The No Child Left Behind Program - Research Paper Example

? Has the No Child Left Behind Act Severely Impacted Special Needs by Expecting Them to Do Things That “Normal” Kids do? Inserts His/Her Name Customer Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name 2 April 2012 Abstract. The No Child Left Behind Program enhances the education of the special needs students. The No Child Left Behind Program increases the special needs learners’ scores. The test taking environment of the special needs test takers is enhanced to fit the special learning needs of each diversely handicapped student. Indeed, the No Child Left Behind Act does not severely impact the special needs students by expecting them to do things that “Normal” Kids do, with the lawfully required accommodations implemented to bring out the special child’s learning potentials snugly implemented. Introduction. The No Child Left Behind Program enhances the education of the special needs students. The research centers on the effect of the No Child Left Behind Program on the special needs learners. The research focuses on the test taking environment of the special needs test takers. The No Child Left Behind Act had not severely impacted special needs students by expecting them to do things that “Normal” Kids do. Related Literature. The No Child Left Behind Program states that the progress of all special education students should be monitored (PBS, 2008). Likewise, the program states the scores of the special Needs students will be included in getting the average scores of the students within a stat by 2014. Specifically, 95 percent of the learning disabled students’ scores in the English and Math subjects will in included in the overall state’s student tests’ statistical results. To level the playing field in the area of test taking, some leeway is legally given to the disabled learners. One such leeway, giving the disabled students tests incorporating large print questionnaires. Next, the special needs test takers are given more time to take the tests. Third, the special needs students allowed to take the tests in small groups, compared to the normal test groups. Fourth, the special needs students can be allowed to take the tests on a one on one basis. Fifth, some of the test watchers or teachers are allowed to aid the students on how to fill up the answer sheets. Sixth, the blind students are allowed to take the tests using the Braille method. Seventh, some special needs students are allowed to use sign language and other communication help to finish the tests. Eight, some of the special needs students are allowed to use computers to finish the tests. Lastly, many of the special needs students are allowed to use bilingual test booklets to solve math problems (English and Spanish version or English and another language version). Further, the No Child Left Behind Program requires all schools that fail the state’s Adequate Yearly Progress goals in math and reading are classified as “in need of improvement”. Consequently, the school is required to put into place an educational program to improve the school’s ratings in the next Adequate Yearly Progress results in the areas of reading and mathematics. On the other hand, Alice Hammel (2011) insists the No Child Left Behind Act has severely impacted on the schools for the failure of the Special Needs Students by expecting them to do things that normal kids do, not the special needs children. The schools will receive complaints if the rights of the special needs children are not addressed. For example, students with emotional needs must be educated and tested in a special way, different from the normal learning kids. The students with behavioral needs, including ADHD students, should be taught in a special way to ensure the student will not be bored and reduce interest in the subject. In addition, the special needs children’s learning environment includes parental intervention. The procedural due process includes giving leeway to students with special learning needs to cope with the learning levels of the normal students. The parents are persuaded to come to the learning aid of their child. The parents’ involvement is part of the schools’ special education program to ensure the special education students will get test scores comparable with the normal students’ test results. The responsiveness to intervention is the rallying cry to increase the scores of the special education students. Likewise, Gaston Alonson (Alonso, 2009) emphasized “’The tragedy unfolding in our inner cities is a time- slice of a deep historical process that runs far back through the cataracts and deluge of our racist past. Most black Americans have by now miraculously escaped its consequences. The disconnected fifth languishing in the ghettos is the remains (p 31).” Patterson centers his remarks on the teenagers who were wallowing in the ghettos, people who did not make the grade in terms of graduating from high school or to being promoted to the next academic level. The next academic level is college. Patterson reports the respondent teenagers are deeply entrenched in the culture of their preferred pastime ‘cool pose.’ For the same teenagers, Patterson observed, the culture “was simply too gratifying to give up. The teenagers likened the culture to an addictive drug. Loitering around the nearby streets after school was over, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual escapades, party drugs, dancing to the lively hip-hop music and enjoyable teenage culture In similar fashion, Tony Booth (2004) reiterated “Inclusion, as an idea, is a feature of the documents regulating curricula and education systems of many countries, though the meaning that it is given differs from country to country and within different elements of the education systems. On our view, inclusion is about consciously putting into action values based on equity, entitlement, community, participation and respect for diversity (p. 2).” The increasing incorporation is often linked with decreasing exclusion. It is focused on decreasing the current levels of inequality, both economic and social, both during the starting positions as well as the opportunities that eventually crop up.” While commonly inclusion is identified with a concern with disabled students or those categorized as having special educational needs, for us it is about educational hindrances to the learning as well as participation activities for all the eager students. It centers on the education discrimination scenes. The scenes include family background, gender, class, sexual orientation, disability, and ethnicity. The researchers' focus on only one criteria of the learners’ identity, the researches cannot incorporate them within the contours of education of all the students. Further, Booth (2004) insists inclusion normally does not incorporate the limits experienced by the enthusiastic learners but centers on the development of the chosen culture's detail, policies and practices in education systems as well as the educational institutions. Consequently, they can respond to the diversity of learners and engender equal cultural values. The research centers on the school curricula and paths of the students' learning organization. The process centers on the development of the learning institutions for both the academic staff and the schools' students, with primary focus on ensuring the implementation of the favorable conditions for learning as well as the outcomes of learning, as well as the reintegrating of special needs education into mainstream education educational scrutiny. It observes participation as including active learner involvement and collaboration and acceptance of every school learner for oneself. This is a transformative concept of the inclusion process of education. It can be easily contrasted with the assimilations or 'melting pot' concept where the students, without taking into consideration their unique identities, gender, backgrounds, interests, attainments or disabilities are meant to fit into a monoculture learning system, with the approved fixed curricula and affirmed teaching and learning approaches. Inclusion is about the prevention of barriers to learning and participation for all children, young people and adults. As part of this process, diversity is assumed, welcomed and viewed as a rich resource rather than seen as a problem. Given the variety and prevalence of exclusionary pressures within society, inclusion has to be seen as a process towards an unattainable goal. An inclusive school is one that is on the move rather than at a destination. Inclusion is about taking real practical steps rather than being caught in the glare of high ideals. But having a view of the destination makes it possible to take a step in the right direction. Further, Tony Booth stated “In most states there is no induction program for newly qualified teachers, but some states do have organized support. Other forms of in-service training and teacher support programs vary considerably between states (p. 9).” In Oregon for example, teachers are originally licensed for three years. This license can be renewed for another six long years. After that classroom instructors must show convincing proof of their advanced proficiency in order to meet the necessary minimum state requirements for the approval of the school's licensing every five years, showing continuing professional development. There is a continuing debate on former President Bush's educational reforms on the No Child Left Behind and Meeting the High Quality Teachers Challenge are being widely argued for its benefits and disadvantages. The educational challenge includes the clamor that by the end of school year 2005-6, all the classroom within the United States has a teacher who is 'highly qualified' to impart knowledge to the knowledge-hungry students. The prioritization of the subject specific knowledge and teachers' responsibility for raising the students' academic intelligence levels is mentioned in the No Child Left Behind reforms. Also, Svi Shapiro (2005) insists “The enduring legacy of Ross Perot's school reforms in Texas is not merely the strengthening of bureaucratic controls at the expense of teaching and learning. It is also the legitimating of a language of accountability as the governing principle in public schools. Incipient in the Perot reforms was the shifting of control over public schooling away from “the public” and away from the profession—and toward business-controlled management accountability systems (p. 77).” The learning systems includes the learners' academic scores on standardized tests to quantify the quality of the teaching results of teachers and principals, and they even use a school's aggregate student scores as data for the comparative “academic test scores” of the respondent academic institutions. Further, Shapiro (2005) opined there were many iterations of the state testing and test-driven curricula put into motion starting when the educational reforms first began under the very popular Perot legislation in Texas during the middle of the 17th century. The current Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) is seldom called or identified by its full name. The Texas test is identified by its advocates in the state government and within the circles of the United States government's business leaders as “the Texas Accountability System,” the test taking reform that realistically sharpened the schools' learning process. It is often classified as the system that pinpoints to the teachers and principals as accountable for the failure of local community's enhancing the current education results. In several educational institutions, tenure for principals was replaced by “performance contracts, '. In addition, the teaching “performance” is quantified by one main indicator—the aggregation of school's academic tests such as the TAAS scores in the school. In addition, Maria Brisk (Brisk, 2004) states “the situational context of education is important: “Learning and development cannot be considered apart from the individual's social environment, the eco-cultural niche” (Newman & Celano, 2001, p. 8). The research of situational aspect aids teachers as well as the learners to combine efforts, especially when both parties come from diverse cultural upbringings. The learners or students, specifically—minority and immigrant learners, also gain from a better comprehension of the learning environment that influences the students’ lives. The learners' progress during their school activities depends on the students’ comprehension and fluency in the English academic skills and on the learners’ ability to learn well within the school's cultural standards. The learners' individual learning activities are assisted or helped by environmental influences. Likewise, Kenneth Saltman (2004) opines “Lockdown is becoming the pervasive reality for working-class youth in public schools that resemble prisons or military camps rather than sites for learning and critical thought. In these schools, replete with metal detectors, armed guards, and periodic searches, poor youth, especially African American and other youth of color are being subjected to increasing levels of physical and psychological surveillance, confinement, and regimentation (p. 127).” The physical prohibitions imposed within the learning institutions’ territory are complemented by the United States government’s national policies and practices in education. The policies include the proper way to school uniforms, increased strictness and standardized procedures of rote education. The policies signify the importance of student discipline, obedience to school authorities, and compliance with all other school policies and procedures. Conversely, Kenneth Saltman (2004) insists the “public schools for wealthy youth resemble palatial edifices, adorned with all of the resources that constitute sites for learning, critical inquiry, and fluid social interchange. These schools are located on spacious grounds and are equipped with state-of-the-art facilities in comfortable, resource-rich environs that encourage the freedom of mobility and thought to discover, problem-solve, and create (p. 15).” The learning environment includes the physical breadth and expanse of the public schools prioritized for the dominant rich white youth. Likewise, the white school environment is complemented by national policies, such as the privatization of the United States public education, the standards movement (SAT, etc.), and enhancing the current math, science, and technology curriculum to signify inherited advantage as well as institutionalized entitlement and endorsement of the students’ creativity, independent thought, and analysis. Also, Ben Porath (2006) states “The mission of expansive education is best described as educationally responding to conflicts while continually supporting the efforts to create a democratic citizen. Multicultural education is best described as the mission to educationally respond to social conflicts, tensions, and differences while creating democratic citizens (p 93).” The learning variances—the fact that diverse culture education does not normally answer to armed misunderstanding but to some influential social tensions and the reality that some of the learning groups included in the conflict are typically distinct along national boundaries. Likewise, David Carr (2004) observes “We have seen that the behavioral experiments of learning theorists are hard put to account for the semantic or meaning-implicated aspects of learning: insofar as the kind of learning presupposed to human education entails some understanding of what is learned, and understanding is a matter of a grasp of its meaning, behavioral psychology seems of questionable utility in accounting for any such educational understanding (p. 100).” Similarly, Amy James (James, 2008) states special needs students have the right to education. The 2004 revised Individuals with Disabilities Act includes helping students with special learning needs the extra time and effort to learn what other children are currently learning, to level the playing field. Under the law, the schools should not reject any students because of one’s disabilities. The schools will determine if the students have disabilities in order to place them under the school’s special education programs (Individual Education Plan). Likewise, the law states that all students, including the students with special learning needs, must have the same appropriate education, without discrimination. The school shall do its best to give similar education to the normal as well as the not so normal students within one classroom environment. Literally, placing the special needs students on the same learning environment as normal students is not realistic. Letting the blind child take the written test, without the benefits of the Braille system, will generate howls of protest from the children and their immediate relatives. Letting the deaf student hear the instructions of the teachers will surely be disadvantageous because the deaf cannot hear the teachers’ words. Telling the mongoloid student answer test questions within the same time limit as the normal student will be outrageous. The state doe not mean literally interpretation in the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Program. Also, Paul Kamoroff (2008) theorizes the Federal Statues’ main purpose of the No Child Left Behind Program is to ensure that the academic proficiency of ALL students is enhanced. All students include both the special needs students and the normal needs students. The No Child Left Behind Program seeks statistical data on the learning aptitudes of both the special needs students and the normal students. The average score of both groups are taken as representative of the state’s academic score. However, the special needs students are allowed some accommodations or modifications. The adjustments are implemented in order to give the special needs students higher academic test scores. To increase the academic scores of the special needs children, the schools are required to hire highly qualified teachers for the special needs students. Further, the Lanterman Development Disabilities Service Act of the California Welfare and Institutions Code mandates that all persons with disabilities have the right to receive services (including learning instructions) to meet their special needs, regardless of degree of handicap, age, or other factors during any stage of the disabled person’s life. Methodology. The proposal focuses on the importance of the No Child Left Behind Program in relation to the Special Needs of the physically and mentally challenged student. The research uses secondary sources to back up the thesis statement. The research focuses on the question “Has the No Child Left Behind Act Severely Impacted Special Needs Students by expecting them to do Things That “Normal” Kids do?” Conclusions and Recommendations. Based on the above discussion, the No Child Left Behind Program improves the learning outcome of the special needs students. The No Child Left Behind Program enhances the special needs learners’ scores. The test taking environment of the special needs test takers is very appropriately tailored to fit the special learning needs of each diversely handicapped knowledge-thirsty child. Indeed, the No Child Left Behind Act does not severely impact the special needs students by expecting them to do things that “Normal” Kids do, with legally compulsory accommodations catered to bring out the special child’s learning potentials snugly implemented. It is highly recommended that the No Child Left Behind Program continue. The program is beneficial to the special needs students. The program offers enough accommodations to the physically and mentally challenged student to enhance one’s academic knowledge and increase academic scores. Additional researches must be included to cover more respondents in other research populations. References: Alonso, G. (2009). Our Schools Suck: Students Talk Back to a Segregated Nation on Failures of Urban education. New York: New York University Press. Booth, T. (2004). Developing Inclusive Teacher education. New York: Routledge Press. Brisk, M. (2004). Situational Context of education. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Press. Carr, D. (2004). Making Sense of education: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Theory of education and Teaching. New York: Routledge Press. Hammel, A. (2011). Teaching Music to Students with Special Needs. New York: University Press. James, A. (2008). School Success for Children with Special Needs. New York: J. Wiley & Sons Press. Kamoroff, P. (2008). The Autism & Special Education Law . New York: AuthorHouse Press. Porath, B. (2006). Citizenship Under Fire: Democratic education in Times of Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Saltman, K. (2004). education as Enforcement. New York: Routledge Press. Shapiro, S. (2005). Critical Social Issues in American education. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Press. No author, (2008). No Child Left Behind’s Impact on Specialize Education. Retrieved April 2, 2012, from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/education/no_child/impact.html Read More