Scott Garrett: “this House will soon be considering a reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. Now, when President Bush signed No Child…”

“this House will soon be considering a reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. Now, when President Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law 5 years ago, the theory went that schools would raise their standards and strive to make improvements and that this would then eventually trickle down and assist all, even the underperforming students that needed the help the most. Now as we now reconsider this reauthorization of this bill, I submit that many of these changes brought on by this bill have had tremendous burdensome unintended consequences. See, instead of giving local school districts the flexibility to develop their own curriculum, they are instead hampered by the NCLB's testing requirements and must tailor their classes now around these tests. Instead of schools setting their standards high in an aggressive drive towards excellence, we have seen just the opposite. In order to maintain their Federal funding, the States are now setting their standards low. In essence, it's a race to the bottom, if you will, as far as standards in this country. And instead of allowing our educators to focus on education, NCLB has instituted some absurd regulatory burdens on the States. According to the GAO, 41 percent of the financial support and staffing of State education agencies was a product of Federal dollars and regulations.…”