Considering our students, the education system has left myself as well as many other students battling with weaknesses due to the constant worry to compete rather than teach. The requirements and the motives of No Child Left Behind has made a negative impact on myself, due to teachers teaching the test in order to keep their funding. The Common Core and No Child Left Behind are both numbers driven. While teachers focus on keeping their funding, the government is focused on ranking and less about the minds of our future, our students.
No Child Left Behind requires standardized testing, which requires students in a state to take the same test as everyone else under the same conditions. This is where NCLB and The Common Core are identical. Both laws participate in standardized testing. The difference between No Child Left Behind and The Common Core is their goal. The goal of Common Core is to prepare students for success, in college. While NCLB focuses on graduating from high school. However, the requirements are the problem.
The NCLB act requires schools to make the Adequate Yearly Progress. If AYP repeatedly fails, changes are made starting with labeling of the school, teacher replacements and possibly even a school closing. Teachers are being forced to teach the test in order to keep their jobs. The pressure to make AYP has created the process of “Teaching the Test” or even changing test scores. I have reason to believe that my weaknesses are connected to No Child Left Behind. How can a student truly learn when they are being filled with answers rather than knowledge? K-12 has really failed us and I have come to realization that the weakness that I have are the effects of No Child Left Behind. I have a weakness in math. Teachers...
... middle of paper ...
... should not walk around appearing as zombies due to heavy workloads and stress because the government wants us to “improve”. We are being called lazy because we are not number one. How many generations are they going to call lazy? I believe those who are setting these standards are the ones who really need to educate themselves. There is no number one. There are solutions to make our educational system and future improve.
The solutions to improve our educational system is one, stop using students for international competition. Instead of competing against other countries, we should learn from each other and help each other improve. Two, our standardized testing scores should also not be depended on for funding, which can stop the process of “Teaching the Test”. Our educational system can improve if the system stops focusing on numbers and more about our education.
Students dread the time of the year when they stop with their course material and begin to prepare for test. Everyone is in agreement that some type of revolution is needed when it comes to education; eliminating standardized test will aid the reform. The need for standardized testing has proven to be ineffective and outdated; some leading educationalist also believe this because the tests do not measure a student’s true potential. This will save money, stop labeling, and alleviate stress in students and teachers.
Even with the negative and positive functions of No Child Left Behind, there are many areas that still need to ironed out. Under the Obama administration several states have received a waiver from No Child Left Behind, “with this waiver students will still be tested annually. But starting this fall, schools in those states will no longer face the same prescriptive actions spelled out under No Child Left Behind” (Feller & Hefling, 2012). Since 2007, the law has been up for review, but due to opponents of the law there has not been an agreement reached and the law continues to stress our schools and children out. We can only hope that when this law is reviewed and agreed upon that it really is in the best interest of our children and the nation as a whole.
The policy “No Child Left Behind (NCLB)” is a policy where Federal legislation has mandated that children be tested, and where there is compliance with standards. Simply means, that all children must meet standards. The standards are defined by the states, and all children will be subject to testing, starting from as early as third grade. The students will be tested annually, in order to ensure that they are getting the type of education that they are entitled to, as determined by their performance on standardized tests.
It has been seen that factors like one’s economic and racial background can heavily influence one’s performance on a tests, as they are not given the same opportunities as those given to more affluent students. A student’s emotional well-being is also at stake as many students come out of tests doubting their overall intelligence, even though they were quite confident in the material and so much is hinged on test scores that it places a great deal of pressure on students to do well. Standardized tests also restrict teacher’s ability to learn due to the restrictions that standardized test place on the material being taught, which makes it very hard for teachers to go beyond the required and teach more interesting things. Due to the issues that have arisen from standardized tests many alternative solutions have been used and have been proven to be successful. Some good alternative solutions have been limiting the amount of standardized tests given by sampling a few students, shortening the length of exams, and allotting more time to complete these tests. Other alternatives look to more qualitative approaches in learning by implementing things like projects and portfolios that give an excellent insight to a student’s performance and
...s a faulty system and needs to be completely done away with or the decline in education will not only be impacted but a decrease in the way an entire country thinks and processes information.
The United States of America has placed low on the educational ladder throughout the years. The cause of such a low ranking is due to such heavy emphasis on standardized testing and not individual student achievement. Although the United States uses standardized testing as a crutch, it is not an effective measure of a student’s ability, a teacher’s competency, or a school’s proficiency.
Education is the foundation of American society. It empowers the youth of America to become the successful leaders this country needs for the future. Education has been one of America’s top priorities since 1965, when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed. Now, education is controlled by the No Child Left Behind Act, which was launched in January 8, 2002. This act was passed with intentions from the government to provide Americans with a more superior education system. However, The No Child Left Behind Act carried many flaws which were left unseen to a vast majority of the public. This act limited American students by not allowing them to demonstrate their full academic potentials while proceeding in school. While the act was still fairly fresh, there was already evidence to prove that it had already gotten off to a bad beginning. For the crucial math and science courses, statistics showed minimal improvements which had begun around the time period in which the No Child Left Behind Act was passed. The act was also supported by a number of educators who voiced themselves by testifying against having the right to teach at their own free will. Teachers across America claimed that because of this new act, they felt a constant heaviness upon their shoulders from the state government to “Teach the test.”
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is currently the educational policy in the United States. Prior to NCLB the educational policies in effect were “A Nation at Risk, in 1987 America 2000, and a few years later with Goals 2000” (Eisner, 2001, p.21). No Child Left Behind is a test based accountability system used in schools to measure their performance holding the districts, administrators and teachers liable and accountable for the outcomes. Supovitz (2009) States that No Child Left Behind was a major reform initiative intended to bring about widespread improvements in student performance and reduce inequities between ethnic groups and other traditionally under-served populations like economically disadvantaged students, students from major racial
Since the No Child Left Behind Act has come into effect, it has caused some concerns with teachers and parents alike on how well it is working for the students. There have been issues to be addressed and instead been overlooked. Because in “Is No Child Left Behind Effective For All Students?” Parents Don’t Think So, a school who fails to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for four or more years is considered under corrective action and the state board must make serious changes to the school. Randolph and Wilson-Younger, (Oct. 22, 2012). Our government has offered states the chance to waive requirements but the states have to make specific reforms in exchange for flexibility. During the first round of waivers offered, 11 states applied. The states had to fill out applications. Each state must put in an application for a waiver and if a state receives a wavier it will last for two years and then they can reapply. These waivers are needed because the No Child Left Behind is broken. The laws can identify which schools that are in need of improvement based on their achievement targets. The law prescribes interventions but the interventions are not working as well as they could be. Lawmakers have proposed to move a bill to the Senate or House floor. However, the Republicans had p...
Making the NCLB Act effective is quite a chore for the federal and state legislation. The positive influences for the act are quite controversial. Accountability standards are set and measured on a yearly basis by each individual state. The educator’s qualifications and standards are also state and federally mandated. Reading, math and writing are the key academic subjects that are measured. The goal is to close the gap among race, socioeconomic groups, and disabled students. The schools tend to focus on these areas, while they direct the education toward the test taking success rather than the child’s needs. Parents are given a whole academic achievement picture when receiving the test scores.
In 2002, President George W. Bush passed the “No Child Left Behind Act” which tied in schools’ public funding to standardized tests and enforced the tests in elementary and high schools every year by state education departments. This law also began to put more emphasize on standardized tests which has diminished our level of education and the law “made standardized test scores the primary measure of school quality” (Diane Ravitch 28). Bush hoped this law motivated more students to do well on these exams and teachers to help them prepare better, but it ended up hurting many schools in the process. These exams like the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) should not play such a prominent role in schooling and the government should not make tests the main focal point.
These facts also relate to the poor quality to which standardized testing has fallen and directly to the poor quality of education received in our public school systems. These tests ...
Since the release of the report by Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in December of 2010 many in the government and community are searching for ways to reform the American education system to give American students the greatest opportunity to succeed. According to the report, American students are not testing as high as other nations in the world (Duncan, 2010). There are many contributing elements that have brought America to her knees in the education system, however, the obsession with standardized testing is found to be one of the most influential downfalls.
The achievement gap is greatly evident and impacts the low-income, minority students the most. Although the federal government attempted to resolve this problem with No Child Left Behind, the social problem is still evident. As there is still much pressure on standardized tests and annual reports, reformation is needed. No Child Left Behind has proven to be inadequate and rather highlights the urgency for education reform. Although the act is called “No Child Left Behind,” an appropriate title would have been “Education Left Behind.” More than focusing on test scores, education should prepare students in how to contribute to
The No Child Left Behind Act was set into place with the goal to improve student performance in school, and close the achievement gap between students; as Stecher, Vernez, and Steinburg state, “When congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), it established an ambitious goal for the nation’s states, districts, and schools: All children will be proficient in reading and mathematics by the 2013-2014 school year” (1). While the No Child Left Behind Act was implemented with good intentions, the act itself is one of the main reasons the United States is falling behind in educational rankings. One of the most common complaints of parents surrounding the No Child Left Behind Act is the weakest link factor: the weakest student sets the pace in the classroom. The weakest student...