Letter to the Editor

Your view: Act fails children

Friday, December 12, 2003

I am writing to you as a concerned parent regarding the "No Child Left Behind Act." My husband, James, and I are the parents of 18 children. All are adopted but three. Several are considered to have special needs with varying degrees of disabilities.

I have read articles and asked questions of school officials about this act. On the surface, the concept looks and sounds great, but in reality, there will always be children who are "left behind." Some will never read at a proficient level. It is unrealistic to expect that they could perform as well as someone in a regular classroom who has no learning problems. To penalize a school district and label it as "failing" because all children are not proficient seems to be unfair.

Why can't these children's progress be measured in their accomplishments? As an example, why not take pride in the child who, because of a disability, could not read without assistance but is now at least able to read alone. Or, why not be proud of the special education student who is attending a few regular classes and passing each of them?

The demands of this act are requiring special education departments in schools to make fewer accommodations for a child with special needs. If a child needs special education, is he or she going to be "cured" because someone says that he or she must be proficient? If so, let mine be the first in line!

For years, parents and school districts have worked to get our children services and acceptance for their abilities. As parents of special education children for the past 20 years, the progress has been tremendous, but my fear is that our collective efforts may have been in vain.

I am proud of the progress that my kids have been able to make, even if they never become proficient at anything! For the government to label them as losers or failures is as disgraceful as it is mean-spirited.

As I understand, NCLB divides children into subgroups such as special education students, free and reduced meal students and black and white students. If all of these groups do not test well, it counts against the school district. How can this not be considered discrimination - for both the kids and the school district? How can a fair comparison be made between those schools that have few, if any, special needs, poor or black kids and those schools that have many of these kids?

Do schools need to continue to try to improve what they do for all students regardless of their ability? Sure they do.

Do parents need to continue to hold schools accountable? Most certainly.

Should the state and federal government label students, especially students with special needs, failures because they can't meet their "pie in the sky" goals? Absolutely not!

Malinda Darter,

New Madrid