No Child Left Behind . . .

Except this one!

I would like to thank President Bush for his wonderful education plan. A plan that is supposed to provided all children with the tools they need to grow and flourish, unless those tools cost money, in which case you're out of luck, because this education plan has no funding to support it and make it a reality.

This is my son, Marcus. He's a wonderful child with a bright smile and lots of love in his heart. He will share that love with anyone within hugging distance, whether or not they want some. That's one of his quirks. He's got quite a few quirks, he's autistic.

His autism originally fell between moderate and severe on the spectrum, but through a little work and lots of love (both of these have been primarily contributed by his mother, who is deserving of sainthood), he is now on the mild side of moderate, and getting better every year. We are now to the point that he is ready to start kindergarten, and his entire educational team (which includes teachers, aides, 5-6 therapists, a principal, and 2 parents) believes he could thrive in a regular kindergarten classroom with a teacher's assistant. The assistant would keep him on task and keep him from disrupting the class. The school district agreed with the assessment, and submitted the approval before school let out last year. You'd think we'd be ready to go.

Except that there are no assistants to be found anymore.

You see, when "No Child Left Behind" became the law of the land, people who had been doing the job of teachers assistant for 20 years were no longer considered eligible to do the job. So they had to take a certain number of classes to get 'certified' to do the job (a job they've already been doing for years). The classes and certifications are not free, and if they were going to continue with their education anyways, why would they bother to remain assistants when they could get certified for something else that 1) pays more, and 2) probably wouldn't kick them in the teeth with a new certification requirement to keep the job they have already been doing.

Now, if the teaching assistant position had been granted a salary increase to adjust for the new certification, perhaps there would be more applicants, but that would put their salaries too close to teachers salaries, which would then have been adjusted. This process would have repeated itself to the point that we might actually have had to fund our educational system to some appropriate level (which would have taken funds away from important tasks like fighting long, protracted wars across the planet to make the world 'safer' from terrorists with weapons of mass destruction).

So all of the people who USED to be teaching assistants left, and no new ones are all that enthusiastic to get certified to do a job that pays about half of any other job that requires certification. And now when you look at the local school district job listings, you see something like this.

10 of the 58 positions listed are for teachers assistants, and waaaaay at the bottom is this kind of open curtain call for an untold number of additional needed positions.

"Open Continuous -Exceptional Ed Teacher Asst. - Various District Wide"

So my son at this point has no assistant, despite the fact that his parents, his therapists, his teachers, his principal, and his entire school district agree that he needs one. He has no assistant because the requirements to BE an assistant have changed for the worse. And the requirements have changed for the worse due to the "No Child Left Behind" act . .. .

Which is ironically leaving my child (and who knows how many others like him) without the tools they need to learn and grow.

Thank you President Bush.