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¶ … Givenemtn recently introduced a Bill called the . No Child Left Behind Act which was an amendment to the Public Law 94-142 Education of the Handicapped Act where education became free and appropriate for all children with a disability. This law emphasized that teachers and principals should accord equal attention to all studetns regardless of educational capactieis and background and that each should be ncouraged to excel academically according to his or her best ability and characteristics. The Act emphasized the setting of high stanfards and measurable goals in schools in order to achieve this goal and strongly called for schools that may be termed as 'stuck' to move towards improvement (American Youth Policy Forum (n.d.))
The 'stuck school' may be termed School A according to Leithwood and May (1992) where top-down power is the modus operandi, principals expect teachers and students to act in a certain manner, schools are conducted along traditional grounds, control is centralized, and there is expected status differences between workers, staff, and students.
The high-involvement school, or the improving school that we want to transfer to, is termed by Leithwood and May (1992)...
where collaborative or transformational school policies are the rule. Here, staff, principals, parents, and stakeholders join together in participative decision-making. Decision-making is collaborative rather than 'facilitative' and it is manifested with and through other people rather than over and above other individuals.
Through collaborative or transformational teaching, teachers are helped to find meaning and motivation in their work and to enhance their skills. They are helped to do so because rather than told to act in a certain way, or according to the rules, by a principal who commands conduct according to traditional school methodology and rules, the principal sits down with the teachers and helps them work together with the school taking their capacities and interests into consideration.
In order to restructure schools, recent government policies have encouraged 'instructional leadership' where administrators are making 'first-order changes through supervising teachers and students but are integrating that with second-order changes where they work on introducing a shared vision, collaborative understanding, and improving communication between all individuals…
References.
American Youth Policy Forum (n.d.) No Child Left Behind:Improving Educational Outcomes for Students with Disabilities
http://www.aypf.org/publications/NCLB-Disabilities.pdf
Leithwood, Kenneth A & Poplin, Mary S (1992) The Move Toward Transformational Leadership Educational Leadership;; 49, 5
(No Child Left behind Act Aims to Improve Success for All Students and Eliminate the Achievement Gap) Parents will also gain knowledge regarding how the quality of learning is happening in their child's class. They will get information regarding the progress of their child vis-a-vis other children. Parents have of late been given the privilege to ask for information regarding the level of skills of the teachers. It offers parents
III. Other Issues and Challenges The No Child Left Behind act is viewed by many if not most of today's teachers as having tunnel vision and that acknowledges little but standardized testing outcomes. Specifically reported by Dillon (2009) in the 2009 New York Times article entitled: "No Child Law Is Not Closing a Racial Gap" that there has not been a narrowing of the gap between white and minority students in
These authors note that the obstacles for ELL students are particularly challenging, given that they include both educational and technical issues. These challenges include the following: Historically low ELL performance and very slow improvement. State tests show that ELL students' academic performance is far below that of other students, oftentimes 20 to 30 percentage points lower, and usually shows little improvement across many years. Measurement accuracy. Research shows that the language
There are over 4.4 million ELs enrolled in U.S. public schools, a number that has doubled during the last decade, making ELs roughly 10% of the total enrollment nationwide (Conrad 2005). The demographic increases demonstrate to government agencies that more needs to be done to support and ensure their integration and success in the educational process, and standardized testing in English is the least appropriate way to meet their
In principle, it is now believed that the traditional emphasis on passive learning through lectures and textbook methods of instruction are far less effective than active methods of academic instruction. Whereas modern educators have been pushing for public education systems to move away from passive learning methods, the NCLB creates the exact opposite incentive: to waste classroom modules memorizing information for the test and practicing test-taking instead of learning
Review and Comment Indications suggest that Obama will endorse a rewritten version of No Child Left Behind once requirements like teacher quality and academic standards are toughened up to focus more attention on failing schools. This will mean more, not less, federal involvement in the program. Overall, reaction to Obama's plans are negative. Most who were opposed to Bush's policy had hoped for a brand new start rather than a rehash