Essay On The 7 Deadly Sins Of NCLB

The NCLB Act has undoubtedly established a focus on testing and data like no other testing reform in recent history. Now with end of NCLB and the beginning of the ESSA era, it is very possible that more parents and students will stand by their right to opt-out of high-stakes/standardized testing. It is fairly common for public schools in every state to start administering standardized test by at least third grade and every year thereafter on through high school. Although the ESSA also requires that all schools and districts have a testing rate of 95% or higher (as NCLB did as well), the likelihood of any disciplinary actions or penalties coming from not meeting that threshold seem to be nonexistent. Proof of this was seen when New York State

This policy pushes schools to achieve scores and enormous amounts of pressure on teachers to perform. Pressure also comes down from administrators, as in this situation, where administrators set target scores and if teachers failed, they would find other educators who could pass scores. This basically set a teacher to “Do it or else” mentality, when they knew that students would not be able to pass specific scoring benchmarks. The NCLB also requires set standards or face sanctions, and many of these are unrealistic. “Some students may need gain 50 pts of gain” or another student may be 2

In a nutshell, NCLB sucks. Ravitch calls it "the worst education legislation ever passed by Congress. (p.244)". Of course, most if not all teachers, if asked, would say the same, but to hear it from one of the very people who helped create it is all the more impressive and disturbing. Ravitch's focus is on what she considers two things that have been the most troublesome components of NCLB: testing and choice.

Teachers have to focus mainly on the basic meaning of what the students need to learn instead of teaching the deeper and worldly application of the material being taught. In addition, every year each grade is required to make higher scores on the standardized tests than the year before. There is also the fact that the NCLB program holds children back. Those who are gifted or high performing students are not given the attention that they need, because all of the funding that the schools are given from the program is being used on programs to get all of the students to the minimum skill requirement, which is set by the NCLB. Also NCLB only focuses on math skills, English language skills, and eventually a science skill. This only elevates the scores for two fundamental skills that students need in today’s world. In focusing only on these few skills students lose the benefits of a broader education. Some schools in times of budget cuts have had to cut some of their classes so that they can focus on the subject areas dictated by the NCLB. Plus, some schools have done surveys and found out that high school students are lacking knowledge in the subjects of history, civics, and literature. Another point that people disagree with is the fact that the Act is requiring 100% of students, including disadvantaged and those with special needs, within a school to reach the same state standards in reading and math by

I agree with many of the concerns Diane Ravitch have about NCLB. The emphasis on test scores leading school districts to cheat caught my attention. I read an article in the New Yorker written by Rachel Aviv. The article was titled “Wrong Answer- In an era of high-stakes testing, a struggling school made a shocking choice. It talked about how a “star group of teachers” resorted to cheating in an effort to help their students be successful in a school that was in its 6th year of being a school in need of improvement. These are hardworking teachers who have taught all of the concepts well . It talked about how the teachers conspired to changed answers leading to higher test scores.

NCLB has received many criticisms since its implementation. Despite its goal of improving student performance by holding schools to high standards, NCLB fails to define what those standards are. It sets its goal as 100% proficiency, but mandates that each state develop its own achievement standards for students to meet. As a result, states developed unique assessments with notably different performance standards. They also changed their assessments over time, which makes trends unreliable . Though NCLB used standardized tests to measure overall school improvements, modern standardized testing systems are not designed to measure educator performance. They are designed to produce reliable measures of individual student achievements in a low stakes

“Unintended Educational and Social Consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act” Journal of Gender, Race and Justice, no. 2, Winter 2009, pp. 311. EBSCOhost. In this peer-reviewed academic journal article, Liz Hollingworth, an associate professor in the College of Education at the University of Iowa, explores the history of school reform in the United States, and the unintended consequences of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Hollingworth states that the great promise of NCLB is that schools will focus on the education of low-achieving students, reducing the gap in student academic achievement between White students and African-American, Hispanic, and Native American student populations. Hollingworth states that an unintended consequence of NCLB was that teachers and school administrators had to shift curriculum focus in an effort to raise test scores, but in some cases, they had to also abandoned thoughtful, research-based classroom practices in exchange for test preparation. NCLB also affected teachers, highly qualified teachers left high-poverty schools, with low performance rates especially those schools where teacher salaries are tied to student academic performance. Hollingworth concludes her article by stating “we need to be wary of policy innovations that amount to simply rearranging the deck chairs on the

As with all big measures, it is hard to qualify NCLB as a huge success or monumental failure; instead, it lies somewhere in between. Based on the statistics over the past decade, the experts nearly all agree that NCLB played a role in increasing the mathematics scores of younger grades, with a pronounced effect on areas with a large, concentrated population of African-Americans. NCLB also forever changed the face of education by making testing an integral part of school; while there are many critics there is no question that this shift will be felt for a long time. However the language of the bill that allowed each state to set their own benchmarks meant that the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) in math and reading that NCLB warranted was in many instances gamed and back loaded. Also teachers, in an effort to meet these standards, began “teaching for the test” instead of say reading novels or creative exercises as in the past. It’s largely for these reasons that Congress failed to renew NCLB and President Obama waived many of the bill’s central provisions. In my opinion, NCLB had good intent in trying to improve accountability of failing schools systems, providing more info for parents and better allocating money. However, I would not have tried the one-size-fits-all approach of sanctioning schools; instead, I would have really focused on

Jamal Abedi begins his article discussing what the NCLB Act is and why it was established in our country. Basically, the NCLB Act was the most recent version of the Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965; it affects the states that use federal funding and hold those states accountable for student achievement (Abedi, 2004, p. 4). After explaining the NCLB Act and its purpose, Abedi creates a numbered list of the flaws of NCLB. The flaws include, “Inconsistency in LEP classification across and within states….Sparse LEP population….Lack of LEP subgroup stability….Measurement quality of AYP instruments for LEP students….LEP baseline scores….LEP cutoff points” (Abedi, 2004, p. 4-5), which he gives a short paragraph about the flaw then continues to explicate later in

There are many reasons why you could argue that the No Child Left Behind Act or NCLB doesn’t work and why we should get rid of it. If you look back on the times before the Act and compare high school graduates from then and now you will find evidence that backs up why the No Child Left Behind Act failed. There are many different things that the No Child Left Behind Act changed and created since it became law. There are also many things that didn’t change because of it that could be seen in a negative manner. The goals outlined in the implementation of the Act have yet to be achieved for a majority of students in the nation therefore it shows failure of the Act to positively influence.

     Many educators find the purpose of the NCLB Act to be very confusing and disingenuous. According to Monty Neill, who works for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, an organization which evaluates tests and exams for their impartiality, “NCLB is a fundamentally punitive law that uses flawed standardized tests to label schools as failures and punish them with counterproductive sanctions” (Neill, 1). Teachers will be of no use to educate their students according to the curriculum, if the only focus that both the teachers and students have is only to pass the imperative standardized test, just so their school district can acquire more

The No Child Left Behind Act. At first glance, this act sounds like all it can do for the educational system is improve it. If no student is left behind then everyone can have equal opportunities right? But if teachers are constantly testing in order to measure progress, then students can be held back. No Child Left Behind Act(NCLB) requires testing in schools in order to help regulate education and to measure how qualified teachers are. Some argue that the NCLB act adds many positive aspects to the educational system. However, the negatives outweigh the positives. The act enforces testing thus limiting the teacher's freedom causing him or her to teach to the test. This form of teaching, in turn, inhibits the student’s creativity.

The No Child Left Behind Act “NCLB” was a bill passed by the Senate in 2001 and signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 8, 2002. It was a revision of the Elementary and Secondary Act “ESEA” of 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson. The NCLB was intended to help children in lower-income families achieve the same standard of education as children in higher income families. This was done by the federal government providing extra finances for Title I schools in exchange for a rise in academic progress. According to Fair Test, if a state wanted to receive funding through the NCLB, the state had to set a proficiency level through standardized testing in grades 3-8 and once in high school, and report those scores to the public (Fair Test). The NCLB act had a goal of reaching 100% proficiency in all schools by the end of the 2014 academic school year This goal would mean a dramatic change in the schooling system and how we look at and treat education. Not only would the students be affected nationwide, but so would teachers and schools. But should the government and politicians be allowed to govern what is being taught in our children’s classrooms instead of their teachers? Although the intentions of the NCLB Act were noble and for the benefit of all, good intentions don’t make for a good education.

Another major problem of NCLB is the people who create the tests. State senators across the country make different tests and decide what should be in the learning curriculum. To become a state senator you do not need a degree, and the senators that do have degrees are typically degrees of business or law. Why did senators make the tests and not teachers? Many of the state senators writing the tests do not have the educational background needed to write tests. And because every state senate makes a different test for every state, students who move out of state are supposed to be able to pass a test that they have not learned about.

The federal government is not taking NCLB lightly. It is serious about each of these consequences and is ready to bring them upon any school that does not make adequate yearly progress. With the increased efforts being made to meet AYP, educators are feeling the pressure and they are becoming very stressed about their jobs. An article by Alvin Granowsky (2008), explains that “schools that have low scores and/or do not show needed improvements in test results, receive negative labels, such as unacceptable, and their teachers and administrators threatened with loss of jobs” (p. 1). Unfortunately, this