No Child Left Behind - Improving Schools and Teacher Effectiveness - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages If a school fails to make AYP for a certain number of years, the school has to improve or face restructuring—which involves firing all of the staff and starting with a completely new faculty. Also, a culture open to learning is instilled in the new staff members. Schools may not make AYP for several reasons. One reason might be that transfer student can bring down the general scores of a school. In fact, “The recent proposal of Senator Joe Lieberman on revamping NCLB school choice provisions suggested providing a safe harbor for one year from AYP calculations for the new out-of-district student transfers.” Schools that do not make AYP are generally schools that have a high number of at-risk students—who, for whatever reason—come from underserved and socioeconomically underprivileged populations. In sum, No Child Left Behind needs to be drastically overhauled so that schools that are not making AYP are not penalized, but rather are being given an extension past 2014 in order to improve further. Putting a timetable on when everyone should be at an ideal level of success is setting everyone up for failure—both students and teachers. Even the best teachers in the world cannot rush success.

Improving schools go hand in hand with improving student performance at these schools that don’t make AYP on a yearly basis. “According to one survey, sixteen to nineteen-year-olds in the high-risk category were almost four times as likely to be high school dropouts as those not in the high-risk category.” Improving schools in the United States is going to be a time-consuming and rigorous task.

In order to improve schools, one of the main foci will be to attempt to raise student test scores by having them take more practice tests, encouraging them to do more independent study outside the class, and encouraging them to complete their assignments in a neat and timely manner. In schools where there is a dense population of at-risk students, it’s important to stress values and social skills as part of the hidden curriculum. That notwithstanding, another integral part of any school is its teaching staff. That having been said, the next issue to be discussed is the quality of the faculty at schools across the country.

There are several factors that influence a student. “At the classroom level, there are three main variables which accounted for the learning of the pupil: time, opportunity, and the quality of instruction. Time and opportunity…influence…the pupil’s learning [directly] whereas the quality of instruction [has an impact on] time and opportunity.” Obviously, what would help tremendously is if a teacher knows how to properly budget his or her time, and spend a majority of class time implementing a lesson and then having the students work. This is the main idea of what education consists of at the high school and elementary stages—whereas college, later on, will have more lecture-style lessons for students.

Assessing teacher effectiveness is not necessarily easy but it must be done in a fair manner. Additionally, students need to be given opportunities to use the skills they learn in the classroom so that they will be adequately prepared to go to college or enter into the working world once they graduate. Teaching children literacy and all the other elements of being an informed and productive citizen of society—throughout elementary and high school—will prepare them and fully equip them for the challenges that lie ahead beyond secondary.

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