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By Martin N. Danenberg “El Quijote del GED” - I spoke with Adam Chavarria, the Executive Director of the White House Special Commission for the Education of the Latino Community yesterday. I have spoken to him several times, once in person at the United Nations. Although we are both interested in the education of Latinos, he has focused only on K to 12. My interest lies with adults. Seven million Latino adults in that commission’s report have no diploma.
I have never been successful in convincing Chavarria that we should work together, because he believes, and I believe that he is wrong, that No Child Left Behind will end or greatly reduce the need for the GED or high school equivalency. He is wrong because raising standards increases the dropout rate and he is wrong because economic conditions are worsening in America. Chavarria and others are not reacting to the impact of the War in Iraq and the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Poverty is on the rise in America and it will continue to rise.
Adam Chavarria told me that I made a “good point” when I told him that the GED in the hands of millions of Latinos would solidify the family. With all the talk of family values in the Bush Administration, there is very little emphasis on the success of seven million adult Latinos alone (we saw that things are not so good in the African American community on television in the Gulf Region). Mr, Chavarria gave me the name of someone at the Department of Education that he knows who may be able to work with me to help millions of people, but he does not understand the role the President can play in this matter. If I can get President Antonio Saca react by announcing that he wants to bring the GED to El Salvador and if I can get President Leonel Fernandez to take a picture holding the Official Practice Test urging Dominicans to complete their education, why can’t I get President Bush to help the American people. We need leadership in this country and we really are not getting it. We can increase the enrollment of Latinos in college by hundreds of thousands in about five years here with an aggressive policy by the President and Congress. Latin America can also prepare more people to enter the university with the GED, as long as funds are available. So the benefits to accelerating the acquisition of the GED are global. Let us solidify families all over the world.
An important statistic that we know is that there has been an increase of the number of high school students who fail the GED. This may be the litmus test of NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND. This statistic reveals a deficiency in our schools. As time goes by and as standards are raised and NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND continues, I predict that the numbers of people who fail the GED will increase, just as it always has been. This statistic alone will damage the reputation of NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.
The success that we see in this new program called NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND is the result of years of work prior to NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND and some minor benefits of that Act of Congress. NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND is probably an illusion of the American mind supported by supporters of George W. Bush and people who have obtained jobs because of the program. If I am successful in bringing millions more diplomas to adults who pass on the respect of education to their children, and this has nothing to do with NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND, NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND will appear to be the greatest program of all time. But it is not a great program. We also have to look at how cost effective it is. Republicans talk about reducing the fat. So let us find out how much actually is fat! In the end, we will probably learn that a bunch of fast talkers have sold us a bill of goods backed by our own congressional leaders. Florida raised the standards on the GED years ago, doing pretty much the same thing, and caused people to fail the GED, thinking that it had done the right thing. This mistake was corrected with my help and advice in the beginning of 2002. All of this raises the questions “Where are our leaders taking us?” and “Why are we following?” Let us solidify the Latino family now. If President Bush will not help, what is his problem? Two million more diplomas in the hands of only Latinos will cost society about 500 million dollars and that includes making the GED free in all states and Puerto Rico. A few billion dollars will put ten million more people in the twenty-first century and take them out of conditions that we saw in New Orleans. It will keep people out of jail and give them hope for a brighter future in the United States. Let us end the conditions caused by people like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Rutherford B. Hayes, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and all the other presidents and elected officials of the United States. Even Hillary is not the answer! |
