Child Left Behind Law did us a favor by showing the opposite of what needs to be done. If you have a foot race with any group of people, will anyone cross the finish line last? How about a swimming race or a spelling contest, reading comprehension, math or any activity you want to name?

The challenge is not to keep someone from being left behind but to make sure there is something in which every student can excel. Every person needs to be first once in a while. As long as student achievement in curriculum remains the main goal and purpose of public education, the majority of children will always be left behind. Only a few will graduate with high grade-point averages.

What is to be done? How would things be different if the slogan had been "Every Child Will Excel"? Dr. Calvin Taylor, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah, proved that everyone can excel in something. He discovered that some students who ranked low in academic subjects were highly skilled in creativity, leadership, the arts and other areas. Herein lies our challenge and opportunity for genuine reform of public education. The only way to avoid having some children left behind and for every child to excel is to change the main goal and purpose of education.

While I was principal of Hill Field Elementary School in Davis County, we adopted the following as the main goal of our school: Develop great human beings who are valuable contributors — not burdens — to society. We identified goals around three dimensions of human greatness: Identity, Inquiry and Interactions.