No post on teen series today.  Getting to Barnes and Noble has been a bigger hassle than I thought over the last few days.  I’m hoping to get there by the end of the week.  But never fear, I always have some trusty back-ups to keep the blog running.  Not like I was solely dependent on that one post or anything but it’s something I’ve wanted to talk about for a little while now (since I really noticed the types of series that exist in the teen arena).

Reading First is a reading comprehension program at the core of the No Child Left Behind fiasco.  If you’re unfamiliar with No Child Left Behind, let me give you a brief run down.  All schools fall under this bill and are subject to student testing in order to determine the funding each school receives.  If the school as a whole passes the testing, they’re fine and dandy.  If they don’t, they get a warning.  That warning dictates that if the school fails again, their government funding will be yanked.  If the school passes, they’re good to go until they start failing again.  If they fail a second time in a row, their funding gets revoked.

How can a school operate without government funding, you ask?  How is this not leaving children behind?  Good question.  Vouchers are then passed out to the parents of the children in these failing schools admitting them to enter other school districts if they so wanted.  Of course, that’ll perpetuate the cycle and cause those overflowing schools to start failing.  When that starts happening, vouchers for private schools start getting passed out, allowing the children of these failing schools to attend private school at the cost of the tax payers.  In other words, privatizing public education.

FYI, in my home town alone, the Board of Education has to run 13 schools on the budget for 11 in a deficit.

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