Legislature on education made at the federal level has a multitude of effects on our daily lives. One such legislation, The No Child Left Behind Act, was signed into law by former President Bush on January 8th, 2002 (“No Child Left Behind”, 2011) and mandated multiple facets of our country’s public education system. In essence, the law was meant to increase student achievement and to hold both the states and the schools’ themselves accountable for making sure the students succeeded (“No Child Left Behind”, 2011). The law also gave block grants to states for educational purposes as long as they met certain standards (Sidlow, 2012). The first two major areas that are covered by the law are teacher qualifications and state grants based on those qualifications. The law defined a “highly qualified” teacher as someone who was certified and was able to demonstrate proficiency within the subject that he or she taught. Additionally, they had to have passed two years of college or more and graduated with at least an associate’s degree (“No Child Left Behind”, 2011). To aid in this process, several smaller programs were set up under the law, including the Teacher Incentive Fund, which helps to support the “development and implementation of performance-based teacher and principal …show more content…
This program provides financial aid to school districts to help “create safer schools, prevent violence and drug abuse, and ensure the health and well-being of students” (“Background & Analysis-No Child Left Behind”, 2014). This affects students as it helps them feel safe in school and attempts to keep them away from potentially harmful situations. For example, under the law, a student can leave a school that is ruled by the state to be “persistently dangerous” and attend another school in the same district (No Child Left Behind: A Challenging High School Education For Us All,