One thing is for sure: educators are very much hoping that President-Elect Obama’s administration will overhaul the No Child Left Behind act. This is largely because the legislation that was so popular when it was first proposed has proved to be a large…we’ll go with “mess” since this is a family site.

When it comes to education, the No Child Left Behind act had noble goals: make sure that students were really learning and that school districts were not getting paid to merely baby-sit kids but to actually teach them. The problem stems from how learning is judged under the act. Under No Child Left Behind, a child’s education is judged solely upon his or her performance on a standardized test.

The standardized test has been used for decades to determine how well students were learning basic skill sets in individual states. Because schools are publicly funded, tax payers wanted to make sure that their teachers (who have the hardest job in the world) were earning their (tiny) salaries. Before the No Child Left Behind act, however, teachers weren’t forced to teach “to the test” and were able to cover a wider variety of materials that taught students how to think. Now, after the passing of this act, students are taught how to test well.

Another criticism of the No Child Left Behind act is that it provides incentives for teachers and school districts to lower education standards to both keep their federal funding and to keep from having to push the students who do not perform well from the district altogether.

Read the rest of this entry »

Related posts

• 6 Ways To Overcome Anger At Special Education Personnel For The Good Of Your Child
• Education: The Practice and Profession of Teaching
• Free Scholarship Search Vs Paid Scholarship Searches
• Lies About Special Education Eligibility and 6 Ways to Overcome Them!
• Education and the Soul: Toward a Spiritual Curriculum