Collegiate Times

If you attended school, whether it was an elementary, middle or high school — public or private — there is now over a 60 percent chance that your school is currently failing. Only four school districts in Virginia, of 132, are not considered failing, and none of them are located in northern Virginia. To make sense of this, consider this example: 10 years ago, Stonewall Jackson High School in Manassas, Va., was Time Magazine’s High School of the year. In 2011, Stonewall Jackson High did not make adequate yearly progress.

Now many former students must be asking, how did this happen? I attended high school in northern Virginia, and my school was excellent. I was well prepared for college, I passed all of my SOLs and I meet general societal standards for intelligence. Well, it is likely not the case that your high school has suddenly taken a turn for the worse. The answer lies in the unreasonable standards the federal government is requiring your former schools to meet.

This year, in mid-August, Virginia results of testing and other benchmarks were released, with the standard being No Child Left Behind. NCLB is a federal act, passed by Congress in 2001 and signed into law in 2002. This law was designed to push states to develop and implement their own standards in reading and math which all students had to meet. Meeting such standards had to be demonstrated by achievement on state-designed standardized tests. Tied into schools meeting these standards is federal funding for education.

This law seems pretty reasonable at face value. Assuring students have the basic skills to survive in our society seems like one of the main goals of education, with reading and math skills as good starts. But the devil is in the details.

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A version of this article appeared in the Sep 3 issue of the Collegiate Times.