No Child Left Behind Act.

¶ … No child left behind act. (Updated: 2009, Oct 15). New York Times

The article summarizes the history of the "No Child Left Behind" act (NCLB), its original intent, support from the Bush administration and Senator Edward Kennedy, the bill's impact on improving education standards, its slide into discontent among teachers, and, finally, President Obama's stance on the bill and his probable action regarding retaining it.

During his 2000 presidential campaign, George Bush emphasized his strong support for a test-based educational system of accountability that:

"...calls for every state to set standards in reading and math, and for every student to be proficient at those subjects by 2014. Students in Grades 3 through 8 are tested yearly, and reports are issued as to whether schools are making "adequate yearly progress" toward that goal. The scores of groups like minorities, disabled and non-English speaking students are broken out separately. Schools that fail to make "AYP," in the law's shorthand, whether overall or for subgroups, face a mounting scale of sanctions, from being required to provide tutoring to students in poor-performing schools to the threat of state takeovers or the shutting down of individual schools" (No child left behind act, 2009).

However, the article goes to say that the latest October, 2009 results from the No Child Left Behind testing have not shown improvement. Students improved more during the years before the act was passed than they have in the years since. Those were the years, the article points out, that states had control of their own education policy.

More specifically, the article points out that, while scores did increase "marginally" for eighth-graders, they did not improve at all for fourth-graders.

The law had been unpopular with teachers who felt it took too much time to spend in the classroom "teaching" for preparation for the exams. Senator Edward Kennedy blasted President Bush because he felt Bush had not come through on a promise of more federal funding for underprivileged schools. Some of the states also began to complain about the restrictions placed on them by the law regarding the practicalities of applying the bill's instructions. The 2009 test results seemed to be the icing on the cake of disapproval.

In the spring of 2007, when the bill came up for funding reauthorization, skepticism was rampant. Even a few fellow Republicans of Mr. Bush saw more and more federal intervention into what some of them deemed states rights to run their own education programs. However, civil rights groups wanted to reach a compromise which would include the increased federal funding that the president had promised.

At the same time, as President Bush's popularity ratings were at historical lows, the bill's popularity went down with his. Due to the many objections and unresolved funding issues, the bill was not reauthorized in 2007.

President Obama, during his campaign, alternated between praising the bill and calling upon its weaker points to be corrected. But he never really committed to doing away with it or significantly changing it.

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 of the old bill (No child left behind act, 2009).

While this article presents a convincing argument that No Child Left Behind has fallen short of its original goals, there are those who think it has improved public education for some students, especially those with learning disabilities.

The bill forces schools to issue easy-to-interpret report cards that break down a student's progress, including those with learning disabilities. It establishes proficiency levels specifically for the disabled student in order to hold the school district responsible for ensuring adequate education is received by all students (staff, 2009).

Others feel NCLB is working better than the test scores show, because the standards, all around, are higher than they have been ever before. The U.S. Department of Education -- perhaps not the most objective viewpoint -- says that due to the accountability of teachers and school districts to higher standards, students are learning more and learning it better (Nation's report card shows record gains, 2007).