No Child Left Behind, or NCLB may be impacting the teaching of foreign languages, such as Chinese per this article. Language Study Left Behind? from the Connecticut Business News Journal.

I have mixed feelings NCLB, I like the idea, but unfortunately the implementation has lacked some common sense. And then 9-11 came along and there went the focus on education that the Bush Administration had. Actually putting in measurements for schools is great, unfortunately states can set them as low as they want that increases their compliance on paper with NCLB.

The idea is because school districts are being forced to focus on basic English Language and Math scores due to NCLB, Foreign Languages funding and hours are being cut.

Of course if the students were at grade level, there would be no need for extra focus on this. Learning a foreign language is a great asset, but if you have not even mastered the basics it's hard to build on a foundation of sand. There are schools that have a 60% drop out rate, and then there are schools like my daughters that just had a Siemens Science winner. And they are located within 30 minutes drive of each other.

Labels: Learning Chinese