Example Of No Child Left Behind Act Research Paper

No Child Left Behind

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001(NCLB) is an act of Congress that is a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This piece of legislation was proposed by President George Bush on January23,2001,passed on May 23,2001 by the House of Representatives and then passed by the Senate of United States on June 14,2001 and finally signed into law by President Bush on January 8,2002.It includes Title 1 that is the government’s flagship program to aid disadvantaged students (Carlson, 2005).The NCLB Act is in support of Standards-based education reform that is based on the premise that by setting high standards and establishing measurable goals than individual outcomes of the learners in education can be improved( Berkhart,2008).
The act requires that all public schools that receive federal funding should administer statewide standardized tests that are administered annually to all the students. The schools that receive Title 1 funding must make adequate yearly progress and each year fifth graders must do better on the given standardized tests than the students of the previous year(Carlson, 2005).In the event, that the school posts repeatedly poor results then steps are taken for the school to improve.Some of these measures range from putting into place a two-year plan for the improvement of the subject that has posted poor results to the school being compelled to offer free tutoring to the struggling students or even overhauling the management of the school. Its supporters have praised no Child Left Behind Act for increasing accountability that is required of teachers and schools. This is achieved through standardized tests that judge the student's improvement over a fiscal year.
No Child Left Behind has also been criticized to hurt schools as the punishments that are meted on non-performing schools do not contribute to the overall improvement of the student education system(Berkhart,2008).Also the focus on standardized tests assessment may in the long run encourage the teachers to only teach a narrow subset of skills that are viewed to increase the student’s performance in the test at the expense of the learners developing a deeper understanding of the overall curriculum(Carlson, 2005).By teaching to test the students have increased test scores though this does not relate to their understanding of the curriculum content. Also, since the schools are held almost exclusively accountable for absolute levels of performance by students, it disadvantages schools that have made strides, but have not yet reached the proficient levels of achievement.
Since there are incentives for improvement, some states have been reported to lower their official standards since each state produces its standardized tests.NCLB has also been seen to affect instruction time in subjects such as arts, language, music amongst another area of study. This is because NCLB focuses on skills of writing, reading and mathematics. Schools have hence cut their budget on other areas and focused on the areas assessed by the standardized exams offered by NCLB(United States,2001).Also, the programs that arise out of this Act do require that a student achieves a certain minimum score. This has been viewed to leave out gifted children. Libertarians have argued that the federal government does not have the constitutional authority in education and through NCLB that is viewed to have set a new standard for the process of federalizing of education and by extension setting precedent for erosion of state and local government control over education.

References

Berkhart, P. H. (2008). No Child Left Behind: Issues and developments. New York: Nova Science Publishers References
Carlson, J. S. (2005). The No Child Left Behind legislation: Educational research and federal funding. Greenwich, Conn: Information Age Publ.
United States. (2001). No Child Left Behind Act of 2001: Report of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, House of Representatives, on H.R. 1, together with additional and dissenting views (including cost estimate of the Congressional Budget Office). Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O..