The NCLB Act Essay

“The NCLB law­—which grew out of concern that the American education system was no longer internationally competitive­­—significantly increased the federal role in holding schools responsible for the academic progress of all students. And it put a special focus on ensuring that states and schools boost the performance of certain groups of students, such as English-language learners, students in special education, and poor and minority children, whose achievement, on average, trails their peers.” (Klein). In 1965, ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) was introduced by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society Program to create a clear understanding of the Federal Government in K-12 school policy, which provided more that $1 billion

     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 primary sponsors of NCLB were President George W. Bush and Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, a decades-long advocate for raising the quality of public education. This law was signed in 2001.

The Federal Government is effected by the NCLB Act because it is representing a more important role in education than ever before. The education department must approve of the testing programs and accountability plans used in the NCLB Act to ensure that schools reach adequate yearly progress (Jennings & Rentner, 2006). The Federal government does not pay for the NCLB Act but they monitor its progress to see if it is worth sticking to.

Making the NCLB Act effective is quite a chore for the federal and state legislation. The positive influences for the act are quite controversial. Accountability standards are set and measured on a yearly basis by each individual state. The educator’s qualifications and standards are also state and federally mandated. Reading, math and writing are the key academic subjects that are measured. The goal is to close the gap among race, socioeconomic groups, and disabled students. The schools tend to focus on these areas, while they direct the education toward the test taking success rather than the child’s needs. Parents are given a whole academic achievement picture when receiving the test scores.

In trying to develop a comprehensive system, some school districts in Denver, New York, Washington DC, and Houston have started using the students’ annual test score method as a measure of evaluating teachers’ effectiveness (Wilkerson & Lang, 2007). However, many policy makers have maintained that the use of test scores in evaluating the

Standardized test are one of the many measures profession school counselors use to assess students performance and learning. When it come to making a decision about a student's educational performance, school counselors prefer more than one criteria instead of just using a single test. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) established in 2001 stated that the academic achievement of all student should be held accountable by the school. “High-stakes testing, which refers to the use of standardized test scores to determine levels of student achievement, became the decision-making, measurement vehicle. High-stakes test results are often used as a method to determine a student’s: academic placement, promotion and retention, graduation and intervention services.

Although the standardized test has a negative impact on our performance, it also has some positive impact. One of the main purposes of testing is to set a standard: a performance baseline of progress for all parties involved in the educational process—students, teachers, and school districts, and to hold them accountable for achieving it. The idea is to detect areas where students usually fail, or fall behind and promote improvement, not punish them. Besides, tests help remove bias some teachers may exhibit towards students and make the evaluation process more objective. This is usually achieved by using special automatic machines that score exams. Also, due to the usage of these methods, the potential of human error is decreased or even

Many people believe that student test scores is the most efficient way to measure a teacher's effectiveness in the classroom. “Many policy makers have recently come

There have been many reforms that have been put in place since schools were created in 1635 . New acts are created and changed as America and its school system continues to change. Lyndon B. Johnson, to face the problem of war on poverty , created the Elementary and Secondary School Act of 1965. As America changed, in 2001, George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act to replace the 1965 act because America was no longer competing internationally with other countries . This controversial act has negatively affected teachers and students ever since its implication inception. After being enacted for over 10 years, NCLB is being replaced with a new act that was just signed by

The ideas behind NCLB stem from changes in the federal government’s role in education, which have been occurring since the 1950s. In 1954, the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education outlawed the practice of racial segregation in America’s schools (A guide, 2004, p.

All in all, people who argue in favor of state mandated testing claim these two points are the most practical way of having some scale to grade student and teacher performance. “Proponents say these tests measure student achievement, ensure teachers and schools are accountable to taxpayers and provide consistency” (Concordia). However, there are other ways to measure this consistency besides standardized tests. “Test scores attract most of the attention because they are quantifiable and allow comparisons. But other measures can show how well schools are performing. These indicators include:

As students in a Structure & Philosophy class, one of the main components has been to introduce and familiarize us with the No Child Left Behind Act. President Bush passed this legislation on January 8, 2002. The NCLB Act was designed to ensure each and every student the right to a fair education, to give parents more options in their child’s education, and to guarantee all teachers are highly qualified. By highly qualified, the act means teachers must have at least a bachelor’s degree, have full state certification or licensure, and have demonstrated competence in their subject areas (US Dept. of Education).

Local, state, and the federal governments require standardized tests as the main method of assessing student, teacher, and school performance. In 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act has been put in place to ensure the equality of education throughout the nation, and with it came the abundance of standardized testing. Assessing students and teachers is the only way to know what teaching styles and methods are successful and which are not. Practicing excellent teaching methods is essential to the success of all students. Strengths and weakness of teachers may be determined by annual standardized testing (Sclafani 43-47). Various governments have set standards at which the student must achieve to excel in life. They believe that the only way to ensure that students around the nation are learning is by testing multiple times a year. “Standardized testing is an assessment strategy

In recent years, the test scores of school age kids in this country have fallen. The response to this problem has been, extreme. A test is something that measures how much of the subject the student understands. Individual scores gives the teacher a general idea of what a student is grasping and what they might need help with. Classroom averages may give the teacher an idea of how to adjust their teaching technique. The scores are representative of the student’s progress, they are not the end goal of learning. Yet high stakes testing makes a test