Young Convention Delegate Knocks No Child Left Behind, Backs Obama

By John Creed

One of the youngest delegates at the Alaska Democratic Convention taking place in Palmer this weekend believes the nation's public education system needs a serious overhaul.

"No Child Left Behind is one of the most ridiculous education laws ever passed," said 18-year-old Laura Ranney, one of seven delegates from Kodiak.

No Child Left Behind is the massive education reform bill signed into law by President George W. Bush in January 2002. Its implementation launched that fall and requires schools to demonstrate 100 percent student proficiency in math, reading and language arts by 2014.

But instead of "proficiency," Ranney says, NCLB has turned schools into pressure cookers where students sit for frequent, often irrelevant tests that stress them out while offering dubious educational value.

Ranney explained that NCLB has wrung much creativity and inspiration out of teaching as educators have been transformed into testing "coaches" who increasingly must "teach to the test" if they hope to survive in a system where their students must demonstrate nebulous, nationwide standardized learning "proficiencies."

"This law expects all students to conform to one standard of learning and one level of learning," said Ranney, whose mother, Judith Phillips, is a fourth-grade teacher in Kodiak. Her father, Cecil Ranney, also has taught school, worked in journalism, and served on the local borough assembly.

"Most teachers uniformly oppose most aspects of No Child Left Behind," said Ranney, but she objects from living under it as a student since middle school.

"It doesn't account for the diversity of American students," she said.

Test scores now rule American education, she said, from NCLB testing to college entrance exams. Increasing emphasis on testing has compelled many students to place high test scores above other, more important values, she said.

Ranney cited education reform as just one reason for her political activism at such a young age.

Barack Obama is another.

"More than any other candidate, Obama is more likely than Hillary to win with the youth vote," said Ranney, who defended her support of a man over a woman for president.

"My gender should not decide my political opinions," she said.

After she graduates from Kodiak High School in a few days, Ranney will attend Harvard University in Massachusetts this fall - to major in political science.

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