By Dr. Ken Lorimer

That accountability and the achievement of a set academic standard is a desirable education goal is the opinion of many politicians and education reformers. Nevertheless, this proposition is disputed in the works of many traditional and contemporary philosophers and scholars whose judgment commands respect.

This proposition when put in economic terms connotes that if a student does not achieve a set standard of basic academic skills after leaving school, he or she would not be able to live a productive life in a modern industrial community, and would be deprived from the possession of wealth. This is a valid concern of some who consider education primarily in relation to the community. This is relevant to present day emphasis requiring young people to have the capacity to interact with an information technology environment. President Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) proposal is framed on the basis of defects in the public school education system of the United States of America. After some deliberation he decided to use contemporary legislative, fiscal, and administrative tools to rectify the problem.

Government Action

Let us take a brief look at how the government is addressing this matter. It should be noted that the proponents of this proposition are not socialists; they are republicans from a conservative base. One way to implement a government proposal is to provide for it in a budget.

So in his budget proposal for FY 2006, President Bush requested fifty-six (56) billion dollars in discretionary appropriations for the Department of Education for the FY 2005. This is in keeping with the government’s agenda of accountability for education progress and proficiency in basic skills for students in our education system.

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act augments the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) thus enjoining a rule to ensure that all students, regardless of background, have the opportunity to obtain a quality education and reach proficiency in a social academic standard of basic skills. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, does not take away the primary responsibility for education from the States and local education authorities. The Department of Education recognizes that the States, local education authorities, and private organizations are the ones that establish schools and colleges. It understands that these are the entities that establish schools, develop curricula, and determine requirements for enrollment and graduation. Regardless of your political views, the government through the Department of Education has a mission to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence throughout the nation.

Options and Resources
What the government is requesting is that schools and school districts that do not make sufficient progress toward proficiency goals should be identified for improvement, and students attending such schools should be given the option of transferring to better-performing public schools. Low-income students attending schools identified for improvement for two or more years may obtain supplemental educational services, such as tutoring and other academic assistance, from the public or private sector provider of their choice, with costs paid by the school district. This combination of increased funding and stronger accountability should produce real results.

Other Non-Governmental Aims are equally important for Education Development
The achievement of a set academic standard, though worthwhile, does not constitute the full picture of education development. There are other aims of education development that are of equal importance to the achievement of a set of basic academic skills. In this article, we have presented a short list of some aims of education development for the purpose of discussion and you can add more to the list. The list is as follows:
· An important aim of education development is to produce young men and women with culture, knowledge, and basic academic skills in some direction. We can infer from this that a satisfactory score in a standardize test of basic academic skills alone is not sufficient for the educational development of the young.
· Another important aim of education is to enable students to continue their education and increase their capacity for intellectual growth. The role of the teacher is directly related to accomplishing this aim We need to evaluate teachers objectively as this is a source of the problem.
· The teacher, the parents, and student aims are different. Some parents believe in nurturing and acquiring knowledge beyond the classroom. Their education aim is to develop the cognitive structure of their child by exposing him or her to various cultural and educational environments so he or she can recognize and match his or her responses to the appropriate environment. Piaget calls this process assimilation.
· A fourth important aim of education development is for teachers to recognize natural development and provide talented students with challenging materials and opportunity for improvement instead of ignoring them.
· A fifth aim of education development is to help students to perceive diversity of opinions and uncertainty as legitimate, and how to use contextual reasoning, and thinking to solve problems.
· And the sixth aim of education development is to provide students with the knowledge and methods for dealing with changing conditions and how to effect a desirable alternative. In other words, how to adapt to a changing environment.
There are many divergent views on education development, and a philosophical analysis of the use of legislative, fiscal, and administrative actions by the government to rectify the problem of education development requires some discussion.

Copyright ©Dr. Ken Lorimer. All rights reserved, 2005.