What is NCLB? There’s a U.S. government-sponsored Web site about it, but, for those who don’t understand it or never followed it, here’s the deal: Enacted by Bush the second in 2002, NCLB requires schools to test children for specific proficiencies. Your school tests well, it gets federal aid money. It doesn’t test well: Parents can pull their kids out, send them to different schools, get free extra help. Oh, and the schools don’t get federal aid money. Here’s the catch: Certain scores are assessed separately. Kids who speak English as a second language, poor kids, minority kids — their scores often don’t count.

Aside from the fact that that’s a crock since it means those groups don’t get the same attention and care that they should, here’s my biggest problems with NCLB: the teachers end up teaching to the tests. They don’t teach critical thinking, they can’t spend time on the whys. All they can do is get kids to learn things by rote because they need to make sure those kids fill in the right little bubbles on the testing sheet. You could have a terrible teacher who knows how to get kids to memorize stuff but can’t inspire kids to actually learn.

Teacher unions are against the Obama plan, of course. They don’t like one of the provisions being discussed — merit-based pay. Congress doesn’t like the fact that funding will be reallocated based not on the number of kids in a school but on the actual help needed. (And for what it’s worth, I think the entire funding thing is messed up, too.) However, there are some bright spots in the overhaul. Personally, I love the fact that the new plan, if implemented, will create new standards of success including one that requires kids to be “college or career-ready” by the time they graduate high school. This takes into account that everyone doesn’t do well on tests, but that everyone out there can be a productive member of society. It should also raise overall standards for those kids who are education-minded.

This is important because, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, we’re ranked 24th out of 29 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries when it comes to our 15-year-olds’ math proficiency. We ranked 17th out of 29 for science. A recent Education Week story even pointed to the fact that Americans may soon fall behind when it comes to technology, too. In my opinion, NCLB is partially to blame for this disparity. The reason that kids from other countries regularly outperform those from the States, especially when it comes to math and science, is that you can’t “memorize” math and science. You have to understand it to do well. Which brings us back to the pointlessness of testing.

Of course, President Obama’s plan has to make it through Congress, no easy task these days. It also needs more fleshing out. But, as far as I can tell, we’re finally going in the right direction.

What did you think of No Child Left Behind? What do you think of the quality of your child’s education? Your own education? If you’re from another country: what’s great about how your country educates? What do you see as the major mistakes being made here in the States as well as around the globe? Let’s discuss.