No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is actually leaving our children behind. It was originally intended to improve education standards in the America ’s public schools. However, NCLB is failing our children as evidenced by alarming high school drop out rates, low reading scores, and employers complaining about ill-equipped and poorly trained employees. Even more disturbing, is the fact that more than 50 percent of minorities are dropping out of high school earning an average lifetime salary of $300,000. States need to stop spending so much time and resources on standardized testing and focus more on enriching the curriculum of our future generations. Rather than “teaching to the test”, we need to go back to teaching basic skills in the public schools.

We need to provide parents with options like state funded virtual schools which allow students to operate at their own pace. In addition to the virtually schools, all students no matter what their academic achievement should be allowed to participate in state funded tutoring and summer school programs. Unfortunately, NCLB was a “one size fits all” for education.I advocate giving parent the option to decide what form of education works best for their families.

Finally, I support the emergence of homeschooling or afterschooling and Florida Virtual School as alternative methods to traditional education. In this global economy, our children will one day be competing for jobs with people from Japan , China , and India . It is our job to ensure our children graduate with the necessary skills to become productive members in our society.