The No Child Left Behind Act

The education system is deeply flawed. It does not fight social injustice, but rather exacerbates the issue. The majority of people in the U.S are blind to the fact that there are still inequities within the education system, much less everyday life. A system based on standardized test scores inadvertently oppresses poor people. The Governments ' decision to judge a schools ' success by its test scores evidently created a faucet of running water for systematic oppression. The flowing water of oppression floods poor schools; drowning students with dreams, and giving no mercy. The only ones safe from the water are the privileged, who are oblivious to the fact that it exists.

With the NCLB’s focused emphasis on English and math standards, other educational areas such as the arts and sciences have been overlooked. The No Child Left Behind Act also focuses on bringing the lower scores up and not helping in raising the scores of those students who are already at higher levels leaving these higher achieving students behind in a push for equality. Although test scores have risen and the achievement gap between minority and white students has decreased, the No Child Left Behind Act has damaged the United States educational system by not addressing the needs of all students, forcing curricula to exclude arts, civics, foreign language and sciences, and emphasizing testing and not learning. It is time for a change.

The No Child left Behind Act was intended to close the achievement gap in elementary and secondary schools by allowing each and every student the opportunity to have the best education possible. This law was signed by George W. Bush in 2001 who described it as a law that will, “Ensure that all children have a fair, equal and significant opportunity to obtain a high quality education”(Neill 2). The No Child Left Behind Act was only intended to help the students, but it is clear, not only to teachers, parents, and professionals, that it is time for a reauthorized law; One that each and every student can benefit from. The achievement gap in America’s school systems still exists. For the sake of America’s future, the school system must make a change now or the future of this country will suffer.

Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act is a renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is an aid program for disadvantaged students. Although it does sound as if the Act is helping children all across the country, Alexandra Robbins thoroughly explains otherwise in her book, The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids. Within pages eighty five through eighty nine, Robbins thoroughly shows her negativity to the Act and why it’s hurting children rather than helping them. She uses hard facts, such as the emphasis on tests, altered curricula, and the corrupt college admission process to prove her point.

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

First, what is the achievement gap? According to the achievement gap in education refers to systematic variances in the ability to learn between students from majority populations and students from minority populations. The most significant effort made by the federal government to improve the nation 's schools and student learning is the 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The ESEA was largely designed to address the achievement gap in multicultural education. However, improvement in the academic performances of poor and minority students has been slow over the last forty years.

The No Child Left Behind Act is designed to raise the achievement levels of subgroups of students such as African Americans, Latinos, low-income students, and special education students to a state-determined level of proficiency. However, since its introduction in 2001, it has received a lot of criticism. Some argue the ulterior motives of the Act while others commend its innovation and timing. With the Bush administration coming to an end, it is difficult to determine what will happen to the Act or how effective it will continue to be. Hopefully future lawmakers will be able to evaluate the pros and cons of the Act and the impact it will have on our youth.

The purpose of this paper is to address the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) which was signed into law by President Barack Obama in December 10, 2015. The paper will also address the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) which was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002. The paper will talk about some of the key components of ESSA in comparison with NCLB and identify some possible strengths and weaknesses in ESSA’s new approach.

When assessing educational legislation and whether it is good or bad law can be muddled by the fact that some part of the law is good versus some being bad. Also, the passing of time can change the viewpoint of such legislation. For instance, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was largely accepted as a good piece of legislation when the law was enacted, but with the passing of time, we have seen that the NCLB has its problems. The lack of truly funding the legislation, coupled with the fact that standardized testing given to each student, regardless of disability or English as a second language (ESL) status causes issues within some areas of the education system. Even so, there are still parts of the NCLB that are good for education as a

The Presidents, who signed into action all of these federally mandated acts, did so in an effort to bring America’s education systems up to par with the systems of other countries, in order to remain economically competitive on a national level in a global economy. Despite all of the benefits that may have come from these acts, some cannot overlook the fact that they came from the federal government. One opinion is state or local officials should have full governance over educational affairs. Although committees, not funded by the federal government, have attempted to make changes to the school system in the past, none have had quite the nationwide impact as the authors of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) is the work of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association and the work of representatives from forty-eight states, two territories, and the

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was authorized by and signed into law in 2002. NCLB was a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. NCLB was meant to hold schools to higher standards, enforce accountability, and close achievement gaps that had existed in education since ESEA was enacted. Nevertheless, the rigorous standards and goals set forth under NCLB were never attained. ESEA Flexibility could be attained from the U.S. Department of Education starting in 2012. The accountability plans states were allowed to develop under their ESEA Flexibility replaced Adequate Yearly Progress or AYP that was established under No Child Left Behind.

In 2002, then-president George W. Bush realized that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 had been under much controversy since it played an insignificant role in reconstructing the performance of learners. In order to fill the loopholes in the ESEA, congress implemented the No Child Left Behind Act, which increased the federal role in the educational system in the country. In hopes of bridging the performance gap that had existed for students of low socioeconomic status, the act increased the responsibility of educators and schools.Within this essay, I shall be focusing on how the No Child Left Behind Act does the opposite of what it claims to achieve. The systematic use of testing as a powerful mechanism for decision making

The No Child Left Behind Act essentially mandates standardized testing. Every state is expected to develop standards and a testing system. With this act, each state is required to test students of grades 3-8 on reading and math every year, and students in high school are expected to be tested once throughout their high school career. Another important aspect of the No Child Left Behind Act is its establishment of academic early progress, or benchmarks, schools are expected to meet each year. Every school is expected to demonstrate its academic yearly progress, or AYP, and if it does not, the school may be forced to send their students to a higher performing school or offer free tutoring (Klein, par. 9). If a school consistently misses AYP,

Few decades back, educational institutions maintained educational records mainly in paper files. In those days, privacy breaches meant access to information present paper files without proper consent, and the main concern was related to misuse of the student information by agencies rather than the theft of records. To comply with FERPA, educational institutions had to safeguard paper files from illegal access, and provide access to these files only for legitimate use.

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