As a future teacher, I am already seeing the importance of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The act was meant to insure that students all around the country were receiving similar educational opportunities. The act was meant to reward school districts that met or exceeded the national standards, and to punish those school districts that did not. At this time, I think that it is obvious that the stick is being used on school district a lot more than the carrot. Schools are aligning all of their curriculums and lesson plans in order to ensure that their students pass the tests that states have implemented to meet the NCLB’s assessment criteria’s. There is no doubt that there need to be standards in our public schools, but I think that we have threatened teachers and administrators so often that many dedicated and talented people have left education and sought other types of employment. I think that this is truly a shame. I know that there are rationales for the NCLB act, but I think that we may not be able to see the forest for the trees. I think that the original intent of the bill was good, but it has lost it’s way.
I know that I will be forced to follow a set curriculum throughout my career, but I do not see how that is the end of the world. It still beets the private sector. I also agree that kids from Texas should get the same basic education that kids get in Iowa, California, and New York.
Critics of the act fear it has negative consequences. They say that non performing schools are given band aids, rather than the complete restructuring that they probably need. Only around three percent of all schools are radically changed, despite the fact that one in eight high school seniors will not graduate. They also seem to believe that students are becoming better test takers, but they are not necessarily any better prepared for the work place or for college. Numbers on the SAT and ACT are still declining in this country, although NCLB would suggest that they should be improving. Other groups have suggested that a large number of ESL student in a school district will cripple it’s test scores. I am sure that is true, but you still need to try to assess the progress of these students. We have to face the fact that bilingual education and all of it’s inherent problems are here to stay, and we need to find effective way to work on this problem.