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to drop out because they resent being mere pawns in a heavy-handed government game plan? Seems like a reasonable possibility.

There's another set of drop outs, however, that cripple the whole public school system. These are the good and competent educators who leave specifically because of No Child Left Behind. Anyone who has been in education for more than ten years can tell you about someone they know personally, another teacher, or in some cases even an administrator who has taken early retirement or made a career change solely to avoid putting up with the absurdity and jumping through the government hoops mandated by No Child Left Behind. It demoralizes the very people needed to make it succeed, and the hideous thing is that it seems to do this by deliberate design. The entire Bush initiative has a paternalistic, justify-your-job tone, similar to what you typically see coming from a corporate HR department when someone is being set up for termination. The implication is that everything deficient in education is the fault of the teachers and administrators.

So what about the finished product? What about the student? And what about the student's place in America? Human resource hiring managers across America will universally tell you that an American public high school diploma is no longer sufficient for anything above a minimum wage job. That's leaving a lot of children behind.

Learn more about this author, Warren Longwell.
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