No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has been nothing but an unmitigated disaster for our school children. Besides the fact that NCLB has actually led to a direct decrease in student performance (a topic for part three of this series) as well as espousing the traitorous philosophy characterized by a “de-emphasis of American excellence” attitude in our academic core courses which opens the door to the propaganda of “globalizing” our young people, the people’s educational resources are being squandered when they could easily be put to better use in our classrooms.

In the present climate of Arizona’s unprecedented budget crisis, one would wonder why the Legislature would continue participating in NCLB due to the plethora of unfunded mandates. All across the country, numerous states are up in arms about the continued participation in NCLB. In fact, the Utah Legislature voted against spending one dime of state or local money on No Child Left Behind. Utah House Speaker Martin R. Stephens said Utah’s legislation is a “statement bill” which sends a clear message to Washington: No more unfunded mandates.  Vermont has passed a similar measure and  Virginia’s House of Delegates recently asked Congress to exempt the state from the law.

Connecticut has actually sued the feds over the unfunded mandates in NCLB as the Connecticut Attorney General stated, “Our message today is give up the unfunded mandates, or give us the money." Ohio has joined in the rebellion against NCLB as their state leaders claim that the state will spend about $1.5 billion each year on NCLB which is much more than it now gets from the federal government to implement the law.

NCLB is part of a very disturbing and ever-increasing trend of the federal government sticking its nose into state education matters. Education is a 10th Amendment issue which carries with it a state and local responsibility. Many states were already well on the road to improving their own standards and testing when NCLB was passed. Now the states are finding the federal law interferes with those efforts. Many state critics say the previous Republican Congress appropriated $8 billion less last year than originally promised. States all across the country are saying no to NCLB.

Arizona could easily opt out of NCLB, thus avoiding the negative windfall of unfunded mandates, and place the saved monies into the resource deprived Arizona classrooms. This begs the question of why the Arizona Legislature cannot do the simple arithmetic and realize the NCLB is the Titanic of education. Perhaps the answer lies in what former Sheriff of Graham County, Richard Mack, told me when said that he personally heard Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction tell a Republican lunch gathering that “NCLB is a disaster, but the money is too good to turn away.” Maybe, Mr. Horne left his bean counter at home that day as he fails to grasp what most public servants in Arizona fail to grasp, NCLB is bankrupting our public education system. Or perhaps, cartoonist Steve Benson (6/29/2009) sums it up best in the following manner: 

“1+1= Government

2+2=Government

10-9=Government

6/2=Government

What is the capital of Hawaii? Government”

Along these lines, I ask the question, “Who knows best how to educate our children? The answer is apparently the Government as the government is presumably the answer to all of our problems. And why can’t the Arizona Legislature do the simple math and get us out of NCLB? Answer: Because most of these Mensa-type legislators went to government schools.

Every state has a choice when it comes to NCLB. We need to ask why the questions raised in part two of this series are conspicuously missing from the public debate on education.