Script+-+Katie

The No Child Left Behind act (NCLBA) was passed in 2001 and it revolutionized the way the students of our nation received education. the standards that we have set prove too difficult for some and too easy to achieve for others. Education before the NCLB was scattered and definitely needed repair, but is there a happy medium between what we have standardized and the freedoms teachers had before? Some believe we are exactly where we need to be, that we are indeed improving but this is untrue. Some students are left unchallenged and unengaged and others are struggling to meet the standards. This all results n pore attendance, confusion, and a dysfunctional system.

Education was disorderly and the question of what children should know before graduating was widely debated. Different school districts were teaching different thing and there wasn’t much of a standard for education. This act has affected all students who received education from 2002 to the present day and may affect students in the future. Now that we have the No Child Left Behind act and standardized education all races and social classes have an equal opportunity for education, but one question still pesters students and parents, is standardized education, helping students? Or holding them back?

The uneven education across the nation and even inside of individual schools caused educational progress difficult and remedial. Past attempts at the standardization of education failed but with the No Child Left Behind act education became uniform and progressive across the nation. Teacher began to demand a standardized form of education so that they would not have to teach children what they should have learned in an earlier class just so they could start their own lessons. Students weren't learning enough to pass standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT. When NCLB was passed in 2004 test scores appeared to be improving and the goal it set, to have all states at an equal educational level by 2014, seemed like an achievable goal, but educational progress has slowed to almost a stand still once again.

The educational standards of our nation need to be reformed so that the needs of all. Children can be catered to and so the final goal of all students is a fruitful life, not a final standardized test. Standardized testing should be used as it was originally intended, a measurement tool for teachers. Education needs to be felt to the states, and the federal government should withdrawal from the education system. Once states can set a standard for the education of its students and that standard is deemed achievable by teachers of the students.

This system will localized education and help students receive the education they need. The goal of education reforms is always to increase the standardize test scores but this is merely a political gain, this in no way proves that our students are ready for the future.

The goal of education reforms is always to increase the standardize test scores but this is merely a political gain, this in no way proves that our students are ready for the future. Robert C. Robert C. Scott, who is a Member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce said

"Tests, when validated and used appropriately, can serve as powerful diagnostic tools to expose shortcomings in our educational system and help individual students... In the absence of such a plan(in President Bush's proposal), test results may be used merely to punish students and schools rather than to help them achieve."(Scott). This plan will use standardized testing as a tool, rather that a milestone

"The “balance” requirement, which demands opposing sides of every controversial issue in the classroom be heard and given equal time, reduces all discussion of controversial issues to a debate over stereotypical versions of extreme alternatives. . . . This will, if written into law, cause a dumbing down of the mental life of students to the cartoon version of intelligence we find on right-wing talk shows. [Here], everything controversial is broken into categories such as conservative vs. liberal, religious vs. secular humanist, or American vs. communist. It forces classrooms to waste time giving equal time to aberrant opinions when there could be a developed discussion of alternatives . . . viable from an academic point of view. The legislation has the effect of undermining mature discussion; in other words, it . . . undermines academic freedom while claiming to promote academic freedom."(Auxter) Tom Auxter is the president of the United Faculty of Florida. This was a statement he made on legislation introduced in the Florida called the Academic Bill of Rights thar was written by the conservative activist David Horowitz. This 'bill of rights' goal was to redesign school so that it would teach student to think not what to think.

Auxter believes that if the issues of the country or world were to be debated and thought about in class, this would in fact "cause a dumbing down of the mental life of students" because teachers would influence student with their extreme views and the way adults split things into categories such as 'conservative' vs. 'liberal' will dull the minds of students. So, in short, children should not be troubled with worldly issues. I disagree, students need to,know what it happening and be able to process it without difficulty.

“Is NCLB really paying off? The answer is yes,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce Senior Vice President Arthur J. Rothkopf said, "While current testing data is still abysmal, it nevertheless “represents improvement from where this nation was” before the law.The law has benefited urban schools by raising reading scores for African-American and Hispanic fourth- and eighth-graders and math scores for African-American and Hispanic fourth-graders to “all-time highs.” Achievement gaps in reading and math between white fourth-graders and African-American and Hispanic fourth-graders also have diminished since NCLB." Students in urban and intercity school have been doing marginally better. Even though the test score of 4th and 8th graders have increased by a small margin, 8.1% of all students will dropout. "the average high school graduation rate in the nation’s 50 largest cities was 53 percent, compared with 71 percent in the suburbs."(Dillon) Students are just not interested by school or they cannot afford to go to school. Our test score ay have increased but what is that increase compared to the amount of students that will never finish high school?

"in urban schools 50 to 60 percent, and sometimes up to 80 percent, of the kids are “high-needs,” Robert Balfanz, associate research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Center on the Social Organization of Schools says, "We're (urban schools) not set up to respond when that many kids need one-on-one tutoring, monitoring of their attendance on a daily basis, [or] people calling up to say, 'Glad you came today,' " These students, instead of learning what they need to for the next test, should be learning what they need to succeed in the future.

I love the ancient African proverb I used earlier one, "it takes a village to raise a child" and I wonder, why can't our society be like this? Instead of leaving parents to teach our children all the skills they need to know, our schools should be able to help. We can keep teaching students content that will aid them in passing standardized tests, but these tests should not be the final goal of our students education. With a skilled based education, students would have a more engaging and rewarding education experience. With the support of our community, this is possible, not only possible, but also highly likely.