How does the No Child Left Behind Act affect Leadership in Early Childhood programs - Research Paper Example

There is a conflict between the student’s learning ability and performance and the reputation of the school. Hence it might be difficult for the schools to achieve the targets set by the act unless suitable changes are applied.  How does the ‘No Child Left Behind’ Act affect Leadership in Early Childhood programs       The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001(NCLB) is a breakthrough educational reform that has been designed to improve achievement of the student and alter the American schooling culture.

The then president George Bush signed the NCLB Act on 8th January 2002 as he earmarked its inception as the start of a new era. NCLB’s aim is to guarantee quality as well as equality in educational provision to all students to bridge the gap between the underprivileged students and their prosperous peers. The major functions of NCLB are to support learning activities in the nascent ages of education thereby ensuring prevention of any difficulties in learning processes that might arise later, provide more information regarding a child’s progress and performance to his/her parents, improve quality of teaching and learning by providing requisite information to principals of schools and the teachers, enrich the schools with more and better resources, provide more funds to research oriented programs and curriculums, provide more flexibility, provide attention to things that work in future (No Child Left Behind- A Parent’s Guide, 2003, pp.

1-3; Glenn, & Marytza, 2011, pp 1-2; Nichols, Dowdy,& Nichols, 2010, pp. 1-2). The paper will assess whether the act has been effectual with respect to the early childhood programs and how it affects leadership in such programs.                The NCLB Act has been subject of appraisal as well as criticism from various circles, though it has obtained very little notice in the legal literature and mostly due to its overemphasis on testing. There has been a bifurcation among the academicians regarding the feasible targets and real achievements of the NCLB Act.

Those in support of this Act are of the view that it has completely succeeded in achieving its impressive targets and they often promote the hard accountability procedures of the NCLB Act. Many academicians and politicians have criticized NCLB’s policies that focus on testing as the main mode of assessment of the progress of a school. They also blame the federal government for heavily interfering with the local and state authorities on issues of education while miserably failing to supply requisite funds for the proceeds of this Act.

In truth, the NCLB Act does highlight a quandary at the root of all test-based methods of accountability. However, testing alone is not sufficient to assess the school‘s proper assessment. It in turn binds the teachers to teach things that are related to the syllabus and books and not the wider aspects of the curriculum, which would lead to a time loss, which could have been utilized, on other educational purposes. Moreover, it encourages institutions that play the leading role in such programs to drop out underperforming students rather than expand resources to help these students perform well in their education.

The Act is so designed to elevate the segregation by race as well as class, and throw lower performing students out of the school, which makes it even harder for the destitute students to carry on their competition with the more affluent pupils. The Act claims to provide the best of the