No Child Left Behind Act Essay

The issue of federal government intervention in state education has been a topic of argument for years. One important law that was passed pertaining to federal regulation of K-12 education was the No Child Left Behind Act. This act was signed into law by President George W. Bush on Jan. 8, 2002. The bill passed through congress with overwhelming support from both parties. The law significantly increased the role of the federal government in the states’ education. Under the NCLB law, states must test students in reading and math in grades 3-8 and once in high school. The states must report the results to the federal government, for the whole student population, and also for particular subgroups of students, such as students learning english, students in special education, racial minorities, and children from low-income families.

Under the law, schools are kept on track toward their goals through a process known as “adequate yearly progress”, or AYP. Missing an AYP, especially for more than one year in a row, can have detrimental affects to the school’s funding and freedom to run the school. A school that misses AYP two years in a row has to allow students to transfer to a better-performing public school in the same district. If a school misses AYP for three years in a row, it must offer free tutoring. Schools that don’t make AYP have to

One of the criticisms is that students often do not take advantage of the opportunity to transfer to another school, or get tutoring. States and districts also had difficulty screening tutors for quality. The law has also been criticized for growing the federal impact in K-12 education to be too large, and for relying on standardized tests too much. Others say its emphasis on math and reading has narrowed the curriculum of schools, restricting other areas of education that aren’t tested, such as Social Studies and the Arts. Some also claim the law has been