While watching the State of the Union address last Wednesday, January 24, I was rather surprised to hear President Bush request a renewal of the No Child Left Behind legislation. It seems that there are very few people in this country who are directly concerned with education – school administrators, teachers, students, parents – that actually approve of this bill and believe it to be an effective tool. Why, then, does the government wish to continue its practice? “Bush Proposes Broadening the No Child Left Behind Act,” an article from the New York Times, states that there are 1,800 schools across the country that have failed in the past five years to meet the requirements set by NCLB. That is a rather significant number, especially considering that failing schools can lose federal funding and even be shut down.
It does appear, however, that Bush realizes his legislation needs some improvement. As a result, he has added a few details to it that may be more appealing to teachers and students alike.
Other administration proposals seemed likely to be more acceptable, among them: a call for a federal fund that would give extra pay to teachers who are most effective in raising children’s test scores, or who agree to teach in the neediest schools; and allowing districts with failing schools to first offer children tutoring before allowing them to transfer.
Giving monetary incentives to teachers may make them more excited about NCLB, but it also dampens the spirit of teaching. Teachers should enjoy coming to class everyday and teaching their students. They should not transfer to a needy school solely for money, and then become miserable and hate their job. Although these additional proposals may make NCLB look more appealing, they still do not tackle the problem of education in our country. I believe that we need to get back to the basics of teaching and teach students for the sake of learning, not for the sole task of passing a standardized test. If students can get excited about learning and can be under the watch of gifted teachers, then our country will see an improvement in literacy that NCLB will never be able to achieve.
I believe that this issue is one which fits in nicely with what we have been learning in class. We have learned to make teaching more approachable and applicable, so that perhaps children will be more excited about coming to school. Teachers need to focus more on direct contact with their students, which will maybe improve standardized test scores nationwide.
“Bush Proposes Broadening the No Child Left Behind Act”
January 25, 2007
by Diana Jean Schemo
m7pm Said:
on February 1, 2007 at 12:06 am
While I agree- with you and apparently everyone else inolved in education- that NCLB is ineffective in improving literacy in school children, I can see it’s appeal. With solid, fixed numbers and percentages, it is easy to compare schools across the nation. It is easy to point out that NCLB doesn’t actually measure literacy, that it measures test-taking abilities more than reading abilities, that the tests’ standards don’t necessarily reflect the most recent findings about how students can better learn how to read, but that is only a superficial flaw of the act. The primary problem is that it is completely focused on results (invalid ones at that). Something like “all third graders will read at a third grade reading level”, and yet it contributes nothing with regard to how teachers can go about helping their students read better. This is the equivalent of your psychology prof telling you “you have to know developmental psychology at the end of the semester” and then not giving a single lecture or suggesting a single reading that would help you learn what you needed to know.
As you can see I started out with the intention of illustrating a positive side of NCLB, and yet I could not do so. I guess the only way to finish this is to blame lazy Americans. Always demanding constant streams of results, we leave no time or energy (what little we are willing to expend) to actually make a difference between test one and test two.