No Child Left Behind?

So President George W. Bush encouraged the No Child Left Behind act and signed it readily when it came to him. He claimed that it would help determine which schools in the US are not meeting the standards that were set for that school by either their district or state and create a new focus of education in America.

Now we know which schools are not meeting the standards. And what would you expect a bill that is supposed to help improve education across America do for these school that are struggling to meet their standards? Give them a financial boost to help them improve or re-energize their schools. But wait, what does the bill actually do? It cuts federal funding from the schools that are not meeting their set standard.

Does this make sense? I do not believe so. When you come across a person in the desert begging for water, you don't force a glass of sand down their throat, you give them the water that they ask for. Cutting federal funding from a school that is failing to meet their standards is only going to make matters worse. Sure, you can cut extra-curricular activities, art, and music from the school to save money and focus on the standards, but then where will children get to experiment with various extra-curricular activities, where will they get to experiment with art and music? What happens to creativity and the desire to perform if we force children to dive into textbooks and chalkboards all day without something else to channel their creative, artistic, and energetic impulses?

Now, besides curriculum, there are two other factors that also should be questioned. The more glaring problem is the fact that the state or district can set their standards to a point that is so low that their students will easily meet those standards and not really "prove" what they know. If I was the super-intendant of a school board I would demand lower standards so that I could have the students meeting those standards without spending the money on just what the government believes is important content. Math, reading, writing, and science are the most important, leaving physical education, art, and music out of the picture, even though we want out children to be able to experience and choose art, music, and PE classes that interest them. With the federal money I would not neglect teaching the students the "important" subjects, but rather use that money to help keep and/or improve the music and arts classes so our children can continue to become the next Michelangelo or Bach.

The other issue that needs to be brought up is how the standards are assessed. I remember taking a NCLB standardized test that I was informed would have no impact on my grade in high school. After being told that, why should I bother taking it if there is no impact on my grade? I took the test and I gave an effort, but nothing near what I gave on the SAT or ACT. If i knew something I put it down, and if I didn't know it I just put down an answer and continued on. I didn't see any reason for me to care about the test if it didn't affect my grade, so I may not have scored as meeting the standard, although on all the other standardized tests I performed at a post high school level since I was in 7th Grade, so even at a partial attempt I more than likely met the standard. What about students who don't want to be in school, or those students that have special needs? Do we hold them to the same standards even though they dislike school or struggle with concepts that students without special needs know easily? We do, but we shouldn't. Otherwise we are allowing a bias before even passing out the test because there are students that have special needs or won't care about how they do in school. Another part of the issue of standardized tests are the tests themselves. Are they truly standardized? Are there no biases? Is the test reliable? Is the test valid? Not only do we worry about the test questions, but we also worry about the answers. Is it better to have true and false questions, multiple choice questions, short answer questions, essay questions, or matching? How do they affect the results? We never know because each class and each student is different, so can we really have a standardized test?

It sounds great, but can we really expect that we will not leave a child behind?