In 2002, President Bush signed the “No Child Left Behind” legislation. The law requires states to prove students are learning the basics in school.

Are they?

I had to wonder after a recent incident at a large retail business in town.

The unsmiling cashier – who didn’t greet me or the customers before me (she barely made eye contact with anyone, but that’s a whole other issue) – scanned the items I was buying. The computerized register showed her the total due: $8.51. I handed her a $10 bill. She hit $1 when she entered the amount tendered.

The registered now showed the total due to be $7.51.

She eyed the display, looked at the money in her hand and seemed to struggle with what to do next.

She typed in $10 for the amount tendered, then handed me $2.49. I gave her a dollar back, saying she was giving me too much change. I was surprised by her reply: “Whatever.”

This wasn’t the first time I had encountered cashiers who cannot make change, who rely solely on the machine to do the work. I’m sure many of you have run into similar situations.

When I got my first job at a small but busy restaurant/ice cream shop, the register was one of those ancient models that actually made the “cha-ching” noise when you put in the total. The machine didn’t add up the total on the slip or figure the tax, that was the responsibility of the server. The machine also didn’t tell us how much change to hand back. We had to be able to do basic math to complete the sale.

The recent incident is just one experience that has me questioning what our children are learning in school.

My daughter is in fifth grade. It aggravates her when I check her homework and make her fix the words that are spelled incorrectly. Phonetically they are correct, but according to my dictionary they are wrong. Over the last few years, I noticed teachers did not mark these phonetically correct words as wrong. How else are kids going to learn that “colum” should actually be “column” and that “every day” and “everyday” are not interchangeable, but are separate words with different meanings? Same thing with “you’re” and “your.”

Education is undergoing major reforms and voices are calling for a return to the fundamentals: reading, writing and arithmetic. Let me add my voice to the chorus. If kids aren’t taught a solid foundation of the basics, how will they ever fully reach their potential?

How many students graduate high school and don’t have a basic understanding about everyday finance, managing a checking account and checkbook, understanding interest rates or making change?

Results for the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS) came out this week. While it is encouraging to see the scores are improving, I can’t help but be concerned we’re missing the bigger picture.

In responding to the test results this week, a school official said that in education it is very easy to get sidetracked by other issues, but educators have now made academic achievement the primary focus.

As a parent, I want more than academic achievement. I don’t want the education of my kids – or the children of this generation – sidetracked by lofty goals set forth through standardized testing. I don’t want my children – or the children around them – to do well solely on mandated tests. I want my kids to be able to do basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. I want their language skills to be strong both on paper and when speaking.

The debate continues over the use of standardized tests for accountability purposes. Some states use such tests for a variety of purposes, such as requiring that students pass the test in order to graduate. Accountability testing is a main focus of the No Child Left Behind Act.

I don’t want teachers to be forced to “teach to the test” nor do I want my kids learning just what they’ll need to take the test and help the district reach a number that some other entity set for them.

Yes, we need to be sure our schools are reaching the students they are there to serve and yes, we need to have some way to measure how well our schools are doing.

I worry though that by abandoning real learning for the memorization of a narrow set of skills and test-taking strategies, we are doing a great disservice to the children of this generation.

Jerianne Strange is news editor at the Glasgow Daily Times. She can be reached at jstrange @glasgowdailytimes.com.