While many of you were recently receiving and scrutinizing your children’s last report card for the past school year, our Wisconsin public schools were also receiving report cards—from the federal government’s No Child Left Behind program. And although these report cards were sent to the schools, they should really be sent to each of us as taxpayers. After all, we’re the ones to whom the schools are really accountable.

The No Child Left Behind grade cards for Wisconsin showed that 95 Wisconsin schools and two entire school districts, Milwaukee and Kenosha, were “failing,” meaning that these schools and districts failed to meet the required academic criteria. No Child Left Behind, remember, is a federally concocted plan ostensibly to improve public schools, especially those schools that receive federal Title I funding for students living in poverty.

No Child Left Behind focuses on core academic subjects such as math, language arts, social studies and science. Standardized tests are given, as designed by each state, that purport to measure linear progress in these areas. Schools that don’t show sufficient progress over a two-year period, provided they are Title I schools, face penalties and sanctions.

As an educator, and even as a taxpayer, I’m all for tracking student progress—and entire school progress, for that matter—in academic areas. Schools are in the business of educating students; they’d better be doing just that and doing a decent job. However, as an educator and a taxpayer, I’m really conflicted on the federally mandated, state-government instituted No Child Left Behind program—or any other program similar to it. Has a school really failed if a certain number of students don’t achieve a subjectively determined standard on a given, standardized test?

Quite frankly, you and I, as parents and taxpayers, need a lot more information than a single test score derived from a single test, given over just a few days, to determine that a school is “passing” or “failing.”

Perhaps we as taxpayers and parents should create a report card for our publicly supported schools, a report card that really assesses the entire scope of what schools do. Let’s consider some questions or assessment measures we might include.

For example, is kindergarten all about socialization or does it include foundational academic instruction? What portion of the school day, at all levels, is given to academic instruction? Do the values taught in the school reflect those of the general community? Are students taught the various theories of origins of life and the universe, or are they taught just one and that as a fact? Are students taught traditional, functional math? Are the faculty respectful of parents and actively seeking their input and engaging them in the education of their children? Do teachers set a good example for the students in word, deed, and dress? Are students socially promoted or appropriately retained if they are not academically prepared for the next grade? Are all students respected and treated fairly, or are some groups singled out for special attention? Do the history courses teach the truth about the founding of America and about the history of the world in general? Are character traits such as honesty, hard work, patience, courage, kindness and generosity consciously and consistently taught and extolled? Do the human growth and development courses uphold the values of parents and present abstinence-until-marriage as the very best choice to protect a student’s health and future?

We could go on and on with such questions. The answers to these types of questions would equip us much better to give a school a “passing” or “failing” grade. Frankly, it’s not fair to students, parents, teachers, administrators, school boards or taxpayers to grade schools on a standardized test.

Public schools definitely need to be held accountable, but that accountability should not be coming from the federal and state governments. That’s the surest way I know to ensure disaster. Accountability must come from those closest to the schools—from those who stand to gain and lose the most.

No Child Left Behind and its one-size-fits-all, standardized-test approach can’t possibly appropriately grade a school and hold it accountable. The real report card must come from parents and taxpayers. Only as we start asking the right questions and demanding answers will Wisconsin schools really be held accountable.

For Wisconsin Family Council, I’m Julaine Appling reminding you the Prophet Hosea said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”