No Child Left Behind Act Essay

1947 Words8 Pages

Introduction
In 2001, when the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was created, the goal of NCLB was to increase the accountability of schools for the educational outcomes of their students and to bridge the gap between poor and high-performing students and districts. To accomplish this, NCLB placed considerable importance on standardized testing, which I will be examining the effectiveness of relative to the goals that NCLB sought to accomplish by 2014, within this paper. NCLB brought attention to the achievement gap and spurred efforts to improve educational outcomes for all students, particularly disadvantaged populations, through its accountability measures and reporting requirements, but its reliance on standardized testing and punitive consequences …show more content…

In 1965 the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was passed. The ESEA tied the Title 1 funding from the federal government to the administration of a standardized test and if the scores were predominantly low there had to be some form of remediation that occurred (Gallagher, 2003, p. 94-95). However, the responsibility for this was not placed solely on individual schools. The ESEA did not allow for any national curriculum to develop, as schools and states had to work together when they fell behind in their scores (Gallagher, 2003, p. 94-95). The ESEA marked the first time that it was required under federal law to take a standardized test in the United States (Gallagher, 2003, p. 94-95). The fact that this is a recent phenomenon in our educational culture is something that should be taken into consideration continuing through the paper. The ESEA was renewed every 3 years or so and is still renewed to this day. In 2001 one of the most significant changes to this act was its renewal as …show more content…

NCLB required schools and districts to prepare annual report cards that detailed student progress on standardized tests for each school year. These report cards were meant to be delivered to students, parents, and communities. The intention was to ensure that everyone, especially parents, were aware of what was happening in their children's schools. Furthermore, this pillar briefly highlights the ultimate goal of NCLB, which was for all groups of students to improve their test-score performance, thereby eliminating the achievement gap between children of different backgrounds and to eventually reach the goal of nationwide competency at grade level within 12 years (Office of the Press Secretary,