Academic Progress: Will No Child Be Left Behind? Essay -- essays paper

Academic Progress: Will No Child Be Left Behind? â€Å"These reforms express my deep belief in our public schools and their mission to build the mind and character of every child, from every background, in every part of America.†Ã¢â‚¬â€President George W. Bush (Executive Summary, 2001). â€Å"We like the bill, but this is a resource issue.†Ã¢â‚¬â€Peter McWalters, commissioner of education in Rhode Island (Coeyman, 2002). â€Å"No Child Left Behind? Everyone hates it. It’s a joke. Not obtainable.†Ã¢â‚¬â€teacher. The No Child Left Behind Act provides incentives for school districts to bring up academic progress, but instead the pressure involved may lead to poor-performing schools falsifying data, teaching to the test, or promoting unprepared students instead of truly improving student performance. Schools which do not achieve their Academic Yearly Progress for two sequential years will suffer loss of funding, corrective action, and may be closed. However, the only way to gauge academic progress on a nation-wide level is through standardized testing, which has serious limitations as a diagnostic tool. The concept of Academic Yearly Progress can lead to bizarre and arbitrary classifications of successful and failing. In additional, some of the corrective measures prescribed by NCLB may be inadequate. Rather than merely reaffirming the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, President Bush oversaw a complete restructuring. This restructuring, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, decrees that every student will be at the academic level deemed proficient by the 2013-14 school year. To achieve this goal, it calls for strict academic accountability. States still have the responsibility of determining their own statewide assessment programs, but... ...same amount of time; the fallacy of the principal as sole instructional leader; the fallacy of setting standards on the basis of exceptions; and the fallacy of uniform standards for all children. The fallacy that all children can learn --at the same level and in the same amount of time.† (2002) And if they cannot learn, we can switch them around, from teacher to teacher, school to school. The Act is unfailingly optimistic. That optimism will destroy any effect that the reform could have. No Child Left Behind is an earnest attempt to fix a real problem- the academic achievement gap between the children of the haves and the children of the have-nots in this country. Unfortunately, the Act gives a rigid timetable and a list of penalties and punishments without giving beleaguered schools solid, concrete examples of how to implement these reforms.