No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has been heralded by many for holding schools, administrators, and faculty accountable for the education of their students. The widespread adoption of NCLB has taken place because many consider the education system of the United States in trouble. Advocates of NCLB argue that schools too often focus on their core performance objectives and that their lack of organization has affected the motivation and accountability of administrators and teachers and therefore, high-stakes testing will make teachers focus on the most critical information (Dee & Jacob, 2011). The Center on Education Policy claims that since the enactment of NCLB in 2002, test scores have increased and thirty-seven states have made medium to large gains (Center on Education Policy, 2007). Its opponents claim that making the assumption that faculty work in their own interests implies that they will respond in a counterproductive manner to mandated accountability policies by only focusing on testable material rather than teaching the larger scope of the subject at hand, which narrows the curriculum commonly referred to as …show more content…
In another poll, 64 percent of superintendents and 73 percent of principals felt that the standardized testing of NCLB was a major concern (Public Agenda Foundation, 2003). However, people do not only find NCLB unfavorable but also that there is too much emphasis on testing which is detracting from instruction for other subjects. In a “Pew Research” poll about the views on education policy, 49 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of independents believed that testing was given too much priority (Pew Research, 2007). Therefore, NCLB is an evolving issue and the polarization it has caused and data found in its regards illustrates its relevance and true controversial