The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is a pet project of President Bush's that has backfired in a serious way. The plan calls for unreasonably rigid standard setting in all public schools and insists on ultra-qualified staff across the board.

But the predictable has occurred. In 2004 there was a major deadline in which Bush insisted thet every teacher in America have the highest level credentials in their respective fields - a requirement that turned out to be impossible to meet. Teachers in credentialing programs were promptly fired at the deadline, some who were within a week or so of obtaining said credential. But there were no exceptions.

Some districts dodged this bullet by starting "Intern Teacher" programs which allowed non-credentialed teachers to teach at a fraction of the salary that a credentialed teacher would command. But those proposals have run afoul of teachers' unions and parents, who perceive such teachers as inferior.

Exacerbating NCLB's implementation is a chronic shortage of credentialed teachers, especially in California. This has led to steady salary increases just for districts to keep any kind of teacher around.

Finally, NCLB does not distinguish between special-education students and the regular student body vis-a-vis requirements to advance and/or graduate, and ESL (English as a Second Language) students receive no special exemption. That means as other more pressing deadlines loom, thousands of students and hundreds of schools will be declared non-compliant with NCLB and schools will shut down or be swalloed up by federal turnaround regulators.

It's quite a mess.

Learn more about this author, Gerald Carroll.
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