Critiquing No Child Left Behind
"Do Schools Pass the Test?" [June 18] notes that it is unclear if No Child Left Behind deserves credit for increased test scores. It is unclear if NCLB deserves any of the credit for gains in reading. The Center on Education Policy's report included a section comparing elementary school gains for the two years before and two years after NCLB was implemented in 11 states. I calculated that before NCLB, the yearly rate of improvement in these states was 1.2 percent. After NCLB, it was 1.5 percent, a difference of less than one third of 1 percent. In other words, reading scores were going up before NCLB, and NCLB did little or nothing to improve the rate of improvement. NCLB has cost us billions, and Reading First, the reading component of NCLB, imposes an extra 100 minutes per week of reading instruction, an extra semester every two years.
STEPHEN KRASHEN
Professor Emeritus
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California Los Angeles
President and CEO of the Center on Education Policy Jack Jennings was quoted in your interview as saying, "The problem is that there's no control group. With NCLB, every student is affected. We will never be able to measure what education would be like without NCLB." Try home-schoolers as a control group outside the NCLB system. Home-schoolers scored 6 to 8.5 percent higher on the ACT college entrance exam every year since 1997. Has anyone ever wondered how parents manage to do this without the Department of Education budget and the force of the U.S. government behind them?
GAIL NAGASAKO
Wailuku, Hawaii
Sadly, your article does not point out that by enacting the socially acceptable No Child Left Behind plan supposedly to uplift the poor and downtrodden, the plan has somewhat backfired. We as a nation have succumbed to the pressure of the mediocre. Highly intelligent students are being held back so that the slower student can catch up. The NCLB plan has been a disaster to gifted programs, once successful throughout our country. No wonder the foreign countries, like India and China, are taking away crucial jobs from our great country!
FRANK DROZDICK
North Andover, Mass.
Presidential Words of Wisdom
After reading your excellent article on memorable presidential speeches ["Seizing the Moment," June 18], I was disappointed that no reference was made to the courageous and pointed speech made by President Harry S. Truman at the Lincoln Memorial 60 years ago on June 29, 1947. He was the first president to address the NAACP and did so when it was neither politically correct nor politically expedient. He did so out of a personal commitment to the moral rightness of his convictions. According to Michael R. Gardner in his book Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks, President Truman "became the first president unequivocally to commit himself and the federal government to 'civil rights and human freedom of black Americans.'"
HAROLD S. GAZAN
Holland, Mich.
After more than 40 years, has no one figured out that John F. Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you" line turned American political theory completely upside down? From the Declaration of Independence to the Gettysburg Address, the basic principle was that the government was the servant of the people who formed it. Lincoln got it right: "for the people." JFK told us to be the servants of the government instead: What can we do for it? In his theory, the people are the servants.
STEVE BILLUPS
Los Angeles
Ronald Reagan will go down in history as one of our greatest presidents. His steadfastness in standing up to "the evil empire" freed millions of people from the shackles of communism. He ended the Cold War and made peace with the Soviet Union by saying: "Trust, but verify" in regard to the nuclear weapons supplies of both countries. Reagan was a decent man who was respected by friend and foe alike.
RICK SCHREINER
San Marino, Calif.
In reading your story praising Reagan's appeal to Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," I wished you had parenthetically counseled our current administration and Congress to forgo their plans to extend the wall dividing the United States and Mexico.
VIVIAN H. DAVIS
Little Rock, Ark.
Your recent item on presidential speeches of note would have done well to recognize George Washington's Farewell Address to the nation, which he delivered on leaving office. Two points he made are significantly prescient regarding our nation's most pressing problems today. He said (paraphrased) that we should let no foreign power replace our democratic republic form of government, and likewise, we should not impose by force our form of government on any other nation. He also said that we should pay for our expenditures "avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt" whether in war or peace.
JOHN J. KIELY
Falmouth, Mass.
This story appears in the July 16, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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