No Child Left Behind Overview:

No Child Left Behind Overview:

The intent of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is to ensure that teachers and school districts are held accountable for the testing results of their students. By holding individual school districts accountable, the federal government is attempting to eliminate gradations in schooling environments, close the achievement gap, and ensure that no child is, in fact, left behind.

Parents:

One of the main methods advanced for securing the lofty aim described above is to integrate parents into the process. The underlying social problem tacitly acknowledged by this approach is that parents are just as responsible as teachers for the academic success of students, and that parents, in general, are shirking their responsibilities. By requiring new information such as overall student success as well as achievement gaps among different races and ethnic groups to be included on report cards sent to parents, the NCLB law seeks to galvanize parents into action.

Teachers:

Teachers are heavily criticized in the NCLB text, either explicitly or by virtue of the document's strong emphasis on promulgating new teaching methods. The law is clearly predicated on the idea that current public school teachers are ill qualified and ill prepared for the challenges. By promoting new teaching methods the government has researched and believes has a scientific pedigree of success, as well as insisting on careful selection and adequate training of school teachers, the law puts the onus on school districts to provide a greater quality of teacher than students have thus far been exposed to.

Students:

From a student's perspective, the law is a mixed bag. The renewal of emphasis on properly trained and equipped teachers and the dangling carrot of greater funds to achieve such an aim is surely enticing for any student interested in academic success. And yet the broad focus on test results, though perhaps inevitable and the sole method of any objective monitoring, promises to result in better trained teachers handcuffed by state mandated lesson plans. These state mandated lesson plans are in turn narrowly tailored to achieve impersonal federal academic goals not best suited for each student.

Personal Perspective: