Always searching for inspiration…

As English teachers who will soon be out in the field we will be dealing with the constant question of has No Child Left Behind, which five years ago had passed as a legislature with many answers to improving student performance in math and reading has had overwhelming improvement in public schools over time. When Bush’s administration created this program the idea was to increase school and government standards so that in subjects that are “most” important such as English, we will have more students who are making the grade more often to ensure that these improvements will hopefully better the quality of our future generations who will one day be taking care of the country.

I discovered in an article I found using Google News which was recently published in Carson City, Nevada that the person writing the article (mostly opinion based) decided to take a closer look at what this act has done to schools in his area. He did this by examining the local schools in the district he lives in while interviewing administration and teachers who live there.

The superintendent of the district, Dr. Mary Pierczynski says,

“NCLB established valid goals for teachers and students,” Dr. Pierczynski told me, ”but the people who put it together must never have been in a classroom.”

In other words, after five years progress many of the schools did have some improvement, excluding the local elementary schools but that those who created and passed the act were clearly not aware of the experiences that occur within a classroom. Those who thought of creating this act created a strict or “uniformed” way of running the classroom. Ironic, considering that most often educators are finding that a slight departure from these traditional classroom settings are more suited to the learning of students. The reasoning for this being that constantly reciting facts and information about “what happened” in stories and poems does not help children maintain what they have learned nor does it offer a deeper sense of understanding that comes from becoming a mature reader. In addition, growing as a reader can only happen when students are interested and engaged. Therefore, teaching in a way that is directed mostly toward an efficient performance on a standardized test is not necessary helping students to improve while learning more, but just passing.

Though there has been some improvement, educators are claiming that the program is slowly progressing toward its goal in 2014 of “proficiency” and that is finally focusing more on the standards taught to lower achieving students. That with its with its five-year deadline, new national standards can be revised for further progression. But perhaps the reason this is taking more time than originally speculated may be for some reasons earlier listed and that there is a constant push-and-pull with teachers trying to teach in ways that suggest students have the ability to learn better from processing what they are reading rather from maintaining facts and skills suited to take a test with certain requirements. Curious.

But the government must not forget that students still do contain the capacity to be creative and thought processing individuals. If our school systems continue this “rigid” program students will have a tendency to having a difficulty learning important reading and writing skills which is for many already a more challenging task to take on. Someone should ask those who were involved with the creation of the act if they know where they laid out the rules for being creative and thinking meta-cognitively rather than constantly struggling to make sure students pass another standardized test. Just something to think about. I think No Child Left Behind has some potential but definitely needs to be improved if the government intends for this to actually prove to be useful in upcoming years. Many aspects that define this act have relatively decent intentions but will it truly do justice for students who are becoming more mature learners? I think that is where this act falls short is helping children become equipped for further years of education.

Is “No Child Left Behind” passing the test five years later?

By Guy Farmer
January 14, 2007

Complete Article