My sixteen year old has started working on her senior paper--a whole year in advance! She had thrown around some really impressive topics--defibrillators in schools, socks for the homeless, baseball for Autism...Today she asked me if I wanted to read what she had written. I was quite surprised when the title of her paper read"No Child Left Behind". I didn't know what she was thinking, so, of course, I asked. In doing the research for this paper, she found some of the statistics amazing and surprising!!! As I read through this, I could actually feel my pressure go up a bit, as I have never been a fan of "the no child left behind" slogan. I have never understood the fact that certain students get pulled out of the classroom to go for additional instruction, while the struggling child has to remain in class because he/she did not meet the numbers on a standardized test. What are we saying to the child who just doesn't "get it", and because the numbers fell short, he/she will have to remain in the class and keep trying, struggling. What kind of message does that child recieve--I see it as setting that student up for failure, and allowing it to continue. One sentence from her paper just jumped out at me--we are now having to "Dummy down" our education in order to get the scores up to where they need to be, by 2014. When did the bar get lowered for our young people? Doesn't everyone deserve a really good education--at the hands of teachers who are striving for better and want that for their students. We see on the news often, one county that is struggling with zoning problems, year round vs. traditional, ... I am hopeful that someone will consider the fact that these young people are the future, and all are deserving of a bright future. The "no child left behind" policy has already left a huge population behind--that is the struggling child. I hope that by 2014 our policies in the public school system will have changed in order to accomodate those that are left behind!!