No Child Left Behind
Should No Child Left Behind Be Reformed?
The issue of trying to bring the achievement gap closer together is an issue that has been haunting the government for ages. To start out with, our international test scores are dropping scarily. We have gone from top 10 in math and reading to 30th in math and 20th is reading according to PISA. The goal of NCLB was to make students better at reading and math but we are getting worse. The No Child Left Behind act was created by our 43rd President George W. Bush in 2002 and had bipartisan support. The goal of NCLB was to raise education standards across the country by punishing schools that failed to make all students proficient in math and reading (King 1). By 2014, all students should be proficient in reading and math according to NCLB, but this has not happened. NCLB puts restrictions on schools that do not meet their AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress). This means that even if a school is increasing the number of students that are proficient, it will still be punished. Nearly half of schools did not meet their AYP in 2012 (Downey 1). By not meeting AYP, these schools must allow students transfer to other schools while they pay the transportation costs. All of this is based on a single test and this makes the whole school worried about just one test. Teachers have lost their ability to teach what students need to learn. They have to teach to what is on the test, an “aim and fire” technique, and students are not benefiting. They just memorize what is on the test and then forget it all. Also, districts have been feeling so much pressure from NCLB that they have started to cheat. In Houston and Atlanta they gave the federal government false information regarding their test scores and were caught (Downey 1). If we reformed NCLB, pressure would be lifted off school districts and teachers and we could teach our students the right way.
For starters, standardized testing has increased starting in 2002. This makes it so that
The issue of trying to bring the achievement gap closer together is an issue that has been haunting the government for ages. To start out with, our international test scores are dropping scarily. We have gone from top 10 in math and reading to 30th in math and 20th is reading according to PISA. The goal of NCLB was to make students better at reading and math but we are getting worse. The No Child Left Behind act was created by our 43rd President George W. Bush in 2002 and had bipartisan support. The goal of NCLB was to raise education standards across the country by punishing schools that failed to make all students proficient in math and reading (King 1). By 2014, all students should be proficient in reading and math according to NCLB, but this has not happened. NCLB puts restrictions on schools that do not meet their AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress). This means that even if a school is increasing the number of students that are proficient, it will still be punished. Nearly half of schools did not meet their AYP in 2012 (Downey 1). By not meeting AYP, these schools must allow students transfer to other schools while they pay the transportation costs. All of this is based on a single test and this makes the whole school worried about just one test. Teachers have lost their ability to teach what students need to learn. They have to teach to what is on the test, an “aim and fire” technique, and students are not benefiting. They just memorize what is on the test and then forget it all. Also, districts have been feeling so much pressure from NCLB that they have started to cheat. In Houston and Atlanta they gave the federal government false information regarding their test scores and were caught (Downey 1). If we reformed NCLB, pressure would be lifted off school districts and teachers and we could teach our students the right way.
For starters, standardized testing has increased starting in 2002. This makes it so that
Cited: Downey, Maureen. “A Decade of No Child Left Behind: A Hit or a Miss?” SIRS Issues Researcher. 9 Jan. 2012. Duncan, Arne. “We’re Tardy in Updating No Child.” SIRS Issues Researcher. 26 Aug. 2013 “Is the Use of Standardized Tests Improving Education in America?.” Procon.org. King, Ledyard. “Shortchanging Students: How State Tests Put Image Ahead of Performance.” ProQuest SIRS. 6 June, 2007