Contemporary Issues of NCLB - The No Child Left Behind Act - Essay Example

Running Header: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES OF NCLB Contemporary Issues of NCLB: The No Child Left Behind Act BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE HERE NUMBER HERE Contemporary Issues of NCLB: The No Child Left Behind Act Introduction In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson aimed to tackle poverty in a national economic environment where children hailing from low-income families were not receiving quality education. A rise in youth school dropout rates and ongoing skills gaps in the most fundamental subjects, such as reading and writing were considered to have long-term, negative implications on the national economy. As a result, the presidential administration declared a war on poverty which included the implementation of legislation known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Student achievement in the most fundamental academic skills continued to decline, especially in low-income school districts. Therefore, the ESEA was designed to serve as a funding source for elementary and secondary education in the United States was designed to provide funding for better educational resources, allocate funding for public schools with a need for additional financial support and provide government-sponsored grants that would enhance the quality of state departments of education. Over the decades since the inception of ESEA, it was determined that revision of the ESEA was required to meet the needs of contemporary students in America. This need led to the implementation of the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 in the Clinton administration and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 which both enhanced the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to make educational reform more relevant for modern academic needs. However, there is still a need for further educational reform that surpasses the relevancy of the NCLB as there are measurable deficiencies related to this Act. This essay explores the issues associated with NCLB which mandate further revisions to this Act in order to fully address the problems in today’s public school districts. The Issues The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, whilst a valuable piece of legislation to ensure higher quality of education, fails to address certain issues in today’s society. This revision to the ESEA does not properly address the goal of promoting bilingualism. In many of today’s public schools, there is a measurable shortage of educators with the proficiency and training to provide bilingual learning for children in elementary and secondary schools. It is estimated that there are nearly 5.1 million students in need of English-as-a-second-language instruction throughout the United States (Cuellar, De la Colina and Battle, 2007). With growth in migrant children now enrolled in public schools throughout the country, bilingual teaching has become a paramount need to ensure that students have the English skills required to be active adult contributors to the American economy. The problem, however, is that NCLB no longer supports the national objective of promoting bilingual education. The Improving America’s School Act of 1994 did maintain funding provisions for bilingualism and English language acquisition programs. However, this emphasis has been eliminated through NCLB, which is a substantial omission for the millions of students that do not maintain the basic English language skills required to integrate them into the American system. Research indicates that minority language students have severe academic disadvantages in comparison to native-speaking students. Therefore, schools require funding to ensure that minority-language students do not continue to have relentless social and academic-based disadvantages. To illustrate the severity of this problem, Rhodes (2014) describes a situation of a public elementary school in Maryland that had, under the IASA legislation, implemented a quality bilingual program for the state’s students in need of bilingual education. However, after the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act, a complete lack of federal funding forced the school district to dismantle these courses even though the school had proven that the bilingual courses had achieved outcomes of better comprehension of the English language and understanding of English-based academic curriculum (Rhodes). This is a phenomenon not only affecting Maryland, but in many school districts that no longer have the ability to fund bilingual programs as a result of bilingual education omissions in this new revision to the ESEA. Therefore, English-as-a-second language students are left to struggle in the classroom to gain the most foundational comprehensions of the English language that is critical to understanding the academic content provided in classrooms where the majority of students fully comprehend English. Funding for bilingual programs is critical as research shows that Hispanics, as one minority group, are often referred to special education (remedial) programs in today’s public schools (Tienda and Mitchell, 2006). This is because elementary school teachers often misjudge the literacy competency of Hispanic youths and therefore consider them candidates for these remedial programs even though the problem is merely a lack of English language instruction (Tienda and Mitchell). Research supports that Hispanics in need of bilingual education, and actually receive this instruction, have more desire to take the SAT as adolescents and receive placement in advanced education programs (Tienda and Mitchell). Therefore, with NCLB maintaining no quality provisions for bilingual education, Hispanics throughout the country might miss out on opportunities to increase their academic proficiency which could have long-term implications well into adulthood. These problems could potentially be mitigated if NCLB maintained a national goal of improving bilingual education. Yet another issue and criticism with NCLB is that it allows the federal government to intrude into what has traditionally been state authority as it pertains to education. The 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution intended to segregate state-level and federal-level powers. The Amendment asserts that powers which are not delegated specifically to the federal government, nor prohibited by State authorities, must be reserved to States. In several landmark cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution does not explicitly allocate authorities to the federal government as it relates to educational matters. The problem, therefore, is that NCLB grants significant authority to the federal government in terms of regulating standards by which public schools receiving federal funding conduct educational practices. To illustrate, the No Child Left Behind Act mandates that schools must meet a specific standard, known as Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). For example, fifth graders in the year 2015 who take standardized tests must perform better on these tests than fifth graders from 2014. If this progress is not illustrated and reported, these schools become listed as schools in need of improvement and must determine a two-year plan for improving student achievement in a particular domain of study where the weaknesses have been illustrated. If this under-performance is still a weakness after four years, NCLB gives the federal government jurisdiction to force termination of the educational staff at the under-performing school or mandate the introduction of a wholly-new curriculum program. The federal government can also force the school to close, transform it into a charter school, or mandate that a private organization take over operations and administration of the school. This level of authority of the federal government defies the intention of the 10th Amendment of the Constitution and removes considerable levels of authority from the state. The concept of Adequate Yearly Progress does not take into consideration that there might be mitigating circumstances which lower student performance on various standardized tests. For example, elementary and secondary schools maintain students with bilingual education needs or disabled pupils that have special needs that differ from their peers. Additionally, the AYP mandate of NCLB might force teachers to work solely to get students to pass the standardized test, reducing their ability to be more creative and innovative instructors that ensure students have multiple comprehension outcomes. The significant powers placed over the federal government related to NCLB are criticized as being unrealistic and not relevant for the plethora of circumstances that might lead to performance declines in meeting the guidelines associated with standardized testing improvements year-on-year. To demand reforms for NCLB, state representatives and educational organizations can lobby the government, a right under the law (Alexander, Mazza and Scholz, 2009). However, in the current economic state of the federal government, Congress is already having severe difficulties in funding the plethora of obligations it has already established. To illustrate, in March of 2015, the government nearly faced a total shutdown of the government due to insufficient financial resources capable of meeting its funding obligations. There is little likelihood, therefore, that lobbying government representatives to force legislative changes to No Child Left Behind will meet with success. Therefore, in a situation where lobbying, in the short-term, will probably not meet with positive return on investment, NCLB continues to provide the federal government which depletes educational system authorities from the state. Enacting revisions to NCLB which limit federal regulatory authority, still remains a problem with the Act in an environment where the federal government is unwilling to relinquish its established regulatory powers. Lobbying is not a direct problem associated with the Act itself, however it is the most common method of getting federal government representatives to work toward enacting legislative revisions to established pieces of law. The Act fails to meet the long-term needs of millions of students in the United States, however bringing these issues to the attention of cash-strapped federal government representatives will be quite difficult for states and school systems that require the Act to be more relevant for the tangible needs of today’s students. Conclusion As illustrated, the NCLB maintains problems with promoting bilingualism in today’s schools and also allowing states to have more authority over the performance and quality of today’s education. The Act requires revisions, as did previous Acts designed to foster better educational quality. Without these revisions, minority students in need of English education and the disabled will continue to bear the largest burden of NCLB which fails to recognize more realistic circumstances of today’s education system. While NCLB does provide important funding for elementary and secondary schools, the Act does not maintain realistic provisions that are aligned with the legitimate needs of diverse students throughout the United States. In 1994, the goal of promoting bilingualism was considered an important concept, however in just seven years, this national goal seems to have lost its focus even though the research clearly indicates that students in need of bilingual education are better capable of gaining those skills necessary to improve the American economy in the long-term. It is clear that NCLB maintains many critical issues that need correction and consideration if the educational system is to be sufficient for meeting the needs of all students. References Alexander, Raquel M., Mazza, Stephen W. & Scholz, Susan. (2009). Measuring Rates of Return for Lobbying Expenditures: An Empirical Case Study of Tax Breaks for Multinational Corporations. Journal of Law and Politics, 25(401). Cuellar, Roxane, De La Colina, Maria G. & Battle, Jennifer. (2007). A Survey Study Examining Pre-Service Teachers’ thoughts about Recruitment and Retention of Quality Bilingual Teachers. National Forum of Teacher Education Journal, 17(3), pp.1-15. Rhodes, Jesse H. (2014). An Education in Politics: The Origin and Evolution of No Child Left Behind. New York: Cornell University Press. Tienda, Marta & Mitchell, Faith. (2006). Hispanics and the Future of America. Washington: National Academies Press. Read More