No child Left behind Act is a controversial United States

The 2001-2002 No child leftover empennage map is a polemical United States Federal fairness which attempts to tackle, head on, the problem of Americas semipublic trails. There atomic bend 18 more(prenominal) than fifty million savants in our civilises and in that respect promises to be increases to this intimidate number from in-migration as advantageously as the natural increase of the unsophisticated. Under this new honor, drills examament be required to ensure that their scholarly persons testament meet or exceed the conquer ara sine qua nons set away by the federal governing and the De lead offment of Education. Repeated failure of a specific domesticate to r all(prenominal) these requirements pass on lastly result in the going away of funding as well as a decrease in the number of students go to these schoolhouses.The latter is made possible by the license that the No Child left(a) derriere dally gives to students and their p atomic numbe r 18nts who be attending schools that repeatedly do not meet the requirements set forth in this act. Any state challenges to the honor are threatened with a point of funds and in 2005 Utah became the root state to challenge the rightfulness with the bulgecome having not yet been played out on the areaal level1. Where the correct amount of attention needs to be paid to and how these problems are to be solved, as well as the impressiveness of the No Child left keister make for, are lineages for much debate. One of the biggest problems is in mettlesome spirits school drop outs and how this increase in drop outs dope be curbed.The No Child Left behind make out focuses on a number of aspects of the public school system which the authorities believes needs to be improved. The first is the case of the readers who teach. It is a popular notion to charge up the teachers for the shortcomings of the student in the classroom. The No Child Left groundwork Act ignores the fe ature that directlys teacher is approach with more impediments to their successful ability to teach than ever before. An average student watches more than six hours of television a day, often judgment of convictions where there is no parental influence at home since often times, especially indoors the inner city, the student comes from a broken home and the mformer(a) is agonistic to work two jobs.Students within the inner city are faced with the constant threat of clump violence and gang influence which makes it not only difficult to rumpvass and to achieve an schooling, but it is too a perilous prospect as well. Also, there is within the American public school, a dangerous overcrowding, brought on by illegal immigration as well as other important incidentors. As a result, there are hundreds of schools within the country that are overcrowded. In pelf, there are more than 150 dewy-eyed schools and 15 high schools, despite the addition of twelve new high schools and thir ty additions to existing schools, which are overcrowded. Roosevelt High School on Chicagos East side is more than 177% higher up capacity and Lerna unsubdivided school on Chicagos south side is more than 150% above its intentional capacity.2 As a result, teachers are faced with an overcrowding of students often times the number exceeds thirty flipper to forty students in which an increasing number cannot speak English.However, there exists some merit as to the requirement that teachers be knowledgably in the subjects in which they teach. In a 2004 ground forces Today expose, it was discovered that in the state of California, over 35% of high school teachers were teaching subjects different than what their major or minor in college.3 This places the student at a severe disadvantage and makes the parents of these students nervous as to who exactly is teaching their students. The No Child Left Behind Act set forth a plan in 2002, when the law was enacted, that by the 2006-2007 sch ool year, all teachers be pick uped as highly educated in the subject in which they were teaching. This is achieved by teachers having regularize tests of their own in the subjects in whom they teach.A teacher must also shake achieved a bachelors degree and demonstrate a command of the subject that they teach as well as a command of the English language, both in speaking and writing in hallow to be allowed to foster teach. In holy order to see if these measurements will yield the expected positive results, progress standardized testing in grades 3-5, 6-9 and 10-11 will be required.4 Under the preliminary system, only students in grades 3, 5, 10-11 were given to standardized testing. It will be seen on a national basis in the coming months, as these results are published, as to whether or not this simple and presumed self evident requirement yield the results which the country demands.Another important addition to the current public school system is the ability of parents and their children to choose the schools that they will attend. Previously, students could only attend the schools which were designed for their sweep. This gave a uniform feeling to the public school map and ensured that those who were paying(a) real estate taxes to their local school, was use to teach the students of the local area. The No Child Left Behind Act allows students and their parents who attend seriously performing schools, the freedom to choose the schools which they will attend. It claims that local government has failed their students and that it now falls upon the federal government to step in and fix the problem.This is a controversial aspect of the law but one which according to the Department of Education, in their 2005 annual report, stated a number of positive aspects to the law. First, more increase was made concerning 4th graders in their reading skills over the last five age than in the previous 28 age combined.5 Americas freshman in high school achieved the highest math and reading slews since 1971 and that the math and reading scores for African Americans and Hispanics have reached an all time high as well. Lastly, forty three states and the District of Columbia have enjoyed unprecedented success in the increase of their students test scores.Not only is the law result-driven through the test scores which their students achieve, but focuses on the concept and quality of the education that their students are receiving. The gap between white and African American and Hispanic children, according to the Department of Education, states that it is the lowest that it has been in the history of public education. The parents are more informed about the quality and yearly transaction of their schools through the publication of school report cards which grade the schools on a variety of various subjects which are designed to be facilitative to the parent.This is also helpful in educating the parent as to what schools in the area would be a trade good fit for their child, if they so decide to strickle their child to another school district as their previous school repeatedly under preformed and did not meet their federal requirements. This is helpful as well, not only to the students and their parents but also for the school as well as the administrators are aware and feel the pressure to perform up to standards or their student body will decrease and so in addition will the amount of federal funding from the government. To many, this is a necessary and effective check on the apathetic attitude that some schools in the nation have felt towards the education of their students which they are employed to teach.A more courtly register is the communication between that of the parent and the teacher with postulate to the standardized testing that is required multiple times in a students educational career. In 2005, in the buff Jersey signed a contract to spend $35 million over the next quaternity years to implement new testing standards for third and fourth graders with regard to math and science.6 The Educational Commission Report reported in distributor point about the state implementation of the NCLBA, not only in New Jersey but all crossways the nation as well.Different from years past, the new implementation of this act represent a more general approach to achieving testing reform and improvement. Professional development of teachers and technical economic aid for low-performing schools are at the front of this debate for needed change. The report also points out the need for states, districts and schools to raise the stakes in order to ward off failure and that steady progress must be achieved and charted in order to improve student achievement.Blending texts and graphics, the report gives a series of snapshots from March 2003-March 2004 in the field of student improvement for math and science scores for ordinal graders. The progress is divided up into seven sub categories standar ds and assessments, adequate progress, school improvement, supplemental service, safe schools report cards and teacher quality and how each area must meet or exceed state requirements. The danger in failing to do so, the report points out, is that once area whitethorn well be able to pull down the other groups as well and erase a great deal of effort that has been used in this endeavor.Any order the size of the No Child Left Behind Act is going to receive criticism. Much of it is justified and has allowed many to regard the law as ineffective or misguided. Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy criticized that The tragedy is that these abundant overdue reforms are finally in place, but the funds are not.7 It has been the long running complaint of school administrators that the capital is not macrocosm sent to the schools in order to make the necessary changes. School executive Charles Johnson of the Roosevelt High School in Chicago states If the government wants higher test scores, t hen they need to show us the moneyAll of these programs be money. Give us the money and the results will follow.8 This is a problem and will probably continue to be a problem as the 2007 government budget again did not yield the necessary amount of money for these programs which as deemed necessary in the original 2002 No Child Left Behind Act. In our highly bipartisan political atmosphere, progress from the NCLBA can only be claimed through a great deal of studies and statistics in order to make such claims.Not only does the study set forth their guidelines, they give detailed statistics as to what areas of the country are meeting those standards and where in the country are the students falling behind at are at the highest risk of dropping out of school. Many studies come to the conclusion, and this one is no exception, that when a student is achieving in school and finds the subject matter and the atmosphere exciting, there is a minimal chance for that student to them drop out of school. The study found that all fifty states met or were partially on track (an improvement from the days before the NCLBA was implemented, to meet at least(prenominal) half of the 40 NCLB requirements. This constitutes an improvement of 11% over the previous year.9 The study then concludes by pointing out how much of an improvement this is.Another problem with the law and one which prompts criticism of the government taking the lead in education reform is the possibility of corruption. The stakes are high for these schools to perform to the standards which the government has put in place for each individual schools. Some of these schools, erudite that they cannot meet these new requirements, will bend the result sin order for it to appear that they are meeting these new demands. This creative reclassification of the results has helped these troubled schools to uphold their previous level of government funding. In this, students are not accomplishment more but are just being classified differently. In Missouri and Iowa, school administrators have admitted to the fact that in many of the schools across their respective states, they had lowered the requirements in order to meet governmental standards.Despite this temptation to create new and creative ways in which to show that these schools were achieving up to government standards, the No Child Left Behind Act allows for further funding towards schools which perform beneath federal standards as well as gives bonuses to schools that repeatedly meet and/or exceed standards. What does worry the aforementioned schools is the fact that only after a specific number of years, usually from 2-4 years of repeated failure to meet federal requirements, despite the extra funding, will schools then be cut off from this extra funding and will then be made to suffer the consequences.There has yet to be a significant number of schools which are placed under these restrictions and then forced to react in ways which would jeopardize the funding of their respective schools as the law is still relatively new. However, it is estimated that especially within the inner cities, these requirements, whether good or bad, will create a reaction that will eventually command a reform within the close troubled and poorly performing schools within each troubled area.The No Child Left Behind Act is controversial by nature. As the United States falls behind smaller and less affluent countries in the areas of science, reading and math, most everyone agrees that education reform is absolutely necessary. However, with a problem that affects such a large population of the country in the form of parents, students and teachers as well as the society in which they reside, it is a fact that no legislation will please everyone. The No Child Left Behind Act is being implemented in order to correct decades of misuse by apathetic but when high school students, upon their graduation, can read and spare at only an 8th grade le vel, somebody is surely to blame.10 What is the source of argument is who exactly is to blame and in what capacity?Are the parents to blame when the student is a product of a broken home and there is nobody present within the home to make sure that the student adheres to his school work? Is the student to blame for not possessing the self slump to make himself to study, seek assistance outside of school hours and to ensure his or her own success? Is it the government to blame for avoiding the fact that illegal immigration has flooded many of our nations schools which has resulted in the overcrowding of the schools or the fact that before this law, there were teachers who have with a degree in History, if they graduated at all, who were teaching Biology.Or is it the fault of society who now places a greater importance on the knowledge of pop culture over rightness in schools? In some degree or another, all of the above mentioned principal players are to blame. What the No Child Le ft Behind Act attempts to do is tackle all of these impediments to the educational process of our nations fifty four million students. The No Child Left Behind Act accomplishes the ability to shed light on a subject which has long been ignored the public school system. However, no government induction can amend the problems of the public school system until the parents and students do their part as well. Only to a very limited degree can government institute behavior. It is up to those involved to ensure the success of themselves, their children, their school and their teachers. We are all in this together.WORKS CITEDCollins, Kristin. No Child Left Behind National Science Teachers Association. www3. ntsa.org. December 31, 2003. Downloaded June 14, 2007Dixon, Janet How No Child Left Behind Affects Your Children. Chicago Tribune June 12, 2004Graham, Patricia No Child Left Behind. History of Education quarterly Vol. 47 May 2007Matthews, Jay No Child Left Behind Acts concomitant and Fiction Washington Post November 11, 2003No Child Left Behind Act www.ed.gov. The Department of Education Downloaded June 14, 2007