I am wondering how Mr. Bush can expect No Child Left Behind to apply to school systems such as this without giving some type of aid to the schools. Can he really expect students that are learning in these situations to be on grade level or even academically close to other students in the rich schools?

I get the feeling that Mr. Bush likes all the pats on the back for implementing laws like NCLB. If he had any idea about what really happened in schools, the laws would be changed. When was the last time he went into an urban school and spent the day seeing what few resources were available and under what circumstances the students had to learn. I doubt that he would acknowledge that we have such poor schools in the US. We as educators have to babysit and then counsel before we can ever think of educating today's children.
I personally don't like the NCLB laws. Children aren't all the same and don't learn the same or at the same rate. No matter what we try or what the laws are, children will be children and that means being different.

In East St. Louis it appears that all chidren have been left behind. The expectations for these children are so low. Page 25 says it all. One-fourth of the systems teachers had to be cut. These cuts, however, did not include the sports and music programs because according to the chairman of the state board, sports and music are the only programs in which these children can achieve success. It appears that East St. Louis has been long ignored by the "powers that be". There is no way that under the conditions present in the schools of East St. Louis in the late 1980's that No Child Left Behind requirements could possibly be met. Will or has the federal government intervened since Savage Inequalities was published????

I'm with you Tami. I wonder what has been done since this book was published. I can't imagine that these conditions are still the same. Since the NCLB act has been put into place, I would love to see what has happened to this place.

Shannon

I was so happy to see the post started. Through reading this book these were my thoughts exactly! These children obviously have already been left behind. At my school we stress out if a child is not at grade level by the middle of the year, and these children are four and five years behind. How can we or the state expect them to be on grade level at the end of the year?