The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 - Assignment Example

With crises, there are opportunities. With opportunities, there is power. With power, there is responsibility. Through the 20th century, the Federal government of the United States has grown steadily larger, justifying its increased responsibilities with crises. The citizenry of our republic expect their elected officials to provide solutions for problems that affect the entire nation. This expectation exists because of a precedent being set: a precedent of Federal expansion into industries and areas of our daily lives previously untouched by government interference. The American public has fallen into such complacency such that they no longer mind delegating responsibilities for health care and education to bureaucrats in Washington, as opposed to state representatives, as the Founding Fathers and framers of the Constitution originally intended. The proof is in the print, or, more specifically, the Tenth Amendment, which safeguards us against aggressive expansion of Federal powers. Education, along with other civil services, lacks mention in the Constitution, and therefore is within the power of the states. Regulation from the Federal level, in addition to being empirically ineffective and wasteful, is constitutionally illegitimate. Standards-based (or standardized) education reform cannot improve individual outcomes in education, serving only to waste valuable resources. To say that such legislation as No Child Left Behind, following in the progressive tradition, needs reform is erroneous; in matter of fact, it needs annulment and education remains the rightful domain of the states. Perhaps the most potent reason why Federal education reform like the No Child Behind Act is unallowable is not the fact that it fails on all accounts to bring about the change it promises, but the fact that it is constitutionally unlawful. Nevertheless, No Child Left Behind is merely the newest add-on to a lineage of nonsensical legislation, beginning with the progressive Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. What public officials would laugh out of court in 1800, based on a clear contradiction with the United States’ founding document, is being passed zealously in today's Congress because of a perceived “emergency of the first order” (Thompson). Bill Graves, a Republican state legislator from Oklahoma, stated publically in an interview, “The constitutions gives Congress no power to legislate as to education. That’s not part of the new rated powers of Congress under Article I. And the Founding Fathers saw fit to leave that—all that matter to the states” (Graves). Federal powers are a matter of precedent, insofar as Congress is checked by a judicial system that works by extending conclusions from previously heard cases. The No Child Left Behind Act, as a piece of Federal legislation, sets forth the precedent of increased Federal regulation over schools meant to be controlled and regulated locally. Since the Federal government has no constitutional authority to enforce these regulations and laws, participating in them is optional for states that wish to receive the benefits of participating (Holland). While this does not provide justification for annulling the Act, it surely ought to make one question the purpose of optional regulation. The most effective argument against No Child Left Behind legislation, and related Federal regulatory steps in education, consists of appeals to their ineffectiveness. In order for these programs to appear viable, they must have some objective measure of success, which is usually a battery of standardized tests (tests taken under the same conditions) that all students must complete. These tests either (a) lower the quality of education insofar as they encourage so-called “teaching the test”, or (b) cannot show the true intellectual development of an individual through time. The practice of standardized testing itself may be inherently biased, discriminating against members of different cultures and of different abilities. These differences may in fact make the expectation that all students complete the same test under the same conditions unrealistic. If, for example, blind students cannot be read the exam, then there is no possible way in which they can pass it (Ralabate). An education system as worthless as the one found in the United States is rendered even more incompetent when student performance is measured as a matter of performance on a single test, so far removed from the real world application of what is on it. Standardized tests reflects the one-size-fits-all philosophy of Federal programs. The practice of standardized tests and the institution of Federal regulation over public schools prevent different, more pressing problems having to do with incentivizing the wrong kind of education. No Child Left Behind, in particular, incentivizes discriminating against low performing students, which typically fall into traditionally disadvantaged race and class segments. As a result, schools tend to set expectations lower rather than higher to avoid punitive measures on the school itself. In Dallas in particular, children are being left behind, almost 60 percent of the 1,000 homeless children in the city for whom it is “too much of a hassle” for schools to educate them (Waghorne). Interestingly, such legislation incentivizes against the high-performing students equally as much as the low-performing ones (Cloud). No Child Left Behind forces schools, in essence, to ration education such that the core subjects are taught sufficiently well. Education for especially gifted children is being lost along the way. In addition, curriculum not dealing with the core subjects has been cut dramatically. Childhood obesity has set in from restricting recess so that teachers can teach the test (Trickey); arts, social studies, and languages have been stripped; American students, having a basic understanding of math, reading, and writing, are sorely deficient in history and literature. In the process, future geniuses are being made below average by a below average school system and, frankly, putting the future of our nation at risk, as it is these individuals on whom it all depends. Given the size and scope of the Federal and Congressional investment in this program, we ought to hope that the regulation does more than improve “public perception” of the education system. According to a study, a greater percentage of those surveyed view No Child Left Behind as more hurtful than beneficial to students, and about twenty-three percent give the nation’s schools a ration of D or worse (Center for Public Education). However, given the statistics relating to the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the No Child Left Behind Act, it is unlikely how an informed citizen could see the program as beneficial when compared to its costs. From 2001 to 2007, funding for the program has increased from $42 billion to $54 billion, making it one of the largest parts of the Federal budget (Aspey, Colby and Smith). In 2008, a study discovered that in twelve states between 2004 and 2006, the Reading First program was “ineffective” for a group of students grades one to three (Gamse, Bloom and Kemple). Reading First, a program aimed at applying research in teaching methods to classroom, is a major portion of the No Child Left Behind Act’s budget. Other devastating criticisms of assigning educational responsibilities to a Federal government exist but fall outside of the quantitative, economic failure of such legislation relative to the actual effects it leaves on our children and thus our future (Hursh). Another potential argument that politicians have certainly made in favor of this piece of legislation (besides the improvement it makes with public perception of public education), is the increase in accountability for teachers and educators. They say that the program links standards with outcomes and measures performance with an objective method of testing. In doing so, the program encourages parental and administrative involvement with individual students. However, there is no clear evidence for any of these claims (McKenzie). Although the program may link standards with outcomes, the problems with the institution of standardized testing have already been addressed. Without a good measurement tool of progress, outcomes remain unclear and standards unachievable. The same goes for parental and administrative involvement: although the program may “encourage” an activity, that by no means entails they will become involved. If a teacher encourages a child to participate in class, there is still no reason to believe that the child will voluntarily do so. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 represents another move toward centralizing the education system. Contrary to the arguments supporting its “efficiency” and “expediency”, the Act’s demonstrable failure consists in its inability to treat individual students as nothing more than a number. Just as with all Federal programs, the one-size-fits-all is clearly not the best solution for fixing any kind of education, as education is predicated on the existence of a real relationship between student and teacher. When the teacher is compelled to strike out all other subjects besides reading, writing, and math, the quality of education is severely impacted. The prospect of implementing “scientifically based” methods of teaching has been argued against, and there is no reason to support standardized tests as a proper basis for allocating public funding. These same tests actively discriminate against individuals of different abilities and cultures who find taking the test difficult given the context of their birth and upbringing. The program incentivizes schools to move high- and low-performing children to the outskirts, and treating all students as if they are the same. Bibliography Aspey, Susan, Chad Colby and Valerie Smith. Fiscal Year 2007 Budget Request Advances NCLB Implementation and Pinpoints Competitiveness. Press Release. Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2006. Center for Public Education. Public opinion on public schools and No Child Left Behind. 28 August 2007. 22 April 2009 . Cloud, John. "Are We Failing Our Geniuses?" Time Magazine 16 August 2007: 14-23. Dusenberry, Mary Branham. "Not as Easy as ABCs." May 2007. The Council of State Governments. April 2009 . Gamse, Beth C., et al. Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report. Interim Report. Washington D.C.: Institute of Education Sciences, 2008. Graves, Bill. No Child Left Behind: A Debate on the Privatization of Education Amy Goodman. 12 March 2004. Holland, R. "Critics are many, but law has solid public support." School Reform News. Chicago, IL: The Heartland Institute, 1 March 2004. Hursh, David. "The Growth of High-Stakes Testing in the USA: Accountability, Markets and the Decline in Educational Equality." British Educational Research Journal 31:5 (2005): 602-622. McKenzie, Jamie. Gambling with the Children. 1 January 2003. 3 May 2009 . Ralabate, Patti. "Statement of Patti Ralabate." 2 August 2006. National Education Association. 22 April 2009 . Thompson, C. Bradley. Is phonics-rich instruction, as pushed by the White House, needed in U.S. classrooms? 29 March 2004. 23 April 2009 . Trickey, Helyn. No child left out of the dodgeball game? 24 August 2006. 22 April 2009 . Waghorne, James. No Child Left Behind -- Except in Dallas. 26 August 2003. 4 May 2009 . Wallis, Claudia and Sonja Steptoe. "The Big Fixes Now Needed for No Child Left Behind." Education Digest 72:7 (2007): 4-11. Read More