EDITORIAL
More flexibility could save 'No Child' intent

If your bosses set an impossible goal, and refused to pay you until you met it, wouldn't you be tempted to walk away?

Well, that's how an increasing number of states are responding to the No Child Left Behind law as they calculate that full compliance could cost more than what they're getting in federal education dollars.

Fortunately, there are signs that the Bush administration is waking up to this widespread frustration and relaxing certain testing requirements.

Thursday, the U.S. Education Department announced a one-year reprieve for immigrant students with limited English proficiency.

Aside from being exempt from taking reading tests during their first year in U.S. public schools, those students will be counted as "limited English proficient" for two years so that they're not immediately removed from the English learner subgroup and measured by fluent-English standards.

Important to Hawai'i

This is a change of particular importance in Hawai'i, with relatively high numbers of immigrant children.

These changes, though small, suggest the Bush administration is realizing that it has to loosen its previously hardline approach to the law or it will lose credibility with America's diverse public education community and, of course, votes in the coming election.

It's important to note that resistance to No Child Left Behind is not a partisan trend. On the contrary, the rebellion has joined conservatives who oppose big-government intrusion with liberals who worry that the law is paving the way for school vouchers.

The woefully underfunded Bush administration mandate, signed into law in 2002, requires the annual testing of students in grades three through eight and at least once in high school.

Schools that fail to meet "adequate yearly progress" two years running face tough and costly obligations that include providing more tutoring, letting students transfer to better schools or replacing a school's entire staff.

Not a perfect world

And all that would be fine in a perfect world, where there were enough well-paid teachers, classes were small, school buildings were well maintained, disadvantaged children received extra tutoring and discipline was observed.

But the reality is, many teachers don't get paid enough, public school facilities are crowded and all too often victims of deferred maintenance. And students raised in poverty or in immigrant homes where English is not spoken cannot keep up with their more affluent peers.

This is no excuse for not raising standards, but a fact of life in a multicultural society with wide gaps between rich and poor where public education is underfunded.

System's inequities

No Child Left Behind reminds us of the inequities in our public education system and what an uphill battle we face without the resources to meet its goals.

Make no mistake; those goals are noble. But if they're unattainable, there'll always be the temptation to walk away.