No Child Left Behind

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In 2001, The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was passed to address the increasing concerns about the quality of American Education. People have mixed feelings about the NCLB act. Some people agree and some people disagree. The NCLB have good qualities and bad qualities. To every law you will find good and bad things. Now legislation, is trying to decide rather to reauthorization the NCLB.

The approach behind NCLB is based on theories of standards-based, or outcome-based, education, which states that high expectations goal-setting will result in greater educational achievement for most students. President George W. Bush describes this law as the "cornerstone of my administration"(The White House, 2007, p.1). Clearly, our children are our future, and, as President Bush has expressed, "Too many of our neediest children are being left behind"(The White House, 2007, p. 1). The No Child Left Behind act is changing more than the law- It Is changing a culture. It’s been said that the NCLB is leaving behind the days when schools shuffled children from grade to grade. Bush and administration are making it clear that every child can learn, and every school must teach. The basic principles of the NCLB: every student must be able to read, write, and do math at grade level.

It’s amazing to me that the Bush administration actually believes all students can learn. I pose a question, how can a student with an IQ of 35 learn on a 4-grade level? It’s impossible for that to happen. In today’s society you are dealing with poverty, alcoholic and drug babies; and parents that just don’t care. What are we to do about those students? I haven’t come across answers for the problem yet. Teachers are so consume with teaching reading, writing and math that other subjects go lacking that is science, history and foreign language. Author Deborah

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White ( 2007) states that, “teachers are pressured to teach a narrow set of test-taking skills and a test range of knowledge.” Is the NCLB really working?

According to national test results president bush feels that the NCLB is working:

• In reading, 9 year olds have made larger gains in the past five years than at any point in the previous 28 years;

• In math, 9 year olds and 13 year olds earned the highest scores in the history of the test; and

• In both reading and math, African American and Hispanic students are scoring higher, and are beginning to close the achievement gap with their white peers.

That might be true that test scores have improved. There is another concern of the no child left behind act is what will happen to the gifted students. The act’s laudable goal was to bring every child up to “proficiency” in language arts and math, as measured by standardized tests, by 2014. Susan Goodkin (2007) states, “the drafters of this legislation didn’t have to be rocket scientists to foresee that it would harm high-performing students. The entire curriculum geared to ensuring that every last child reaches grade-level proficiency, there is precious little attention paid to the many children who master the standards early in the year and are ready to move on to more challenging work. According to Susan Goodkin (2007), “NCLB sacrifices the education of the gifted students who will become our future biomedical researchers, computer engineers and other scientific leaders.” Our administrators and teachers can lose their jobs for failing to improve the test scores of low-performing students, but they face no penalties for failing to meet the needs of high-scoring students. Should administrators and teachers be held responsible for

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failing to meet the needs of high-scoring students? If the legislation can come up with ways to improve test scores of low- performing students I know they

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