Children Left Behind
The REAL Impact of No Child Left Behind on YOUR Child
No Child Left Behind was enacted in 2001. Has it made any real impact on our schools?
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was initiated in 2001 to fulfill an honorable purpose: Each child, irrespective of economic circumstance deserves and should receive every educational benefit America can offer. NCLB was educations answer to “separate but equal” in social causes. The intentions were good, but any sociologist or educator can tell you that separate but equal is not always equal.
Let’s take a closer look at what NCLB has delivered – in terms of our individual students – in the past five years:
Accountability for Results
- Positive Impact: Schools, districts, counties and states have been motivated by economic incentives to show a ten percent increase in test scores each school year. Some schools that were previously slogging through each day and year, keeping the status quo are forced to compete for educational funds to stay in their district.
- Negative Impact: Our children, already overburdened by standardized tests are taking more tests than ever. Some students, who suffer from “test anxiety” and those who are just not good tester’s can skew the results negatively. There have been reports in this highly competitive atmosphere of teachers “coaching” during the tests and some actually giving answers!
Teachers spend the year teaching “to the test” in order to garner more educational funding. As a result, our children primarily learn only what is on the test – not a cohesive education built on a strong foundation followed by in-depth analysis and details.
Creating Flexibility For States:
- Positive Impact: States are mandated to take a look at education in their state and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses and then let the districts know where to seek improvement.
- Negative Impact:In theory, it sounds good to have individual states set the bar for students and in turn for individual districts and schools to meet the standards set forth. This has turned out to be a federal slight of hand and needs to be changed. Because states are allowed to set the bar where they want it - you cannot move to Alabama and get the same education you were getting in Maine.
Expanding Options for Parents:
- Positive Impact:If you find your school is listed as a failing school, you have the right on your child’s behalf to request a transfer – to the school of your choice – at no cost. In addition, educational funding exists to provide supplemental services to those students who are failing (i.e. tutoring outside of the classroom).
- Negative Impact: Recently, an article ran in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel stating that for the most part, parents were clueless when their child’s school was failing. Yes, the information has to be made available. Evidently, not many parents are requesting it. As a result, children are not being given the benefit of transferring to a school that has met the magical bar set by the state.Parents who have actually read the results and request a transfer are sometimes being given tutoring instead – something that isn’t supposed to happen. If your school is failing, demand your child be transferred, if that is what you want and is best for your child!
Strengthening Teacher Quality:
- Positive Impact: This is a win-win for the student and the school. Teacher’s who are not making progress, being innovative and producing results are simply not going to be able to hold a job as an educator. Wonderful, inspirational things should be happening inside the classroom when previously timid teachers are encouraged to step outside of their comfort zones and change things up and actually teach to the students inhabiting their classroom in any given year.Challenged students are given the opportunity to truly progress towards optimum functioning.Teachers are encouraged to pursue higher educational degrees and training as well!
- Negative Impact: From a teacher’s point of view, this road has many pitfalls. Some classes are slower educationally than others. Many schools have transient populations, so you can’t always count on Mrs. Green down the hall teaching second grade to give you third grade pupils ready for the third grade.
Sometimes you get a transfer pupil who was in a state with a hugely different educational background – and you have to make sure she knows what this state expects by the middle of October when testing occurs. Your job hangs in the balance if you don’t.
Challenged students – depending upon the degree of mental involvement – are simply not going to progress ten percent over last year’s scores each year. Once a child meets his optimum functioning, what does that mean for his teacher who cannot show progress? What if this same teacher has an entire classroom of students functioning at a very high level for their abilities, yet do not progress as mandated? Is it right that the teacher, school, district and state lose out on funding because of it?
Confirming Progress:
- Positive Impact:The confirmation of progress is necessary in order to put any teeth in the accountability aspect. If we cannot confirm progress, then assuring accountability is impossible.
- Negative Impact: It isn’t that confirmation of progress is wrong – but it goes back to the burden of testing over and over again. Is there a way we could cut back on the testing, still confirm progress and assure accountability?
Promoting English Proficiency
- Positive Impact: As a nation of immigrants, it is absolutely essential that we meet the needs of those studying English as a Second Language (ESL). It has long been a challenge within the classroom to simultaneously teach English alongside the other subjects you must teach – those students who have low English comprehension quickly fall behind in other subjects. Because of NCLB, new funding has opened up to hire more ESL teachers.
- Negative Impact: Our immigrant population far exceeds funding for teachers. Classrooms are crowded and a challenge themselves.
Immigrant populations tend to be transitory populations, looking for employment and finding places where other immigrants from their country have moved, thereby creating an instant community for them where they can begin to assimilate into American culture.
These communities tend to exist in large part, in school districts already struggling economically in communities with a lower tax base, add to that a need for many ESL teachers and budgeting has to be done by district staffs who specialize in miracles.
All-all, I would give NCLB an over all grade of “D.” We need NCLB, but we also need it to work for your child and mine – and for each teacher - on an individual basis to make a major impact on educating our children.
Each day there are children left behind in America. That is the reality. We can pass law after law, but no law can mandate the way a parent raises a child, a child’s economic circumstances or the life experiences that will impact a student’s education. That is a fact we have to live with. What we don’t have to live with are second hand schools, and high school graduates who can’t read.
