Kateland Bailey
Comp 2
Professor Rebecca Mullen
TR 9:00am
Why are we let the government control the way we learn in schools? When today’s children are having a hard enough time experiencing life outside of electronics. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) makes it more challenging for students when they are cutting activities outside of school. The No Child Left Behind Act has so many pros and cons to it. In ways it can help but in other ways it disturbs the way a school functions. President Bush revised the act in 2002, it now raise a lot of questions with teachers, parents, and students trying to stay within the score range. Why do we let the state say we have to score high on a test. They do not go to schools to see how they are doing. What is a piece of paper going to do to say a school is doing good or if it is improving. The new education law makes everything harder in so many ways such as testing/purpose of NCLB, the effects it has on schools, and students lack certain skills. For instance, the purpose of No Child Left Behind/testing ensures that all children have fair, equal, and significant opportunity to a high quality education. State must create and give annual standard reading test in grades 3rd-8th starting in 2005-2006. “Title 1 of NCLB amends and expands Title I of ESEA and has as its purpose “to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic assessments.” More specifically, Title I encompasses the following goals and methods: Using high-quality academic assessments and other methods to measure progress against common expectations for student academic achievement. Closing the achievement gap between high- and low-performing children, especially the gaps between minority and non-minority students, and between disadvantaged children and their more advantaged peers. Meeting the needs of children in need of reading assistance, including minority students, English-language learner students, students with disabilities, and poor students. Careful distribution and targeting of resources.” (Batten, 2013) For example, the government wants kids to take test to basically to know if they are learn what they need to learn but in reality over half the stuff they learn in school we do not use. So why are they wanting kids learn something they are never going to use.
Nowadays, kids have so much on their plates with sports, clubs, and other activities. School say you have to be have good grades and good test scores to play sports. Some kids have learning disabilities and are not good test takers. So how does the school and government compensate for the kids who have learning disabilities and can not take test. Are they just going to ignore them and take their test out because it is really not far to other students to test and do good. “Daria Hall, a policy analyst at the Education Trust, says it is a significant amount. Educators “are using the standards to develop a challenging curriculum for all students,” she says. “They are using assessment results to inform their instruction in the classroom.” NCLB, Hall says, gives administrators leverage to make needed changes. (Mantel, 2005)
Also, there are so many effects the No Child Left Behind Act has on schools. The NCLB Act can make or break a school really because if the scores do not meet the requirements of the state, they will be placed on a watch list for the following year. When a schools are on the watch this they try to do some much to improve the test scores. Most schools were on the list because they failed to test at least 95% of their students. Academic levels should score at an average 95%per school. Also all students in the state are to be or above proficient level by 2014. If the scores did not improve from the last year the state will not fund