Virginia House May Request Exemption from Flawed Education Law
by Jim Brown
February 4, 2004
(AgapePress) - Lawmakers in Virginia want their state exempted from participating in President Bush's federal education initiative.By a vote of 98-1, the Virginia House of Delegates recently passed a resolution calling on Congress to withdraw the state from the No Child Left Behind Act. And even though Delegate Albert Pollard's bill would do just that, the legislation has been set aside until next year and is being used as leverage to push the federal government to revise its standards.
Pollard says the No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to meet unrealistic requirements. He says the very rural part of the state that he represents has an "educational bureaucracy" that consists of four local employees in one school administration building.
With a school administration of four, the delegate says, "you cannot expect them to implement a 670-page piece of federal legislation and not have it interfere with teaching kids, which is what our schools should be about."
And Pollard notes that there are certain inequities that are inherent in the design of No Child Left Behind. "There is a federal standard which says that you have to have a ten percent improvement in your testing overall per year," he says, "but that means that a very poor school district can go from a 40 to 44 percent pass rate, and a [well-funded] school district can go from an 80 to an 84 percent pass rate, and still not be considered as good under federal standards as the poorer school."
Pollard says implementing Bush's education law is not a Democratic or Republican problem, but a problem created by the culture of Washington. The Virginia lawmaker wants his state exempted from the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act until issues that hinder its fair implementation can be resolved.
