No Child Left Behind The No Child Left Behind act (NCLB) was signed into law by former President W. George Bush on January 8th, 2002 (Diorio, 2015). Through the years, there has been a great deal of both positive and negative criticism about the act. NCBL was created to increase the quality of education for all students and to reduce achievement gaps in American schools” (Diorio, 2015). However, this is not what universally occurred in each school. NCLB is considered “one of the most sweeping education legislation in our nation’s history” (Diorio, 2015).
History
Legislation like NCLB is not new to the world of politics. NCLB was created to revitalize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Diorio, 2015). The Elementary and Secondary
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According to the U.S. Department Education, NCLB give states and school districts “unprecedented flexibility” in how they chose to utilize federal education funds (Four Pillars of NCLB, 2004). The article Teachers’ Views on No Child Left Behind: Support for the Principles, Concerns about the Practices states, “…states can develop their own academic content standards, choose the tests they will administer, and specify the minimum scores students must obtain to be declared “proficient” (2010). The National Assessment of Educational Progress has stated to be considered “proficient”, “Students reaching this level have demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter, including subject-matter knowledge, application of such knowledge to real-world situations, and analytical skills appropriate to the subject matter” …show more content…
This is because firstly, students have been taking more tests than they have in the past (Diorio, 2015). Public school students are required to take tests in mathematics and reading, annually in grades three through eight (Murnane & Papay, 2010). Then students must also take similar test in high school (Murnane & Papay, 2010). Critics have issues with it since testing takes up great amounts of the school year and student are only being tested on math and reading (Conley, 2015). Often times, mathematics and reading tests that are required by the state become the main way in assessing what students learning (Conley, 2015). However, children must learn more than mathematics and reading to survive in this world. Carrying out testing on only mathematics and reading makes other vital subjects seem less important (Conley,