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Nclb Failure

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No Child Left Behind, one of the biggest social engineering projects of our time, put fifty million students and their three million teachers under pressure ("A Failing Grade for No Child"). On January 8, 2002, President George W Bush’s NCLB Act was signed into law. NCLB is an education reform bill created to narrow the racial achievement gap. Recently, NCLB has made its way back into the news, simply because it has been up for renewal for over four years now and nothing has happened. This is significant because NCLB dictates how students are educated. NCLB has already affected student learning for many years now, and if renewed, it will continue to do so. The NCLB Act has failed in its mission to improve our schools and narrow the racial achievement …show more content…

In fact, rather than improving student learning, it hinders it. The first thing wrong with the NCLB act are its harsh cascading punishments. These punishments range from mandated tutoring all the way to school takeover (Rich). Punishments are given to schools that fail to reach the already flawed rating system. Schools are required to obtain certain test scores, which are given by the state, if they want to avoid the punishments. This pressure that is put on schools forces them to lower passing scores and make the tests easier. Schools do this to inflate the number of students deemed proficient (Rich). This shows schools would rather lie about student growth than face federal punishment. Secondly, student test scores are actually dropping. “The Bush administration claims victories, but upon closer scrutiny it becomes clear that the White House is simply dressing up ugly data with fancy political spin. Far from leaving no child behind, President Bush seems to have left reality behind.” (Richardson) The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows a slight narrowing of the racial achievement gap over the past three years. Yet, this is due to a decline in overall reading scores, not improvements in minority student performance. This is not …show more content…

Throughout the entirety of NCLB, the federal government has been judging schools in an obscene manner: how many students are proficient in a given year. Even though proficiency is defined differently in every state, and has changed over time (“A Failing Grade for No Child”). NCLB focusing solely on test scores to measure proficiency leaves behind real student growth. There is no praise for raising students from below-basic to basic or from proficient to advance. Meaning that schools are ignoring students at both end of the spectrum (“A Failing Grade for No Child”). NCLB does not care about student growth and education, all that matters is if they meet the required test

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