The No Child Left Behind

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.

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.

“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

The No Child Left Behind Act passed by Congress in 2001 is a standards based initiative intended to improve public school education by promoting high, measurable standards and accountability in schools. However, after fourteen years, No Child Left Behind has resulted in some unintended negative consequences. Two of these negative consequences are the narrowing of the curriculum and lost instructional time. In schools across the country, less instructional time is spent in non-tested areas such as the Social Sciences, Science, Art, and Music. Furthermore, extensive amounts of time is lost due to test preparation, test administration, and testing.

This article in the Times newspaper, points out problems and flaws with the 2002 U.S. No Child Left Behind educational legislation, which was designed to improve education in the U.S. Topics that are discussed include, teachers complaints that No Child Left Behind policy sets impossible standards and forces teachers to teach based on the test material, and how the bill originally came to life by the proposal of former U.S. president George W. Bush. The other topic

For the past decade, our country’s education system has reached a flat line in results. Studies show that the United States is the number one country in education spending in order to improve our results, but standardized test scores have plateaued. During President George W. Bush’s term, he initiated a program titled “No Child Left Behind.” No offense to President Bush, however his educational initiative is the most ironic title due to its produced results. So far, no state in our country has reached one hundred percent proficiency in mathematics and language arts and the system has gotten deficient and is failing the millennial generations. Education is a key component to success in our fast-paced society and our system needs to change, for

Many educators have seen The No Child Left Behind Act as both a success and an inadequacy. Introduced in 2001, the Act’s intention was to reform education at that time. It was a step in the right direction, however, like most things, it didn’t solve the problem.  The Act pushed education to seek standardized testing as the only mean to evaluate a school’s quality of education. In fact, Robert Rothman, Scott F. Marion, and Helen Ladd believe that education needs reform. They confront their different positions on the issue in two articles. Ladd’s article is more admirable than Rothman’s and Marion’s. Ladd fulfills her purpose for writing the article in a better manner than Rothman and Marion because she communicates the issue in a formal, but

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

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

In this passage of No Child Left Behind, Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the principal federal law affecting education from kindergarten through high school. In amending ESEA, the new law represents a sweeping overhaul of federal efforts to support elementary and secondary education in the United States. This new law focuses on policy and distribution of funds to public schools. Most federal funds under NCLB are distributed to school districts whose populations that are representative of lower economic levels and culturally diverse populations, which consists of African Americans, Native Americans, Asians, and Latinos. Proponents of the No Child Left Behind Act claim that its mission is to diminishing the achievement gap by holding school districts and states accountable, encouraging the use of more flexible educational approaches, and supporting parent’s rights to school choice

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.

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

A notable issue in our society is the widening gap between poor and rich schools, and the source of this is a combined list of problems such as school performance, requirements, and funding. It has been studied that minorities and underprivileged students struggle more in school, being that in the past approximately 75% of the Hispanic population observed in Texas could not continue schooling by the third grade (“Hispanic Education”). On top of this, the controversial No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001 became a federal law in which it “expanded federal funding for poor school districts, held schools responsible for the success of low-income and minority students, and required that all students in certain grades take annual standardized tests” (“No Child Left Behind”). Students with less privileges have had a harder time succeeding in school, with their poor performances being a consequence of the obligations set on them. Furthermore, the quality of school life for students is very different between many schools.

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.

Many stakeholders’ in public education are seeking solutions to produce high achieving students who graduate ready to embrace technological challenges. One solution for many stakeholders’ seems to be high stakes testing. High stakes testing is an educational reform where decisions are based on individual student performance, teacher performance, and school performance. The tests are usually performed as an end of course or end of grade assessment after completion of the curriculum. The No Child Left Behind Act or NCLB signed by President Bush in 2001 was mandated to improve student performances and remove inequalities among diverse student populations. This Act required states to design and develop programs that employed test- based