By Keighla Schmidt, Staff Writer 

Growing up, learning was something that came pretty naturally to me. I was the oldest – so my family spent a lot of time with me, reading to me, going to the library, or the zoo and on vacations exposing me to a ton of things. I grew up in a very non-diverse area where everyone spoke English. While my community wasn’t an excessively financially rich one, most families were fairing just fine.

All the little ducks were lined up making education accessible and natural to me.

However, if I had been uprooted to another country where educators spoke a different language, or I had to deal with being hungry or tired because my parents didn’t make enough to support our family, or I tried to incorporate American culture into another, I’m fairly certain learning would have been a very different story.

Then, if I was expected to test at a level equal to my peers, who had the advantage of speaking the language, understanding the semantics of it, not being hungry when they took the test, actually being at school and not caring for their siblings while their parents were at work or have a learning disorder, I’d feel slightly overwhelmed. Tack that on to that the federal pressure saying: if everyone doesn’t make it, everyone has failed.

Not only would I feel like I had literally failed everyone, but that everyone was blaming me for failing all of them.

If you really look at No Child Left Behind, the Adequate Yearly Progress standard, and the tests used as a ruler, it is a flawed system. Not everyone learns the same way. There are visual learners, hand-on learners, textual learners and combinations of those. To ask every child to take tests where they fill in a bubble to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding, that’s likely not an accurate representation of what each student has learned.

Additionally, it’s not just hurting school districts in terms of federal funding – it’s going deeper than that. It’s hurting the learners, the kids. By telling them they’re not doing well enough, they’re not smart enough, they’re not learning at a pace that’s acceptable to the nation – that’s a tough cookie to swallow. Being told you’re not good enough is likely not a motivator to try harder, but rather a motivator to not try as hard because you’ve already established the feeling of inadequacy.

Each child is put into at least one of nine subgroups based on their ethnic/racial origin, if English is their primary language, if they receive free or reduced lunches at school because their parents don’t make enough money to pay for it on their own, or if they’re in special education. Some kids can be in multiple categories. If one of the groups fails in a school, the whole school fails.

The subgroup of kids who failed are going to be easily picked out by peers, parents and cynics of the school who turn their nose up when the school is labeled as “failing.” Harsh comments and thoughts are spread and people likely don’t truly understand the issue, but use false prejudices to blame those tested.

Step back and look: if you were learning English as a second language and understood words: “idea,” “the,” “cold,” “threw,” “he,” “on” and “water” in their literal sense, would you automatically know what “he threw cold water on the idea” meant? It’d be a challenge.

Don’t automatically think just because a subgroup of learners at a school failed that the teachers or administrators aren’t working hard to teach your children. Don’t automatically think just because a subgroup of learners failed that they’re stupid or lazy. Look at the system, acknowledge its flaws and support the schools to continue their teaching efforts. Don’t run them through the mud.

 (Keighla Schmidt is a staff writer for the Savage Pacer and can be reached at kschmidt@swpub.com [2]. Her column is one of several opinion and commentary pieces appearing regularly in this newspaper.)