No Child Left Behind Act Essay
No Child Left Behind Act - Affirmative In 2001, President George Bush enacted the No Child Left Behind Act. This act made sweeping changes in our educational system to assure students reach minimum proficiency standards and to provide a basis of measurement for achievement of those standards. In addition, the act provided funding and incentives to reach these goals, as well as penalties for those teachers and school systems that failed to reach these benchmarks. Now, for the first time, our schools and teachers could be held accountable for making sure that our nations ' youth received a proper education. One of the first goals of the program was to provide standardized testing for reading, math, and history in order to measure progress and guarantee a minimum level of acceptable of achievement. For reading, all students needed to be proficient in reading by their third grade year. Also, all Limited English Proficient (LEP) students would be required to pass an English proficiency exam. For math, all students would reach proficiency in math by 2014. In addition, K-12 math education would be strengthened to improve instruction and curriculum. Each of these requirements helped assure that students receive the basic instruments needed to function in society in the United States. Without basic reading, writing, and math skills, people would struggle to gain employment and to advance in their careers. Another goal of the program was to ensure that the environment in our schools would be conducive to educational growth. To achieve this, the law promoted safe and drug free environments for the students and set strict qualifications of teachers to assure that they were "highly qualified." In order to be highly qualified, teachers needed to be certified in specific programs for each of their specific subjects. Title 1 of the NCLB Act defined these qualifications, established professional teacher development, and required that teachers had at least 2 years of
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