"No Child Left Behind" is starting to get left behind...

Everyone has their opinions about how situations in our society today are handled.  Being an education major, I feel that one topic that is brought up so often in my classes is the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.  This is a very heated argument among educators today.  According to Answers.com “The ‘No Child Left Behind’ law requires states to give students in grades 3-8 an annual test in reading and math.  In 10 years, all students are supposed to test as ‘proficient.’”  So this act was established to help give every student an equal opportunity at getting the same effective education as any other student. 

Well, published just today on Fox News was an article titled “82 percent of US schools may be labeled ‘failing.’”  In this article it plainly says “The Department of Education estimates the number of schools not meeting targets will skyrocket from 37 to 82 percent in 2011 because states are toughening their standards to meet the requirements of the law.”  According to Education Secretary Arne Duncan “This law has created a thousand ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed.” 

When the No Child Left Behind Act was first put into place in 2001 by then president, George W. Bush, I truly think he had the best intentions at heart.  The idea of opening the playing field to every student, regardless of race, gender, ethnic background, or disability was something unlike anything we had seen before.  But the act was very unpolished with gaps and little things that needed to be fixed about it. 

I love the idea of boosting test scores nationwide, I really do.  I’m just not sure that the No Child Left Behind Act was the way to do it, and by statistics, I think it’s starting to show that.  I think each region of the country or even each state needs to come up with a method for increasing these scores.  People in the Northeast live a completely different lifestyle than those in the Southwest, and their test scores are going to reflect that.

Another problem being that some students just do not do well on standardized tests.  I graduated with 375 students; I was in the top 12% of my class with a 3.89 GPA.  I took honors classes all through high school in almost every subject.  I could not do well on standardized tests at all.  I took the ACT 5 times and still was not satisfied with my score.  I don’t broadcast my score but let’s just say that the score I got, most people associate with the “dumb” kids (or so it was said in my high school.)  Whenever I took a standardized test, whether the ACT or the MAP test, I froze up. I couldn’t remember anything and I got super nervous.  I even went to tutoring for them to help my scores; it didn’t work. 

So forcing children to take a standardized test every year and expecting them to be in a certain range is not realistic.  And we can only hope that maybe there will be some revisions done to the No Child Left Behind act that could help make it a lot more realistic.