Bush Administration\'s Crowning Contribution to the American

¶ … Bush administration's crowning contribution to the American educational system was to be the program known as "No Child Left Behind," however, from its beginning the program has been the subject of acrimonious debate with many educators arguing that it must be abandoned. Those educators advocating against the program argue that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is fundamentally flawed and is punitive in nature and results in too many schools being identified as failures and that such schools are subsequently sanctioned. Sanctions that publicly embarrass the school and vindicate anyone associated with the school. These educators suggest that a better approach would be the enactment of a law and establishment of an educational program that is supportive of school improvement and is truly dedicated to leaving no child behind.

In theory, many of the educational concepts supposedly promoted by the NCLB program are admirable and largely concepts which few can oppose. For example, NCLB mandates that states eliminate the educational achievement gap between low and higher income students; that more monies be expended in those areas that have been underserved; and that states educate all students successfully (Linn, 2002). All are admirable and idealistic but, pragmatically, difficult to achieve.

NCLB owes its popularity and enactment to the fact that it appealed to such a broad range of supporters (DeBray-Pelot, 2009). By touting such ideals, the Bush administration was able to garner political support from a broad range of politicians and, thereby, ensure its enactment but hidden in the language of the law was Bush's private agenda of privatizing education and his hostility to public education. Since its enactment it has become abundantly clear that NCLB is a burden for public education that is suffocating many school systems because the standards proscribed by the law are impossible for them to achieve. Instead of encouraging improvement, the program reinforces the failings of these school systems and enhances the frustrations that these systems already experience on a daily basis.

The NCLB program suffers from some inherent problems that must be addressed if the program is to continue and be successful. The first problem with NCLB is that it several of its mandates are unfunded or underfunded (Fusarelli, 2004). The most glaring of these unfunded mandates is the fact that the law requires that all schools eliminate test score gaps within 12 years of the law's enactment. This mandate completely ignores the fact that poverty and racism have made a lasting impression on the nation's educational system and that many of the school systems affected by such factors cannot begin to eliminate these effects in a lifetime what alone in the space of 12 years. Add in the fact that the federal government has not provided adequate funding to assist school systems in achieving these lofty goals and you can begin to appreciate how the law is flawed.

A second major problem lies in the fact that NCLB depends heavily upon testing procedures and results that are too rigid, discouraging, and ultimately unworkable for a large percentage of the nation's school systems. Additionally, the tests are inherently destructive to the process of education in that they only test achievement in limited educational areas and devalue other subjects such as social studies, music and art. The result is the development of schools that focus on the tested subject areas while ignoring the non-tested ones. In the process, schools become training centers for test taking and ignore their responsibility to educate.

The NCLB program's insistence on the use of simple labels to mark the success or failure of school systems is counter-productive (Darling-Hammond, 2007). With over 70% of the nation's school systems being declared as needing improvement under the terms of the NCLB the labeling approach is discouraging to both the school systems and the parents whose children are forced to attend these schools. The NCLB demands certain standards and allows parents to transfer their children to schools that are in compliance but it fails to provide the funding necessary to build schools that are capable of complying or to help those schools that do exist and are in compliance to expand their programs. The result is the creation of a tremendous demand but no provision for meeting that demand.

Being critical of NCLB does not eliminate a need for accountability in the nation's educational system. There is a compelling need for accountability but such accountability should be genuine and should lead to improved learning and better schools and not the frustrated and castigate schools that have resulted from the NCLB.

The NCLB must move beyond its tendency to be punitive if there is any hope of its being successful as a program. Like the students that the NCLB is intended to assist, school systems, teachers, and school administrators respond more quickly and willingly when they receive praise for their achievements then they do by being labeled as inadequate for their failures. An improved system of measuring and encouraging achievement is required and the present punitive assessment system must be abandoned.

These assessment changes must center on measuring what students are capable of doing instead of merely measuring how well students take standardized tests. The present system is highly standardized and invalidates the influence of teachers on the local level and their ability to determine what is educationally best for their individual students (Gatto, 2010). These are the teachers who know their students best and there is a strong argument that these are the professionals who are best situated to make decisions. Education has traditionally been a local concern and the enactment of the NCLB has largely made it a national concern. In the process, the talents of the individual teacher have been minimized and the power of school systems to make educational decisions that are appropriate for its own student population has been eliminated.

The political power to abandon the NCLB program does not exist. The language of the law was formulated carefully and to openly oppose NCLB would likely constitute political suicide for anyone advocating its annulment. There are, however, some major concerns that must be addressed in order for the law to remain viable.