Holt: School law may
become election issue
No Child Left Behind
raises hackles in good
schools deemed ‘failing’
BY DAVE BENJAMIN
Staff Writer

MANALAPAN — A visit from Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) to Manalapan High School earlier this month led to a discussion of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Holt, a three-term member of Congress, was addressing advanced placement government and history students.

Freehold Regional High School District Superintendent of Schools James Wasser was present for the event and raised the subject of the No Child Left Behind law.

"You are [standing] before some of the brightest students not only in this school district, but in the state of New Jersey," Wasser told Holt. "Their advanced placement scores exceed all state averages. They’re award winning students and so on, and you’re in a (so-called) failing school."

Wasser was referring to recent reports that showed Manalapan, like many schools throughout New Jersey, had failed to meet a strict set of student achievement criteria set forth by the No Child Left Behind legislation. By law, those schools are said to be failing.

Noting facilities such as the media center that complement the students’ experience at Manalapan, Wasser took issue with the law that led to the below par ranking of the school.

"I really see this as an attack" on education, the superintendent said. "Just like you (Holt) said there are people in Washington that may have had a motivation for going to war, I also think there are people in Washington that are motivated to destroy public education in this country and I am very concerned."

Wasser asked Holt to address the issue of the No Child Left Behind law for the advanced placement government and history students.

"Public education is one of the great accomplishments of the United States," the congressman said. "It has allowed us to become the country that we’ve become and it will allow us to become the country that we can become. But there are those who think it will be better if the government would just get out of this and give people a voucher [to] let them decide where they want to go to school. They can make better decisions than the government can. They can [also] spend the money better than the government can. The result would be excellent education for some and a terrible education for others."

Holt said the nation has had an ideal for about 150 years of public education, to provide an excellent education for all.

"We don’t weed out people early and say, ‘You’re not college material, get outof the way,’ " he said. "We give lots of people second chances and we figure that the public schools are for everyone and should offer everyone an excellent education."

Holt said leaders sometimes fall short of that ideal and have to ask themselves how they can make things better.

"One of the problems in the last 10 or 20 years is that people have hidden behind averages," the congressman said. "A school will say, ‘On average, we are providing an excellent education to our students.’ Then there would be 10 or 20 percent of the students [in a particular identifiable category] that just weren’t getting a decent education. But on average, the school was doing just great."

Holt said No Child Left Behind was legislation that was intended to get behind the averages and insist that every identifiable group had to be making what is called "adequate yearly progress."

"What do you mean by adequate yearly progress and is adequately yearly progress defined the same way for all students?" he asked. "How do you mea­sure it?"

One way to measure adequate yearly progress is by using a test, Holt said, adding that there may be other ways to measure a student’s achievement.

"The idea was to see that no child was left behind," the congressman said. "Every student was [to] make adequate yearly progress and a school couldn’t sweep that 10 percent under the rug."

Holt said there are several problems with the legislation. Some of the ques­tions that need to be answered are, How do you measure using a test? Do you end up teaching to the tests? Do you add ex­pense to the schools in order to comply with this legislation and who will pay for it?

"The expectation was that the federal government would pay for the additional expenses," he told the students.

The congressman addressed the term "failing school."

"The federal government never used the term failing schools," said Holt. "That was not part of No Child Left Behind, but that’s the way it has come to be described in New Jersey, which is cer­tainly unfortunate."

Holt said he thinks No Child Left Behind will have to be reworked and said it may become a political issue this year.

"It’s something the president pushed for very hard," he said. "It was his first major piece of legislation. Education was to be his signature issue, particularly el­ementary and secondary education, so he is tied to that."

Holt said many Democratic candi­dates are finding fault with No Child Left Behind and he predicted it will turn into a political issue.

"It hasn’t yet, and I may be wrong, but I think it probably will. If it does, it will probably mean that some changes will have to be made," the congressman said.

Holt said it will stir up the general sense of disappointment and resentment among the millions of school families and teachers who are unhappy with the way No Child Left Behind is implemented.

"That was a brief summary of a very involved problem," he said.