No Child Left Behind

[Barack Obama-sac]

No Child Left Behind

On January 8, 2002, a new bi-partisan act was signed. It was the No Child Left Behind Act known as (NCLB). This was brought upon my President George W. Bush and was widely supported by both Democrats and Republicans. When the act was signed normally one of President Bush’s biggest opponents, Senator Edward M. Kennedy was quoted, “What a difference it has made this year with your leadership.” (Mantel, Overview). The NCLB provides the federal government more access to the states public schools and also increases responsibilities for the states and school districts. The NCLB is a Federal Act that is supposed to provide “highly qualified teachers in every class and also states all students must be grade level proficient in reading and math by 2014. The states annual test scores will attest to the student’s grade-level standards and test are given in grades third to eighth, and once in high school. The schools that do not meet the state requirements two years in a row are labeled “in need of improvement” and suffer sanctions. Gail Russell states, “Schools that fail to show “adequate yearly progress” in student achievement face sanctions ranging from cuts in federal funding to a requirement to shut down.” (Russell, No Child Left Behind’ losing steam).

Former Governor George Allen was a key reformer to Virginia’s Public School system. Governor Allen states, “The key to the reform was creating new standards of learning (SOL) in math, reading, writing, science, economics and history for grades K-12. We instituted School Performance Report Cards so that parents, students, teachers and taxpayers could see how each school performed. Ours was one of the first standards- and measurement-based accountability education systems in the nation. (Allen, Stop dumbing down America; Reform the No Child Left Behind Act). The American Federation of Teachers has reported Virginia to have the strongest standards in all subjects according to the Federation’s criteria. Mr. Allen hoped with the passing of NCLB that the structure would be similar to Virginia’s. As time went on he noticed that the demands and standards on testing were less than Virginia; he was hopeful that at least require standards equal to Virginia’s. Mr. Allen is also quoted, “Unfortunately, the NCLB managed to muddy the waters for states that have or want high academic standards. By forcing bureaucratic federal determinations, the NCLB provides perverse incentives to states to set the lowest, most easily cleared standards to avoid sanctions. The problem of “dumbing down” will only get worse if the NCLB is not logically and promptly changed.” (Allen, Stop dumbing down America: Reform the No Child Left Behind Act).

Another thing that NCLB does is change the way the states tests are given. Students are separated into sub-groups based on ethnicity, economic standing, disabilities or if they are ESOL. This is how the government determines which students are being left behind, even if a school has a satisfactory rating. The government can choose to manipulate these numbers to evaluate the performance of the school. Mr. Allen uses a comparative example, “…one of the subgroups is Limited English Proficiency (LEP), or non-native English-speaking students who are learning English. NCLB rules require students who are English beginners to take reading tests just like those taken by fluent English speakers, and many have not yet learned enough English to pass the test. Schools with increasingly diverse populations of LEP students, including many in Northern Virginia areas, have failed to meet NCLB goals specifically because of this demographic. It just does not make any sense to fail and entire school because a few young students who are new to America have not yet learned English.” (Allen, Stop dumbing down America; Reform No Child Left Behind Act,). For students who do fall in schools “in need of improvement”, they do have an option to attend a better performing schools. The shortfall is not a lot of students take advantage of this, because of limited spaces at these schools. Conservatives also want to offer $4000 scholarships for students to attend private or religious schools.

In 2005, Senator Kennedy was quoted as saying No Child Left Behind, “has been under funded, mismanaged and poorly implemented and is becoming the most spectacular broken promise of this Republican administration and Congress. “America’s children deserve better.” (Mantel, Overview). As the NCLB act was coming up for reauthorization in 2007; some of the biggest criticism is coming from the conservative republican side and even supporters of the act are demanding changes need to be made to NCLB. There were several bills passed in March of 2007 that would allow states to opt out of most of the law’s required by NCLB and also still keep federal funding. Another big concern of NCLB has been proper funding to accomplish its requirements. Gail Russell states “…, say that they initially supported NCLB on the promise that federal funding would give schools the resources they needed to implement the new law. While federal funding for public schools has increased by a third since the law was enacted, it still has been under funded by some $70.9 billion, below levels authorized by law, say critics ranging from top democrats to education associations and teachers unions” (Russell, No Child Left Behind’ losing steam). For fiscal year 2008 the law has been under funded by $14.8 billion by President Bush. (Russell, No Child Left Behind’ losing steam)

On Barack Obama’s Presidential plan he states, “…we should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests.”(Obama, Improve Assessment). Barack wants to improve assessments that are currently being used to track student progress. By creating new assessments models that can be used by educators and students to provide educators and students with more rapid feedback. Barack Obama also wants to improve the Accountability System that supports schools and not punish them. Barack mentions in his presidential plan, “They also believe schools should assess all of our children appropriately - including English language learners and special needs students. Such a system should evaluate continuous progress for students and schools all along the learning continuum and should consider measures beyond reading and math tests. It should also create incentives to keep students in school through graduation, rather than pushing them out to make scores look better.” (Obama, Improve Accountability System). In Barack’s plan he also states he wants to standardize a Recruit, Retain, and Reward America’s Teachers plan. He will do this by recruiting teachers through a Teaching Service Scholarship. The scholarship will be worth up to $25,000 and 40,000 scholarships could be handed out. With these scholarship students could cover approximately four years of undergraduate or two years of graduate at most schools. Barack also details developing Performance-Based Teacher Education and Professional Development Schools. With these new options available students will learn and develop skills for teaching utilizing accredited methods as well as learn from tenured Professionals in their fields while they are still in school. This then becomes reinforcement for new teachers when they graduate and go on their internship’s. This then leads to retention of teachers since they are more capable and able to do their jobs. With more highly qualified trained teachers; then leads to rewards and paying teachers for their additional training. With this training a teacher will have more opportunities including advancements or even becoming a mentor for new teachers. Mentoring in Barack’s plan states, “In places like California that have funded mentoring, beginning teacher attrition has fallen: generally, first year teachers who are mentored effectively leave at rates of no more than five percent….It provide $1 billion in funding for grants to create mentoring programs and reward veteran teachers for becoming mentors.” (Obama, Mentoring). Obama also states,” We currently make inadequate investments into researching and developing better educational tools and methods. While we spend roughly $400 billion annually in this country on public education, we spend less than seven tenths of one percent of that-$260 million-figuring out what actually works. Barack basically states that he is not against the NCLB, but a lot of things need to change, because the current methods are not working.

Works Cited

Gail Russell, Christian Science Monitor, Mar 21, 2007, CQ Researcher,

George Allen, the Washington Times, Jan, 29 2008, Stop dumbing down America;
Reform the No Child Left Behind Act,

Barack Obama and Joe Bidens, Printed in House, 2008, http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/PreK-12EducationFactSheet.pdf


Barbra Mantel, LexisNexis Academic, May 27, 2005 • Volume 15, Issue 20, No Child Left Behind is the law improving student performance?

By Rogelio Gutierrez

[Krystal Margaret Reyes]

Our education system has dramatically changed in a small amount of time. I compare the way school was when I was young to the time of today, and I realize that it is much harder. Students and teachers feel the extreme pressure to pass the standardized tests that are given. I agree with the fact that the test is not fair because in my onion, there are different situations and circumstances in every city and state. I understand and agree with the idea that every school should continuously show progress every year, but I feel that it has been taken to the extreme. It is important to remember that every student learns at a different pace so it is unfair to give the same test to everyone all over the state and nation. I like Obama’s ideas of giving scholarships to future teachers to help encourage them since we all know that the salary of teachers is not that great.

[Joe]

Obama's plan on "No child left behind" I agree with what he says about how we need to find a different way instead of punishing these schools. There are so many schools who fail to meet state requirements. We need to restructure the way kids now these days are getting educated. I feel where it also needs a change is the parents at home who need to encourage their kids. Obama's plan on education is a good plan because we do need to spend more money on education because there are schools who need money like inner city schools. Because as a former high school student there were some schools that were highly advanced in technology.

[Rogelio X Gutierrez]

Throughout my research, I discovered that there were a lot of problems with No Child Left Behind. I started to realize this first when my Brother Roland, who is four years younger than myself. That the teaching emphasize was changing directions from actually teaching to more of a test preparation. Now that I am a parent and can see firsthand how my children’s progress is going and how it affects them in school. The overall idea was a breakthrough; the disadvantage came from poor management and support. Comparing both Obama’s and McCain’s plan it looked like Obama had a more structured and detailed plan on what to do with the NCLB. He had several points not only about the direction NCLB needed to move, but how to do it also. His plan may not be perfect, but I think it is moving in a ve ry good direction and a good start.