No Child Left Behind 1 Running head: NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND The Impact of the No Child Left Behind Act on the K-8 Setting Kara Robertson A Senior Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation in the Honors Program Liberty University Fall 2009 No Child Left Behind 2 Acceptance of Senior Honors Thesis This Senior Honors Thesis is accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation from the Honors Program of Liberty University. ______________________________ Shanté Moore-Austin, Ph.D. Thesis Chair ______________________________ Janice DeLong, M.Ed. Committee Member ______________________________ Connie McDonald, Ph.D. Committee Member …show more content…
In her article “Time to Kill ‘No Child Left Behind’,” Diane Ravitch (2009) explains the consequences if the NCLB requirements are not met: Schools that do not make progress toward the goal of 100% proficiency for every group are subject to increasingly, stringent sanctions. In their second year of failing to make “adequate yearly progress” for any group, failing schools have their students given the choice of leaving to enroll in a better public school. In the third year of a school’s failure, students are entitled to free tutoring after school. In the subsequent years, the failing school may be converted to private management, turned into a charter school, have its entire staff dismissed, or be handed over to the state. (p. 5) 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 No Child Left Behind 6 causes teachers to be afraid that if their schools
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 was put into place to provide extra money for children who do not have money while trading their knowledge using their test scores. The NCLB Act says that students are to be given yearly tests along with yearly report cards to track how well they are doing in school, in doing so, school is not about fun and socializing but now it is all business. These tests not only do not help the students learn but puts a load of stress on their shoulders, alongside that the tests have no purpose other than grading how well a students is able to retain information.
second largest and oldest city in Georgia with a population of about 200,000. The school district
When President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) into law in 2002, the legislation had one goal-- to improve educational equity for all students in the United States by implementing standards for student achievement and school district and teacher performance. Before the No Child Left Behind Act, the program of study for most schools was developed and implemented by individual states and local communities’ school boards. Proponents of the NCLB believed that lax oversight and lack of measurable standards by state and local communities was leading to the failure of the education system and required federal government intervention to correct. At the time, the Act seemed to be what the American educational system
Since the No Child Left Behind Act, also known as NCLB, has come into effect, it has caused some concerns with teachers and parents alike on how well it is working for the students. There have been issues that have arisen that needed to be addressed and instead been overlooked when a child does not meet with the school’s standardized testing and is pushed onto the next grade level.
In 2004, coinciding with the conclusion of President George W. Bush’s first term in office, United States Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, released an essay depicting the successes of his administration. Paige’s department spearheaded the initiative sparked by the No Child Left Behind Act, a set of policies enacted to reform education and provide students with an improved degree of learning more suited to the evolving job market. Paige brings light to the findings of his administration, presenting what he considers to be evidence explicitly showing the successful nature of these programs. Through numerous faults with his argumentation and reasoning, however, Paige’s opinion on the outcome of said policies is highly debatable. To judge
“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
Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal policy. Both Clinton and Bush administrations regulated freedom of choice within their educational policies. Clinton’s Goals 2000 increased standards for student scores within core subjects. Legislation targeting Title I, required States and school districts to “turn-around” low-performing schools, and in 1993, public charter schools increased to over 2, 000 (www.clinton5.nara.gov). Bush’s No Child Left Behind’s structure demanded high-stakes testing and created provision for privatization of public education, as well as “school choice .” No Child Left Behind not only increased the Clinton’s strong accountability disposition, but it also superimposed a new set of accountability rules that would adversely affect public schools (Porter, Linn, & Trimble, 2005). One significant requirement of NCLB is that each state must adopt challenging academic content standards and challenging student achievement standards. Additionally, states must establish Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals for each year from 2002 to 2014—that would culminate in the 2014 goal that all American students would be at or above the proficient student academic achievement standard (P.L. 107–110, 2001). When local educational agencies (LEA) failed to meet their state’s AYP goals, in addition to other criteria, they [LEA] faced the inevitability of losing their accredited status and eventually face school
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.
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
The Bush administration, as well as others, hoped to close achievement gaps and bring all children up to a higher standard. In order to do this, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was enacted with the hope of an extreme education reform. It requires strict accountability and assessments for schools. This was done without proper funding and expectations that are difficult for schools and students to reach. This act caused many problems in schools rather than fixing the problems that already existed.
No child left behind does nothing but dishearten the students who are proving to be ahead of the average student from wanting to improve. While the struggling students are simply carried from one grade to the next. The No Child Left Behind Act is great in theory but is too heavily reliant on standardized tests and percentages and not enough about what the students actually learn. Being a survivor of NCLB I have had firsthand experience with this topic and from an above average students point of view it really deterred me from wanting to push myself further and eventually lead to me falling into the average category as my high school career came to an end. Teachers and students treat education with the idea of “just
After perusing through multiple databases in search of an interesting article, I finally came across one that discusses the issue of No Child Left Behind or NCLB and its flaws. The article is entitled, “The No Child Left Behind Act and English Language Learners: Assessment and Accountability Issues” by Jamal Abedi. The title itself practically says it all about the main purpose of the article. Abedi questions the credibility and points out the flaws of the NCLB Act, which I would agree with him on those flaws. This article analysis will be discussing the main idea of Abedi’s article and my thoughts and opinions about the article and idea itself.
* Teacher Qualifications: By the end of the 2005-06 school year, every teacher in core content areas working in a public school had to be "highly qualified" in each subject he or she taught. Under the law, "highly qualified" generally meant that a teacher was certified and demonstrably proficient in his or her subject matter. Beginning with the 2002-03 school year, all new teachers hired with federal Title I money had to be "highly qualified." By the end of the 2005-06 school year, all school paraprofessionals hired with Title I money must have completed
The No Child Left Behind Act should tremendously be re-examined and amended because the focus on the standardized tests decrease the quality of other subjects not on the tests, the tests are not an efficient tool to make certain that a student is receiving an excellent education and the tests create unnecessary stress for the students, teachers and administrators. The purpose of No Child Left Behind is to provide every student with the opportunity to receive a top-grade education. This is a great proposal to strive towards but, legislation plans on achieving this proposal by making schools responsible for their students’ proficiency and to measure their proficiency with the use of standardized tests. After the students take the
In what follows I first provide a history and explanation of the NCLB act. As well as the thinking behind this piece of legislation. Then, I show how the NCLB’s rules and standardized testing are destructive to teaching. Finally, I argue how the act is leading to the overall downfall of our educational system.