Can We Really Say Good-bye to The No Child Left Behind Act?
D. Distel
According to Grace Smith of Education News.org, The Federal Government will begin to take a serious look at overhauling the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) which was enacted by the George W. Bush administration in 2001. The goal of the No Child Left Behind Act was to ensure that all children in the United States were given equal opportunities to succeed in the public education system especially those considered minorities or from socio-economically depressed communities. While the intent might have been a noble one, it put undue pressures on school districts to show Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) through high-stakes testing that by its very nature is exclusionary and biased. What the authors of this law failed to recognize is that regardless of socio-econmic status, race, color, or creed, human intelligence is not a constant. Human beings are not all blessed with the same intelligence levels. People differ from one another in their ability to overcome obstacles by taking thought, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to learn from experience, to adapt effectively to the environment, and to clearly understand complex ideas. This law failed to take into account the myriad of students with disabilities and other hurdles.
Can we expect anything new as the House of Representatives are now investigating the NCLB act and relabeling it Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)? I think Gertrude Stein it best, “A rose is a rose is a rose.” What can we as teachers and administrators really expect to change with this “overhaul”? Even if this new law gives individual states and districts power to make their own decisions about students who are not showing adequate growth, unfair testing is still taking place. Students are being instructed with developmentally inappropriate curriculum and expected to fit into a one-size fits all system. Teachers are still being judged based upon how many of their students are able to pass state and district assessments.
According to the National Center of Education Statistics, the drop out rate for students of all races as of 2013 is 6.8% with the highest percentage of Hispanics at 11.7% and Blacks at 7.3%. So how is this new law going to combat the fact that minority populations are disengaged from the education system in this country? When are schools districts going to make sure that the education students receive is engaging all, embracing all cultures, and pertinent for our changing technological global world? When are teachers going to stop being targeted as the ‘bad” guys and penalized for the failure of students to pass assessments that truly do not reflect the variety of differentiated needs of today’s student populations?
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. ” Albert Einstein.
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