Tuesday, March 22, 2005

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No child left behind...

I am not a fan of this law first because it leaves kids behind. It really leaves those kids with learning disabilities that can compensate for them behind, I know we live this nightmare day to day in my house; but I will whine about that later. I read in Salon yesterday and was surprised to find out that our kids names must be turned over to military recruiters as a criteria of federal funding, it is mandated in No Child Left Behind. So it turns out what No Child Left Behind really means is No Child Left Unrecruited!
From Salon:
One day in the next two weeks, a uniformed colonel from the U.S. Army is expected to pay a visit to William Cala, the superintendent of the Fairport Central School District in Fairport, N.Y., east of Rochester. While Cala has not been told exactly what's on the agenda, he knows why the colonel is coming: to try to talk some sense into him about how he's handled the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act. It might seem strange that the Pentagon is sending an emissary to a school district, but it's actually the law.

The colonel's visit is the latest move in a three-year dispute between the Fairport school district and the government over a little-known provision of No Child Left Behind, the controversial landmark education legislation passed in 2001. The provision, under Section 9528 of the law, requires districts that receive federal funding to share students' names, addresses and phone numbers with military recruiters. This is where Cala, an outspoken critic of NCLB, has run into problems with the law -- he doesn't want to hand over student data to military recruiters without explicit permission from parents.


What a farce, in order to maintain the minimal amount of federal funding a school district receives it must turn over student information to military recruiters. What do you want to bet that those recruiters don't show up on doorsteps at 7 pm in the upper middle class neighborhoods, while they do in the poorer neighborhoods?