No Child Left Behind: Are There More Negative Than Positive Effects?

When I was in High School, I remember that every year we had to prepare for standardized testing. It was like we were being “taught to the test”. When we had to prepare for the standardized tests, there was a lot of emphasis on Reading, Writing, Science, and Math. The main reason why there was so much test prep in these certain subjects throughout the school year was because of the No Child Left Behind Act that was signed into law in 2002. Even though the No Child Left Behind Act has some things that are positive about it, there are also some negative things about it. The No Child Left Behind Law helps teachers be accountable for what they teach and it gives them a standard of what is important to teach, but it might be hurting our students more than it is helping them.

The first negative result about it is that According to the website Educational Research, The No Child Left Behind Act is “setting one standard of knowledge” for children to learn. The No Child Left Behind Law is causing students to not have intellectual freedom. The reason why these things are happening is because there is more emphasis in Reading, Writing, Math and Science then in other subjects like Social Studies, Art, and Music. If you think about it, it seems like the No Child Left Behind Law is telling people what they should learn instead of people deciding what they want to learn themselves.

The second negative result that comes from the No Child Left Behind Law is that there is a lack of imbalance between students and how much attention they get from their teachers. To further explain this, the students have to meet a standard whenever they do standardized tests. If the student meets the standard of these standardized tests, they usually do not have any problems. But if they do not meet the standard, they can feel like they are failures and they need more help with trying to meet that standard than other students do. The students who are lagging behind often get more attention then what the kids who meet the standard do. According to the video No Child Left Behind: Truths and Consequences, Gerald Bracey, an educational researcher, says “Students will have to reach 100% proficiency by the year 2014.” This means that all students have to meet a certain standard by the year 2014, and this will cause a stressful situation for both teachers and students.

A third negative result that comes out of the No Child Left Behind Law is that it is causing students from K-12 to become more segregated then what they normally would. Whenever these students are given a standardized test, they have to bubble in what ethnicity they are, how old they are and what their income level is. According to the video No Child Left Behind: Truths and Consequences, a school has to meet what is called an AYP (academic yearly progress) each year, and if they do not meet one of the categories, the school can be labeled as a failing school and the students might have to go to another school, which can cause even more segregation within the educational system.

As you can see, there are negative results that come out of the No Child Left Behind Law. No Child Left Behind is causing students to struggle. This law does help teachers to know what they teach, but they cannot be creative enough and the children themselves do not have much intellectual freedom. Children who are in school are being taught that they should only care about Reading, Writing, Science and Math and that they should not care about other subjects such as Art, Social Studies and Music. This law is keeping children from reaching their full potential and it is putting stress on them because they feel like if they do not meet the standard that they are failures. It puts stress on the schools too because if they do not meet the AYP, their schools are labeled as a failing school. To sum it up, this law is holding everyone back and we should do away with it. If we do not, more children will have to face these problems in the future.

Sources

“YouTube – No Child Left Behind: Truths and Consequences.” YouTube – Broadcast Yourself. 4 Sept. 2007.Web. 04 Apr. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=hSTzLILQx3c>.

Educational Research Newsletter. “Pros and Cons of NCLB: What the Research Says.”Educational Research | Education Training | ERNweb. 2006. Web. 04 Apr.2011. <http://www.ernweb.com/public/892.cfm&gt;.