For those of you who are unaware of what NCLB stands for it is known as the No Child Left Behind Act. I recently began attending graduate school to become a special education teacher. As I began to progress through my program I became aware of the fact that the NCLB act was not all it was cracked up to be.
Why is that you may ask, it is because there are so many ambiguous requirements that ask teachers to teach to the standardized testing system and as a result educated children and the actual process of education are on the decline. Teachers no longer educate, the give facts that students will have to know to pass the test because the test is the bottom line.
What does this all mean? It means that we are creating an entire generation of students that have no idea what it means to be a critical thinker. Problem solving is no longer taught in schools instead students must memorize dates and facts that are practically obselete in outside the classroom. What has happened to the idea of thinking outside the box?
Am I saying that the NCLB act is a bad thing? No I am just trying to show that it is in many ways an example of taking 2 steps forward and 3 steps back. Inclusion, its a great idea but how do you make it work when it is mandatory that all students pass the same test.
The NCLB act needs to be altered and changed to truly support education. I have to ask, who will be brave enough to step up and change an act that is believed to be the answer to all of our educational problems. The conventional veiw of the average American says that every student is included and all students are getting the same education. It misses the more critical view of the social forces at work.
What a beautiful name, The No Child Left Behind Act, because it implies that anyone who oppposes the act is insisitng that some children should be left behind. When what they are really trying to accomplish is creating an educational system where all students are supported as they progress through the United States school system.
Where is education heading?
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Down the tubes. :( At least, in America.
Well the irony is that the act is not just affecting America, all over the world people are trying to emulate our educational system, China is attempting to create a similar program.
I think that they are trying to give it a name that makes us believe that they are truly concerned about every child's education. Who makes the referral that a child is being "left behind"?
I agree with you. When I first heard about the law, I had a feeling that it was going to be in sufficient. It did not sound practical especially in the Los Angeles, CA area; they had to protest to the school board so that they could implement the A-G system. If this law is suppose to create an opportunity for all children to get an education in America then why is that most parents who live in terrible neighborhood have to send there children to private school?, when this law state that each student get an equal opportunity learn. The law is just here to take more money from the taxpayers. I could be wrong about it, but that what it seems like to me.
I totally agree with you. I see what NCLB does to my school district and how teachers dislike it. To try to meet the NCLB standards, we now have homeroom to take timed tests. Every teacher thinks it is a waste of time and that time could be used to do something else. NCLB needs to be changed drastically because it just doesn't help what it was intended to help.
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