I agree that the No Child Left Behind act has caused more problems than it has fixed. However the problem is not that it requires teaches to teach for the test but because the funding that it gives is actually less than states need to pay for the tests that they are required to give. This means that the states have to waste money on a required test rather than choose what is best for their state. This is a violation of states’ rights almost.
I think a much better solution would have been to give individual school districts a reason to improve their own students long term learning and performance on tests such as the SAT rather than state tests. Or the money may have better been spent giving aid to college students who want to learn.
In the end we should just test making improvements and if they don’t work we should repeal them. And although America is great at innovation we should also look at other countries education system because law makers may have some things to learn as well.
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It's been a year and a half since I've been in high school, but I doubt anything has changed in that small amount of time. I think that the idea of standardized tests overshadows the idea of teaching in high school. For those in AP classes students aren't so much learning, they're memorizing facts and dates and fretting about what the specified essay is going to have them talk about. The multiple choice aspect of these standardized tests is also flawed because it focuses on what the students don't know -- not what they do know. I myself did the International Baccalaureate program in high school. It's talked about as the step above AP and feared by many as far as difficulty goes. But the truth is (besides the 150 community service hours and many extra papers/projects), I feel that this program is in a way easier because of the formatting of the standardized tests. With a few exceptions, the tests are all essay. Not just that, but students are usually given a couple of choices for essay. In this way the students are getting to show the grader what they really do know, which I think is extremely important considering the sheer volume of information high school expects you to swallow. And you know what? Only three out of over thirty students at my school who went through this two-year program failed to receive enough points on their tests to get their IB diploma. This is opposed to the half of my Spanish IV class (including me) who did not pass the Spanish AP test. That being said, I got a 2/4 on my Spanish AP test and a 6/7 on my Spanish IB test. I feel like something is wrong with that.
I'm not particularly in favor of the No Child Left Behind Act because it encourages a system that focuses on what we do not know, when school should be about so much more than that. It gives teachers less room to inspire and makes school unbearable at times. There are some areas, such as Math and Science, that are harder to make exciting, but I've had teachers that can do it with a fun project or presentation. The fact is that we are given so much to learn on such a tight schedule that there is no room to stray from the syllabus. I think that if kids are more interested in what they are learning, the test scores would show it. However at a high school level I think that many choose for themselves whether they want to succeed or not. In this sense the No Child Left Behind Act would better serve if it focused on those who really needed it. This money should be used to create new programs for those who aren't taking AP or IB classes, because (I know I'm risking coming off as high and mighty) those are the kids who usually need it the most.
Have there been huge changes seen in overall education since the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act? No not really. In the post Many Children Have Been Left Behind my colleague David discusses the problems of the act and also proposes possible solutions. Like many states, Texas is facing underfunding for the standardized TAKS test, of which teachers have to year after year create lesson plans preparing students for the test. These state-issued tests are often not a very good gauge of comprehensive high school knowledge, but passing is a requirement for graduation in Texas. The majority of teachers see the test, and preparing for it as a joke, therefore students can't be expected to take the test very seriously.
Like David proposed, instead of pouring the money into state wide tests I think that the money would be much better put into SAT or college prep programs. The benefits of programs like this would be seen very soon, because for a lot of kids when they take the SAT they have no idea what they are in for. As it is, not a lot of kids can pay for the prep classes because they usually cost several hundred dollars which isn't exactly pocket change. It's a lot better to get the students prepared for college; because on one hand the SAT is a major admission factor while on the other colleges usually don't care about performance on a much easier state administered test.
To me another crucial piece that has been left out of education reform such as NCLB is the issue of financial aid. This part of our education system gets me unbelievably frustrated and there simply have been no answers. Nobody should have to be discouraged from applying to their dream school just because they're unable to pay the 50k a year astronomical tuition at many out of state universities. Partly I blame the schools with the huge endowments that aren't willing to budge much unless family an income of less than 30k. I also blame the government who can give massive bailouts to struggling corporations, but can't help out the kids who are the backbone of our future economy.
With a country so advanced, America should not have to settle for second rate education policies and as David proposes, maybe we should look to other countries to better structure our system. Loopholes including a state’s ability to make up for bad results by setting low standards or making the tests unusually easy just defeats the whole purpose. The act itself has really done very little in solving the core issues of our education system, and something that initially sounded promising, has since turned into a dud.
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