No Child Left Behind Failure Analysis

Throughout decades, education inequality is still one of the most deliberate and controversial issues in the United States. Thus far, the privilege or right to receive education has not attained the level of equality throughout the nation. Poor districts obtain less educational funds while rich districts obtain more, which create an immense gap between the quality of schools in poor and rich areas. In other words, the education gap is the root of inequality in America. Inequality in education is linked to the major problems in the society. The need for studies to be done to find ways of overcoming these inequalities is very inevitable. The means of mitigating these inequalities are important for the entire world. This is something of great interest due to the fact that children need quality education which is a pillar for a guaranteed future. Generally speaking, the distinctions among races, genders, and classes in the society have caused the educational inequality in America.

(Leon-Guerrero, 2014) Education reform scholars argue that racial segregation, funding, inequity and educational inequality go hand in hand. In the 1990s courts began to examine whether the achievement gap between minorities’ and whites was a vestige also known as the former segregated school system. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) Today education analyst contributes this to the achievement gap. Although state courts have held that the quality of education should be fair, the struggle to close the achievement gap still continues. For instance, children coming from a household making over $90,000 have a better chance graduating from college by the age of twenty-four. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) Children coming from families making less than $35,000 have a one in seventeen chance from graduating from college. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) The No Child left behind Act (NCLB), was intended to be the revalidation of the ESEA in 2001. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) The purpose of the NCLB was to close the achievement gap within the races, but ended up failing to drive the educational improvement where it was needed most. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) The NCLB mandated higher scores, but failed to provide low-income schools with resources to make the achievement possible. (Leon-Guerrero, 2014) As a result wealthier

During President Bush’s term, government became aware that American schooling needed major improvement. There was a need of a law which would improve the system while using scores to evaluate students as well as their teachers. "The fundamental principle of this bill is that every child can learn, we expect every child to learn, and you must show us whether or not every child is learning," (Secretary, 2002) President George W. Bush said on Jan. 8, 2002, signing ceremony of No Child Left Behind Act. However, this one size fits all approach revealed not be resourceful. "The goals of No Child Left Behind, the predecessor of this law, were the right ones: High standards. Accountability. Closing the achievement gap, but in practice, it often fell short. It didn 't always consider the specific needs of each community. It led to too much testing during classroom time. It often forced schools and school districts into

With the many diverse characteristics of the Unites States, perhaps the most troubling is the rising gap in the distribution of wealth. As the wealth gap in the United States rises exponentially, the gap in the quality of public schooling rises with it. For a country that prides itself in prestigious outlets of education, the system of public schooling seems to be miserably failing. Public education, a system that some fight to destroy while others fight to preserve, is perhaps the only source of academic opportunity for many individuals living in this country. The fact that someone can live in a certain area and receive a higher quality of public education than someone else living in a different area in the same country—even in the same state—is a problem that should not trouble a ‘progressive’ democratic society. Unfortunately, areas of lower socioeconomic status receive much less funding than areas of higher socioeconomic status, where property taxes account for 45% of funding in public school districts. Naturally, the impoverished residents of poor neighborhoods pay a harsh price in this situation, sending their children to an underfunded school with little to no resources, where sometimes teachers must supply the classroom from their own pocket. As Rogerson and Fernandez note, “a system that allows the accidents of geography and birth to determine the quality of education received by an individual is inimical to the idea of equal opportunity in the marketplace”

A widespread issue for Americans, the achievement gap is a significant inequality that young minorities face. Directly correlated with the societal injustices of poverty and racism, often resulting in limited opportunities and socioeconomic stagnation, the achievement gap encompasses the disparity in education performance of students by race and income. As the basic values of a democratic government include justice and liberty, it is imperative that a democracy and democratic citizens provide equal opportunity for all, especially in the realm of education.

Everyone always wonders how to fix it but the gap is obviously coming from schools that are in poverty and not taken care of. I believe that in order to fix this, the system needs to start caring about every student’s education. There needs to be an equal playing field for every student. No one child should be seen as above the other just because of the amount of money their family makes. It's all because these students are not getting enough equipment to learn from at the same rate as other students that is causing them to fall behind. I have seen an educational gap happen firsthand. My mother works at a school that is in a poverty area. The students are not given the right supplies from the school to learn from and sometimes their families cannot afford the tools for them. These students are left on their own to learn and yet are still expected to succeed at average or above the average rate, which is completely

The achievement gap, as most educators know it, isn’t just something seen or experienced at a district level. This is something with national implications, which will be felt for generations to come if it is not addressed now. Yet many people ask “so what? Why do anything about it?” According to a report from The Center for American Progress, longstanding racial and ethnic gaps in education and other areas are growing in part due to income and wealth inequality. This suggests that decisions made today, will directly impact America’s economy tomorrow.

There have been steps to fix this clear inequality of education in the United States, such as the institution of affirmative action. Unfortunately, this has not been enough because, though it gives minority students to gain acceptance, it does not make up the fact that they learned in an under-resourced environment and may lack the appropriate knowledge and skills to be successful in a university setting. It would take $100-200 billion to fix the public school system, yet we see that these funds are often used for other things, such as the building of a new stadium in Cleveland (“Children in America’s Schools”). It has not been a priority for many politicians, as we have seen in Chicago. There has been many closures of schools

However, it is nearly impossible for us to make progress towards this end when we are bogged down by centuries of social injustice and deeply ingrained power imbalances. We continue to push this idea of The American Dream, where anyone, no matter their circumstances, can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become some self made man archetype. In reality, people are afforded drastically different opportunities on the basis of their socioeconomic status, race, and gender. For many Americans, the quality of their education is decided by their zip code. Here in Alabama, for instance, our 1901 Constitution mandates that education funding come from property and sales taxes, which are directly related to the income of the families zoned for a school. This means that in rural and otherwise underprivileged counties, there is little to no funding for these schools which puts these children at a significant intellectual disadvantage, from kindergarten on to the rest of their lives. You can’t pull yourself out of the cycle of poverty if you are never given the means or opportunity to succeed. We have a corrupt system that benefits the interests of a small, privileged elite over the working class majority, and that, at the end of the day, places the value of economic capital over that of

states in a possibility towards this issue is that “But maybe the U.S. spends more because it needs to spend more? The U.S. has more inequality and more poor people than those countries. Just as some countries naturally need to spend more on health care than others, the U.S. might naturally need more education”(Smith). This reason could be why education cost so much and how we must change that. In America, it is irrationally unfair for the people who have their shoes shined when walking. If one wants a bright future, one must start out small and work their way up, and be better than greedy

Education is the factor in our society, or any society for that matter, that allows people to strive for their chances of equality, or better yet, greatness in a convoluted world belonging to both marginalization and wealth. However, at the same time, many people are being forced to miss out on their chances for an education and the opportunities that come with it. If we improve the opportunities for education, we also stand to diminish troublesome income disparities. Such a course of action is something that depends on the school districts and the resources that are available to them. If one takes a look back at the history of education in our country, they could undoubtedly see challenges to education access and how far the United States has come since then in providing said access. The positive development has seen increased education access for demographic groups ranging across four specific categories: ethnics, race, gender and one 's place in the class system.

The achievement gap is difficult for children just entering school because the bar has already been set to where some of those children are going to land. At the age of three, children of people with careers have vocabularies that are nearly 1.5 times greater than those of working class children, and nearly double the children whose families are on welfare.” This statistic shows that even children at the age of three experience the achievement gap because of their own home life. It is imperative to reduce or eliminate the Achievement Gap in the U.S. To do this we must identify the problem, balance and control the funding, increase our teachers’ abilities and explain the benefits of closing the gap permanently.

Today there is a colossal gap in education among the wealthy and underprivileged. There is also a significant gap in education based on race. Does growing up in a family with or without money really impact your education? Are kids given a better education if they have money? Education should be equal to everyone, but it is not. One obstacle facing kids living at or below the poverty level is that their parents didn’t have a valuable education. Either they didn’t finish high school or they didn’t go to college. Consequently, the reason most people don’t go to college is that cannot afford it. Kids who grow up in families that don’t have a lot of money normally don’t have the skills they need to enter kindergarten. On the other side kids who

​The United States of America is among the countries in the world that highly focus on the education of its citizens. The country’s government allots sufficient funding for its education, thus the country is considered the number one nation that spends on per student than any other nation in in the world. With the high price of education and the high cost of funding, the country aims to ensure that all public schools in all states achieve quality education. The “No Child Left Behind” Act is America’s law that expanded the role of the federal government in education reform, particularly focused on improving the education of marginalized American students. At the core of this act are various measures in increasing student achievement. It also puts emphasis on the accountability of states and schools for student achievement and progress. The law ushered important changes in the education of Americans in various aspects including annual testing, academic progress, report cards, teacher qualifications, curriculum, and funding. It continues to set a benchmark for the achievement of desired level of quality of education in all states in America. Through the years, the “No Child Left Behind” Act is faced with controversies and debates by various educators, policy makers, groups and individuals in America (Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, No Child Left Behind, edweek.org).

At its most basic level, this gap leads to inequality of educational opportunity between high- and low- income students. Equality of educational opportunity can be thought of as “equitable and sufficient funding for all students to achieve state content and performance standards.” The requirement for sufficient funding means states and districts may need to invest more money in resources that serve low-income and other academically at-risk populations. At a higher