Is No Child Left Behind a Flawed Policy

No Child Left Behind is an inherently flawed policy because it unites what are essentially two diametrically opposed educational philosophies. These philosophies are based on the ideas of Adler on the one hand and Holt on the other (Koonce, 2016). The philosophy of Adler is that public schools should promote a democratic approach to education in the sense that all students adhere to and follow a uniform curriculum and standards. This standard curriculum is evident in No Child Left Behind. However, Holt’s philosophy is also evident in that the policy also views every child as a unique individual with his or her own special needs, which means that every student who is struggling should receive special attention to help him or her reach objectives. These two philosophical approaches are more opposed than they are aligned, and to combine the two is to present a drain on resources that most schools simply cannot afford to have happen in their districts.
The idea of producing nationwide standards for all students in public schools is unrealistic, as educational approaches and standards will vary from region to region, district to district and school to school. Instead of obliging all schools to operate under the same set of standards, there should be competition among the schools, with each school offering what it believes to be the best approach to education: students and faculty would then decide for themselves if that was a place they would like to attend or if there was another school that they would rather go to.
As Knight (2008) notes, central powers in the government should simply assist schools and “guide them in the development of an internally consistent point of view and a program that [is] related realistically to the larger world context” (p. 5). Instead of trying to control schools from the top down and thus limiting many teachers and students in terms of what they can do and how they can do it, the central government should rather promote, encourage and support schools in identifying what it is they can do best given their resources and helping them to achieve the goals that are unique to their circumstances. No Child Left Behind does not do this: instead, it obliges schools to approach education in a way that rewards testing rather than knowledge acquisition (U.S. Departmetn of Education, 2015): the more students who can “pass” a test, the more federal dollars schools are rewarded. The problem is that this can lead to all types of abuses among schools, as administrators and teachers will realize that their jobs depend upon teaching to the test rather than teaching to inspire real learning.
In other words, No Child Left Behind takes away from the real point of education which is to inspire a desire to learn in the students. Instead it teaches students that all that matters is that they be able to pass tests that have no real meaning or connection to the outside world or to the actual love of wisdom, which should serve as the very heart and foundation of an educational approach. No Child Left Behind twists education into a uniform process by which teachers are compelled to follow a state-sponsored curriculum. Teachers should be allowed to teach that which they themselves know how to do: there should be more creativity allowed to educators so that they can use the unique gifts, talents, tools and knowledge that they possess to help make their school great in its own way. By obliging everyone to try to be like everyone else, the democratic ideal is actually undermined and what is produced is a cheap, inorganic, homogenization of students, who come out having no real skills other than the ability to cram for a test that has no purpose other than to serve as a superficial assessment.