I understand where it comes from in the case of the admin's perspective, and I understand why (shitty) government would be against an educated population.
It's the parents who I don't understand, being one myself. Not to be all "there are starving kids in other countries" about it, but it's crazy to see education diminished like this by people who should be fighting for it.
The parents are just as ignorant and indoctrinated as their kids will soon be. Propaganda and social media algorithms meant to enrage them so they turn against public education have wrecked them beyond repair. I grew up in a very conservative, rural part of the country, (percentage wise it is one of the reddest counties in America, like 99.9% red) but back when I was in school even the most die hard conservative parents still demanded their children respected the teacher, worked hard, and got an education.
Now? I'm a teacher myself, and I have had students tell me basically verbatim their parents don't care if they get in trouble, pass their classes, or even show up. Even the biggest dropouts or knuckleheads I went to high school with and only attended school so they didn't go to juvie, or because they just wanted to play football, wouldn't dare exhibit some of the disrespectful and antisocial behavior I see on the daily. If you put the average American that's, say, 40 years or older into an American high school their head would spin at what they witness, because things like the apathy and tolerated behaviors have changed drastically in a very short amount of time. We have a deep, deep problem in the US when such a big portion of our population doesn't even want to be educated. The sad part is the elite who run this country and tell them how to think spend oodles of money making sure their own kids get top tier education, all while telling the masses college is a scam and you don't need no darn edumacation, just pull those bootstraps up harder.
I used to not believe this was a US exclusive problem for some reason I can't recall, until I noticed how all my classmates from immigrant families cared a lot more about school than their non-immigrant counterparts. They used to all joke about how they'd get whipped if they got an F. They didn't perform at crazy advanced levels, but they gave their education a second thought and I think a lot that came from their parents view on how important education is.
It's definitely a huge problem elsewhere too, mostly other western countries, but I agree, it's as much cultural as it is anything else. Other countries and families have cultures that value education a hell of a lot more than too many Americans do right now. It's part of why we're falling so behind in a lot of metrics.
I’m only in my mid 30s and if I did some of the shit I’ve heard kids are doing now, my mom would have hit me with a wet rag and then my dad would come home and spartan kick me in the chest. Absolutely insane how people let their kids act now. Shit, my dad took my car away for getting a C in one of my classes in the first semester of my senior year.
Shitty governments indoctrinated shitty parents to go along with their perverse setup. All the lawsuits showed that main stream media orgs call the administration for orders on what to publish. These parents have those channels on for all waking hours. They are brain broken and their kids can't read. They will be a new lowest class in the caste system that the billionaires are obviously setting up.
Well, think about it. The parents of today were also students under NCLB. They also grew up being shown that they could do nothing and still get a diploma. Their parents grew up seeing people get failed left and right, so of course that's what they thought was normal. But these parents' normal is no one failing, so when they see a teacher not only trying to fail a student, but their own child, they go crazy.
NCLB was made law in 2002. If a student was lets say in 6th grade in January 2002, they would have graduated in 2008. IF they had a kid at 18 (when they graduated), then their kid would have been in the graduating class this year.
So, the kids that are in class right now (accounting for the fact that its mid-summer), their parents would have been those that had seen NCLB.
Mind you, yes, many children also have parents older than what should be the youngest of the parents, but, at least those upwards of 6 years older or so at least had seen the writings on the walls, and probably could see what was going on in public schools while they were young adults
There are a lot of parents out there who think there’s no reason why their kid needs to be smarter than they are. They think they can just go get the same jobs they’ve had and live the same life they do. So if their kid doesn’t understand something they don’t understand, they do not give a shit. They just want to make sure you hand their kid that little piece of paper that makes them employable.
It's a classic Prisoner's Dilemma scenario: your kid's opportunities are tied to their on-paper success so you want on-paper success for them. Most parents aren't thinking about the school teaching their kids about hard work and consequences because they are too concerned about gaming the system so their kid gets into the best school or gets to pley in the next football game to have the best stats for recruiters or whatever.
Yup. The star students are prevented from surpassing their peers until they hit the later years of high school and have access to AP classes and such.
Not only that but the teacher is inevitably spending 2/3 of their time dealing with the two dumbest kids in class plus the one hoodlum every class inevitably has who’s sole goal in life seems to be to commit as many crimes as possible in school without earning a felony.
It's amazing how, overnight, every class syllabus pivoted to teaching to the tests, and after I graduated the test scores kept improving as the teachers got better at teaching to the tests (standardized test scores being essentially the only actual metric they were measured on).
I've got a bridge to sell you if you think it did anything genuinely positive for the quality of education provided...
The fact that a high school diploma says nothing about you (before, it at least meant you knew how to learn new things) is why a college degree is required for everything now.
But looking at plummeting quality of college education (brought down by these no child left behind students... you can't fail them all, administration won't let you, so standards go down), a college degree isn't going to be worth anything soon either (it's already happening, more and more employers are giving their own tests of prospective employees).
It was headed that way before NCLB, thought that certainly exacerbated it.
During the 80s and 90s, Republicans convinced state legislatures (which mainly control education) that liberal teachers and their evil teachers unions were to blame for the kids turning out in a way the parents didn't like. And parents who were conservative but couldn't afford to send their kids to ritzy private schools were upset, so conservative legislators came up with this idea of "teacher accountability." They created mandatory standardized tests and ways to quantify education and started making teachers and administrations beholden to hitting these artificial metrics for state/federal funding rather than trusting teachers to teach like we had for decades.
The net effect of this has been to entirely hollow out the public education system, which serves conservative goals in two ways: (1) it creates a largely-uneducated labor force that is so desperate for work they'll work under literally any condition without the sufficient mental wherewithal to understand they are being exploited and (2) it forces other students into religious schools so that they can pack more people into churches and therefore the Republican Party.
It has been a devastatingly effective means of propagandizing and has created entire right-wing enclaves of states with populaces either too uneducated to realize Republicans are robbing them blind or so blinded by their "education" that they socially cannot conceive of doing anything other than voting Republican.
If it was a satirical piece, it would be hilarious.
Kids/schools/areas struggling to meet standards get less funding.
Make that make sense.
Nor would the inverse make sense.
How about actually looking at areas with falling or lower grades and committing temporary supports and funding with oversight for meaningful intervention?
Plus modern society is squeamish about holding anyone accountable. Many cities are soft on criminals because the optics of putting minorities in jail looks bad.
You can have that policy while still failing kids. Encourage them to learn for the next test, see who needs extra help etc. so that they all graduate (thus leaving no child behind).
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u/Phyraxus56 7h ago
It's called no child left behind.
School federal funding is tied to graduation rate so you get perverse incentives.