Academic Progress: Will No Child Be Left Behind?
“These reforms express my deep belief in our public schools and their mission to build the mind and character of every child, from every background, in every part of America.”—President George W. Bush (Executive Summary, 2001).
“We like the bill, but this is a resource issue.”—Peter McWalters, commissioner of education in Rhode Island (Coeyman, 2002).
“No Child Left Behind? Everyone hates it. It’s a joke. Not obtainable.”—teacher.
The No Child Left Behind Act provides incentives for school districts to bring up academic progress, but instead the pressure involved may lead to poor-performing schools falsifying data, teaching to the test, or promoting unprepared students instead of truly improving student performance. Schools which do not achieve their Academic Yearly Progress for two sequential years will suffer loss of funding, corrective action, and may be closed. However, the only way to gauge academic progress on a nation-wide level is through standardized testing, which has serious limitations as a diagnostic tool. The concept of Academic Yearly Progress can lead to bizarre and arbitrary classifications of successful and failing. In additional, some of the corrective measures prescribed by NCLB may be inadequate.
Rather than merely reaffirming the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, President Bush oversaw a complete restructuring. This restructuring, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, decrees that every student will be at the academic level deemed proficient by the 2013-14 school year. To achieve this goal, it calls for strict academic accountability. States still have the responsibility of determining their own statewide assessment programs, but...
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...same amount of time; the fallacy of the principal as sole instructional leader; the fallacy of setting standards on the basis of exceptions; and the fallacy of uniform standards for all children. The fallacy that all children can learn --at the same level and in the same amount of time.” (2002)
And if they cannot learn, we can switch them around, from teacher to teacher, school to school. The Act is unfailingly optimistic. That optimism will destroy any effect that the reform could have. No Child Left Behind is an earnest attempt to fix a real problem- the academic achievement gap between the children of the haves and the children of the have-nots in this country. Unfortunately, the Act gives a rigid timetable and a list of penalties and punishments without giving beleaguered schools solid, concrete examples of how to implement these reforms.
Duncan, Arne. "Partners in Reform." Reform Education. White House, Washington, DC. 2 July 2009. Speech.
Born in 1894, Hee Kyung Lee grew up in Taegu, Korea. Although the details of her early life are not given, the reader can assume that she came from a decent middle class family because her parents had servants (Pai 2, 10). In the early 1900’s, Japan exercised immense control over Korea, which by 1910 was completely annexed. Her twenty-year-old sister and eighteen-year-old Lee were introduced to the picture bride system, an opportunity to escape the Japanese oppression (Pai 4). Unlike her older sister, Lee made the decision to immigrate to Hawaii in 1912 as a pictu...
In order to be completely informed a mother needs to know what exactly an epidural is and how it works. An epidural is the most popular form of pain relief during labor. An epidural is a regional pain reducer. An epidural is analgesia, which is meant for pain relief. This is much different than an anesthesia, which provides total lack of feeling to a region of the body. Epidurals are giving intravenously. There are two types of epidurals a woman can get. The first method is a regular epidural. In a regular epidural, after the catheter is in place, a combination of narcotic and anesthesia is administered either by a pump or by periodic injections into the epidural space. The second type of epidural is a combined spinal-epidural, these are often called the “”walking epidural”. In this type of epidural, an initial dose of narcotic, anesthetic or a combination of the two is injected beneath the outermost membrane covering the spinal cord.
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 implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act applied a market approach to school reform as a way of improving the school system. This new law promised an era of high standards, testing, and accountability in
The presentation of numbers from studies creates an appeal to logos. O’Rourke first shows the high average amount of spending per pupil per year-$11,749- after giving an example of what a typical night working on purchasing supplies for projects in a public school family is like. He wants the reader to take note of how much this amount of spending is and then ultimately compare it to the outcomes that it produces. “Massachusetts (fifth in spending per student) and Vermont (first) do lead the reading proficiency list with 43 and 42 percent respectively. But there’s not much to choose between that and 25th-biggest spender Montana’s 39 percent,” (O’Rourke). O’Rourke appeals to ethos by citing these facts from a Statistical Abstract report of schools and their spending compared to their proficiency in math and reading. He wants the readers to see that the public school system is wasting money because there is no beneficial outcome from high spending.
Another major criticism of the “No Child Left Behind” deals with the implications of using a standardized test as means of assessing achievement.
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.
A Blueprint for Reform is the title of President Barack Obama’s and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s proposal to Congress to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This Act will essentially replace the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001(NCLB) and any subsequent documents used in place of NCLB. In 2009, Congress enacted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in response to the “great recession” of 2008. One of the many objectives of this act was to invest in and reform education focusing on four areas: (1) Improving teachers and principals in every school: (2) Providing information to families and educators to increase student learning (3) Implementing college and career-ready standards; (4) Addressing Americas lowest-performing schools. The blueprint sets out five key priorities to address the four areas set out in the ARRA: (1) College- and Career-Ready Students;(2) Great Teachers and Leaders in Every School;(3) Equity and Opportunity for All Students;(4) Raise the Bar and Reward Excellence;(5) Promote Innovation and Continuous Improvement.
Data from a dose-response study by Palmer et al13 data indicate that the degree and duration of analgesia of epidural morphine increase in a dose-related manner from 0 to 3.75 mg. A single bolus dose provides good analgesia for the first 24 hours. An extended release formulation EREM (extended release epidural morphine) is also available.
Potent pain medication contains the aspects of utilizing medications such as morphine or demerol, how the medications are dispensed, and t...
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...
When all stakeholders share similar core values and agree on the aims of education, reform efforts stand a better chance for success. Knowledge, skills, critical thinking, and citizenship are core values found at the heart of my beliefs for education. I also believe it is the aim of education to prepare students as contributing members of society. In schools where core values and education aims are revisited due to reform implementation, strategies are identified along with a plan for implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The federal government, state, districts, school leadership, teachers, students and parents all have significant responsibilities to make reform efforts a success.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows – first an overview of the relations