Schools in Need of Improvement

As expected, a number of Lowell schools have been put on a federal watch list for not meeting the standards of the No Child Left Behind Law. The Lowell schools had a lot of company. In all, 384 schools in Massachusetts made the list including some of the highest performing when it comes to overall MCAS scores. Next year, even more schools will make this list. Eventually, every school in the country will be there, too, which only illustrates the absurdity of the law. The real shame is that this law had such promise when it made its way through Congress. Its premise is that many subgroups of students, particularly minorities and those receiving special education services, were being forgotten by school systems whose average test scores were quite impressive. But the noble objectives of this law were corrupted by the ideologues in Washington who are using the law to dismantle the public school system in favor of vouchers and to dilute the power of teachers’ unions.