No Child Left Behind has many requirements for schools regardless of their location. This is important because one of the laws major goals was to close the gap between inner city schools and suburban schools. Although making both types of schools similar was one of the main goals of the law when it was originally introduced, the only way to fix the problems that the law has caused is to allow the requirements for inner city schools and suburban schools to be different.
Suburban schools obviously have an advantage over inner city schools because of funding. For example, according to bestplaces.net Philadelphia spends $5971 per student per year in their public schools while in Norristown, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia that is only 20 miles away, spends $9215 per student. How is it fair for schools that can only spend $6000 per student per year to be held to the same standards as schools that have over $9000 to spend on their student?
The answer is simple. It isn’t fair. Something has to be done to fix this backwards system. The inner city schools have less funding and more students yet they are supposed to figure out how to provide special tutoring programs to help struggling students. Concurrently, suburban schools have less students and more available funds. There is no way for the inner city schools to meet the same standards as the suburban schools yet No Child Left Behind forces them to or they face the consequences.
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