Failures and Successes: No Child Left Behind Impact on Education (Essay Sample)

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND IMPACT ON EDUCATION
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Thesis
 When politicians mandate education legislation, many times they do not understand the immediate and far-reaching consequences of such legislation. The negative effects of the No Child Left Behind Act on students transitioning from high school to university level studies are a concern for many people. The NCLB act is among those legislations. This act has seen many challenges towards its perceived success. Major and minor changes have been made to try and correct some of the challenges in vain. In this essay we will assess some critiques for and against NCLB with an aim of comparing its achievements and the challenges and probably taking a side on the statement, when politicians mandate education legislation, many times they do not understand the immediate and far reaching consequences of such legislation.
Introduction
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which passed Congress with overpowering bipartisan support in 2001 and was marked into law by President Bush on Jan. 8, 2002, is the name for the latest redesign to the ESEA of 1965 (Act, 2001). The NCLB law which became out of worry that the American training framework was no more extended universally competitive essentially expanded the government part in considering schools in charge of the scholarly advance of all understudies. Also, it put an exceptional concentrate on guaranteeing that states and schools help the execution of specific gatherings of understudies, for example, English-language learners, understudies in a custom curriculum, and poor and minority youngsters, whose accomplishment, overall, trails their companions. States did not need to agree to the new necessities, but rather on the off chance that they didn't, they gambled losing government Title I cash (Act, 2001).
Under the NCLB law, states must test students in specific areas such as reading and math in evaluations at grade 3 all through to grade 8 and once in secondary school. Furthermore, they should report the outcomes, for both the performance and populace overall and for specific "subgroups" of students, including English-learners and students in a specialized curriculum, racial minorities, and kids from low-wage families (Act, 2001).
States were required to convey all students to the "capable level" on state tests by the 2013-14 school year, albeit every state got the opportunity to choose, independently, exactly what "proficiency" ought to resemble, and which tests to utilize. (In mid 2015, the due date had passed, yet no states had achieved to pass 100 percent of its students over the bar) (Act, 2001).
To start with, lets us asses some of positive achievements and minor challenges of the program, which in one way or another, has boosted the level of education in America or contributed to the unpreparedness of high school students transitioning to colleges thus deteriorating the education stature.
The NCLB, from the angle of the number of students transitioning from high school to college, has bore a huge success. As the title of the act suggested, No Child Left Behind has been successful in increasing the number of students attaining the proficiency levels to allow them join colleges especially among the needy groups such as the disabled and the lower class income students (Vander & Waggener, 2015).And although the argument of quality of students transitioning from high school to college arises, the number of students who would have ended their career dreams at high school level and probably turned to some stereotype criminal activities has been converted to potential productive citizens.
High school is supposed to be a level of education where students are introduced into a broad pool of academic material to enable them have a wide selection of the area they wish to major in. The NCLB act has place more emphasis on studies especially reading and mathematics which has improved the levels of literacy amongst students transitioning to colleges from high school (Wernert, 2013). Some of the challenges that have not been addressed by the NCLB such as balanced extra curriculum and curriculum activities can and should try to be resolved at college levels, especially in first year by encouraging more student interactions, teaching communication, encouraging involvement in sports amongst other co curriculum activities (Bigger, 2005).
Real segments of the NCLB law have presented huge challenges, especially as the law developed with no congressional redesign or reauthorization. For example, it's vague that the two primary solutions for low-performing schools did much to enhance student accomplishment. Much of the time, students did not exploit the chance to exchange to another school, or get free coaching. States and locale additionally experienced issues screening guides for quality. A few locale, including Chicago, effectively appealed to offer their own mentoring administrations. States likewise for the most part shied far from utilizing sensational school turnaround methodologies for perpetually coming up short schools. Such moves have seen states take control of the program in deciding who has met the proficiency level required for college students. Therefore majority of these students have been allowed into colleges through untested test handles.
The NCLB law has additionally been condemned for developing the government impression in K-12 instruction, and for depending too vigorously on state sanctioned tests. Furthermore, others say its accentuation on math and reading tests has limited the educational programs, compelling schools to invest less energy in subjects that aren't expressly tried, similar to social studies, language, and human expressions. Some of these studies are highly critical for a student’s development both mentally and socially. Subjects such as social studies are key to helping students in understanding and relating in environments of high diversity. They are also important in aiding the transitional knowledge from teenage to adulthood. Lack of these studies or low investment in the studies in terms of time leads to production of mentally and socially unprepared students who are sent to environments which require high levels of self awareness and good decision making skills.
Training advocates likewise assert the law has been underfunded. The first enactment called for real increments in training spending to counterbalance the cost of achieving NCLB's eager objectives for student accomplishment, however government spending never achieved the elevated levels illustrated in the law. By financial year 2007, for instance, yearly subsidizing for the primary NCLB program, Title I, should ascend to $25 billion. It never arrived. In monetary year 2015, for instance, Title I gets about $14.5 billion. The program, from close assessment, required adequate funding to aid the tight transitioning of students from high school to college as required by the NCLB act. However, ever since the enactment of the NCLB, funding has been a major challenge (Vander & Waggener, 2015). For schools to be able to hire highly qualified staff and create the required environments to ensure all students are prepared enough and meet the proficiency levels, not only in terms of school work but also in the extra curriculum activities, adequate funding is necessary.
Besides, states and areas have disregarded parts of the law, including the necessity to guarantee that very qualified instructors are equally dispersed amongst poor and wealthier schools. Therefore, there is no way of assuring that students are getting equal and standard training across all sub groups. Some of the sub groups which the program hoped to help like the low class students have therefore been ‘pushed’ into colleges without proper training.
With a specific end goal to enhance success of the NCLB law, President Bush second secretary, Spellings, permitted states to apply to take part in pilot activities to experiment with changes to the law, including a development show pilot that let states consider student advance in rating schools as opposed to contrasting diverse accomplices of students with each other. This kind of test for preparedness has seen unprepared students being compared with other unprepared students hence allowing them to move on into colleges.
The NCLB programs advocates for a standardized way of assessing students transitioning from high school to colleges. These standardized tests to some extend were allowed to be customized by individual states. Moreover, due to this requirement, most of the states are focused on achieving a 100 percent pass of the proficiency test, which means that, the schools hire professional tutors to ensure all students pass the tests and only the tests. The consequences of using standard testing to measures a school’s performance cannot be underestimated. Considering the fact that the annual progress is monitored using the results of the standardized tests, most schools use their time preparing students to pass the test. This is not right since students should learn something other than just the information needed to pass the test. Students should be engaged in extra curriculum activities and social advancement activities to help them build their personal social and metal growth. It is even possible that with this kind of requirement, some schools are highly focused in making sure all students’ pas the tests to an extent that they teach students the same exact things that appear in the exams so that the students pass, and ensure the school continues to receive the programs funds.
Considering this probability, one can say that students in the current education system lack the required classroom experience such as the ability to make prompt decision, th...