Nclb Debate

Since George W. Bush first introduced the NCLB bill, the landscape of politics in America has essentially reversed. From 2001-2010, we had a Republican President and a conservative Congress. Since that time, the political continuum of pivotal politics completely flipped. We now have a liberal President on the other end of the spectrum, and a democrat majority Senate. This is an important switch to note. This change in the political landscape of our country also changed along with it the veto and filibuster pivots in Congress. So how will this new look in Washington effect the reauthorization of NCLB? Since we now have opposing political parties in the House and Senate, there is a small chance that we will see an agreement on a reauthorization.

There are some issues with NCLB that will need to be addressed by Congress when thinking about revisions. The entire system of NCLB is based on a test. This angers teachers in many ways. Because the whole system centers on a standardized test, teachers are no longer teaching students new and exciting curriculum to help them grow. There is no more individualized instruction; everything is scripted curriculum to prepare kids for the test. “The law's annual testing requirements in math and reading have led many schools to pump up the amount of time they spend teaching these two staples — often at the expense of other subjects, such as history, art or science.” (Blass, 2007) Another problem is that the assessment doesn’t take individual learning into account. There is no correction for a learning disability in a student, or for students in Special Ed. Rob Andrews put it best by saying, “A school's AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) should not be based on standardized tests that fail to account for a child's cognitive capacity… in many cases [the standardized test] is beyond the abilities of special education students.” (Andrews,

President Obama and the conservative house lie on opposite sides of the status quo. For this reason it is hard to believe that a reauthorization will be agreed upon. We can assume that both sides will try to make changes to the bill that will move it further to the left or the right from where it sits currently; almost dead center. If it moves to the left, the republicans would rather have the current status quo because it is closer to their beliefs; just like if the new bill moves to the right, then democrats would rather have the status quo because it’s closer to