Title: No Child Left Behind-Successes and Failures – TFD Supplies
Headings: No Child Left Behind-Successes and Failures
No Child Left Behind-Successes and Failures
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Content: In more affluent communities, where property taxes help to fund the schools, students had access to the resources necessary to thrive academically and as such, were neither at risk for losing funding nor in need of said funding. Schools in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods began to lose funding and resources necessary to operate schools at the most basic of levels and often saw a decrease in educational progress. Instead of being motivated to effectively improve student achievement, many school districts in poorer neighborhoods instead saw increased state oversight, school closures, and restructuring as a means to mask the ineffectiveness of policies and procedures centered solely on preparing students for standardized testing. The enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act was done on good intentions. Lawmakers, concerned with the status of the American institution of education, set out to devise a plan of corrective action to jump-start states and school districts into requiring and expecting improvement in achievement amongst all students and not just amongst those with access to considerable resources. While well intended, the act failed to acknowledge the pitfalls of how a punitive system would affect the most vulnerable and disadvantaged students in the country. Instead of acting as a motivator for improvement, the act instead relied too heavily on standardized testing, enacted heavy punishment to schools and districts already struggling and levied resources for progress when many schools needed additional resources in order to meet even minimal benchmarks. While NCLB has been abandoned and replaced with the Every Student Succeeds Act it is important to note that, while many critics of NCLB claim that the act was an overall failure, there were some key components that worked and should be continued in the future. Most notably the implementation of a system for the collection and reporting of achievement data, as well as policy for implementing effective change based on data collected. In the end, education policy will remain fluid as times change, but by learning from past mistakes and successes, education systems at the state and federal level can continuing striving for student success.