No Child Left Behind Act: As Graduation Rates Go Down, School Ratings Go Up“Inherently the system creates a dilemma for principals: comply or educate. Unfortunately we found that compliance means losing students." -- Linda McNeil, the director of the center for education of Rice University.
The Government based on the No Child Left Behind act (NCLB) standardized testing creates a system where dropouts are raising the standard at schools while not improving their education at all. The NCLB leads to the rise of student’s dropout rates. Most students that dropout are Latino, African-American, and ESL due to their incapability of getting pass the standardized testing created by the accountability system. In this article, it focuses on the negative implications on the NCLB act. The accountability system pressures the students and causing them to leave school because the government would use student’s test scores to rate the school. The article discussed 4 major key points on this act. First, if schools ask their low achieving students to leave the school, it would help the school’s rating. Second, schools are allowed to hold back students that are not performing well. This often causes student to drop out. Third, low achieving students are single out due to their liabilities that would most likely affect the school’s rating. Thus, administration of the school would often “encourage” those students to “quietly” leave the school or to transfer to another school. The fourth point that was made is that under the accountability system, they enforced the zero tolerance rules to student’s absences and behaviors. This would actually put students to court, separating them from the school and leads to dropouts. All these consequences are the major reason why there are low graduating rates.
This article particularly draws upon the issue of language and emotion. The article itself is intended to focus on just reason and logic concerns. Students are being forced to learn in a cookie cutter way, and are pressured by schools if the students do not get to a certain degree that is standardized by the NCLB testing. On the surface, the NCLB act sounds like a well thought and constructed plan for the education field. However, it actually demands schools and teachers to have all their students pass the standard. If schools don’t have their students pass the standardized testing, then the government would cut the money off. This means that school would have fewer resources. Less resource, to the school, means unable to hire teachers. Teachers at school would also be pressured by the school since they are in charge of student’s grade. This would further leads to pressuring the students. It is like a domino effect, but works in a cycle that will go over and over. The question that arises from this issue is that should strict logic and reason be the determination of standard in education? In terms of language, it expresses more than words. Language has several aspects to look at. It is a way to express, to control, and to communicate. In this case, language is being contested since the NCLB act is limited to logic and reasoning. The word “standard” is the major wording issue here. Who created the standard? What standard is considered as good standard? This probably has no right or wrong answer. Each student’s learning behaviors are different. There is really no way to put every child on a scale and have them to stand at the same level. It is just not practical to carry out at schools. Also, take the great variability of student’s nationalities into account in terms of language where those students usually have troubles with. The logic behind the NCLB act is to help every child to pass the standardized test to show that they actually received education at school. It is understandable why the government is enforcing this. It is all for the child’s future. However, the government neglected the fact that it actually pushes more kids to dropout. Not every kids are born to the same family background nor are they the same in terms of learning habits and levels. Therefore, it is most unfair to ask every child to reach standard. Some students might happen to be a slow learner and some students just happen to adapt and learn quickly.
Student’s learning could be linked to family issues and psychological issues. This is where emotion comes in. The government took inconsideration on variability in student’s learning ability. It’s almost as treating students like machines. Most of the time, emotion attaches to the learning. For example, kids who have family issues like being abused or parents being alcoholic. All these issues could distract a child’s learning. How do you expect a child to study and learn well in such environment? Certainly, the government did not thought of that when they proposed the act. Personally, I think that the government is smart to think of this act. However, the inner part of this act should be adjusted. First, the government shouldn’t put pressure on schools. Without the pressure, schools can spend more time on teaching students instead of just giving them practice tests to prepare for the test. This then, would be an educational purpose rather than stuffing information to students; students gain knowledge out of this.
In real life, there’s a much similar case to the NCLB act, which is the patients in hospitals. This goes by the same standard. If the hospitals know when patients are not doing well and their condition is poor, they would actually ask the patients to move out of the hospital so they don’t die in their hospital. The more seriously ill patients move out, the less deaths on their record. This would make the hospitals look good as in it cured and saved lives. However, really, this is not the case. Another reason that the hospital is removing patients from the hospitals is to have more patients come in. So, this is debatable like the NCLB act. In a sense, the hospitals are saving more lives from accepting more patients in. However, to accept more patients in and having a good record, the seriously ill patients are most of the times being the minority. Here, we see that the hospital is pushing their patients away as the schools are pushing their kids to leave.
Citation:
Rice University. "Negative Implications Of No Child Left Behind: As Graduation Rates Go Down, School Ratings Go Up." ScienceDaily, 16 Feb. 2008. Web. 19 Sep. 2011.
Student’s learning could be linked to family issues and psychological issues. This is where emotion comes in. The government took inconsideration on variability in student’s learning ability. It’s almost as treating students like machines. Most of the time, emotion attaches to the learning. For example, kids who have family issues like being abused or parents being alcoholic. All these issues could distract a child’s learning. How do you expect a child to study and learn well in such environment? Certainly, the government did not thought of that when they proposed the act. Personally, I think that the government is smart to think of this act. However, the inner part of this act should be adjusted. First, the government shouldn’t put pressure on schools. Without the pressure, schools can spend more time on teaching students instead of just giving them practice tests to prepare for the test. This then, would be an educational purpose rather than stuffing information to students; students gain knowledge out of this.
In real life, there’s a much similar case to the NCLB act, which is the patients in hospitals. This goes by the same standard. If the hospitals know when patients are not doing well and their condition is poor, they would actually ask the patients to move out of the hospital so they don’t die in their hospital. The more seriously ill patients move out, the less deaths on their record. This would make the hospitals look good as in it cured and saved lives. However, really, this is not the case. Another reason that the hospital is removing patients from the hospitals is to have more patients come in. So, this is debatable like the NCLB act. In a sense, the hospitals are saving more lives from accepting more patients in. However, to accept more patients in and having a good record, the seriously ill patients are most of the times being the minority. Here, we see that the hospital is pushing their patients away as the schools are pushing their kids to leave.
Citation:
Rice University. "Negative Implications Of No Child Left Behind: As Graduation Rates Go Down, School Ratings Go Up." ScienceDaily, 16 Feb. 2008. Web. 19 Sep. 2011.
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