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Pros and Cons of no child left behind

The no child left behind is a law that governed schools in the United States around 2001- 2015. This was a very harsh law that penalized schools that did not make any progress and schools were held accountable for the achievements and the learning of their students. The law was implemented to help the students who were perceived as a disadvantage to be like the rest of the schools and students. Examples of the disadvantaged students include; students from humble backgrounds, minorities, the students who understand little or no English, and lastly those that receive special education.

 

Pros

1. Test scores improvement: The targeted student’s population that is the minority and the other needy students have had an equal opportunity like the other fortunate group. This has resulted in the test scores of these minority groups rising.

2. Quality education: Quality education is brought about by the services offered by well-learned and experienced teachers. This law needed all the teachers to be qualified and for that, the students benefitted from higher quality education.

3. Parental awareness: Parents of the less fortunate children could be able to understand how their children are doing at school at the same time they can understand how the schooling system works.

4. State academic content: The no child left behind law, connects the quality of the state academic content with the performance of the students in education. The best educational outcome is contributed by the use of research in the classes, incorporation of some parents programs as well as the teacher’s development plan or action.

5. Best teacher’s qualifications: The law ensured that all the teachers employed to teach had high qualifications and this led to the others to get a better education and therefore more highly qualified. The students got lucky as they get caught by the beast and most qualified teachers which also meant that they got the best quality of education just as their teachers.

6. Extra tutorials: The performance of the schools determines the financial support it receives. This has resulted in teachers creating time to help the struggling students to raise the performance of their respective schools.

7. Closure of the achievement gap: Most of the minority students have benefited from the law since, the quality of education the whites get the rest of the minority group to receive, and therefore there are healthy competition and performance.

8. Improvement of the structural educational programs: This law was the first to dwell on the best educational programs and performance of students in the US. This was done through the standardization of testing results where the students in different parts were compared to each other and problems to be solved were identified.

 

Cons

1. ineffectiveness of the act: Since its inception, the NCLB was to improve the education sector but what it did was the opposite. According to data taken of the performance of schools since the act was enforced, there has been no major improvement that would put the schools on the map.

2. Shortage of teachers: The strict requirement of highly qualified teachers, has resulted in a few individuals with the qualifications hence fewer teachers available for teaching.

3. Too much concentration on the test scores: The NCLB law has been known to use test scores as the primary determiner of the school’s success. This has brought about a bad education culture where the teachers just teach to attain higher test scores rather than teach the students to learn.

4. Governments lack constitutional authority over education: Many people or rather critics of the NCLB believe that the government does not have any control over the education sector but rather the education of the children cannot be controlled and monitored by the government.

5. Too high qualification standards of teachers: Some of the requirements of the NCLB law require that a teacher must possess more than a college degree in multiple subjects and some specified subjects. This has made the process of hiring teachers hard as very few individuals have the required qualifications.

6. Underfunding: For the NCLB to be fully effective it required full financial support from the government and the states. This was a major challenge as the funds allocated to the law were not enough to propel it through success and this posed more risks of withdrawal of funding if the program did not yield good students performances.

7. Concentrated on funding: Some schools concentrated on getting federal money rather than teaching the children. This meant that they abandoned the NCLB law mandate which was to ensure that students learned from the best and hence achieved the best.

8. Involuntary transfer of teachers: The NCLB law allowed the schools to transfer teachers by force despite their refusal. This act resulted in the best teachers being moved to the poor-performing schools and this meant that the teachers had to move and relocate their families to adjust to their work environment.

9. The goal of learning changed: This started with the teachers who taught their students how to pass standardized tests rather than real learning. This is the fault of the NCLB law as it forced schools to pass the test scores to get funding. Further, this brought about too little knowledge to the students as they were bright on paper but in the real world, they got stuck.

In conclusion, the no child left behind law has failed and got a replacement. It has its turn of good advantages but the cons have been more which saw the replacement with every student succeeds act. This NCLB law was more money-oriented than the student learning objective. The teachers as well as the schools all concentrated on getting higher test scores to get funding for the schools rather than teaching students to learn. This law frustrated the teachers who are the key drivers of education with involuntary transfers as well as the students especially the bright ones whose testing was limited by the test scores.

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