Has "No Child Left Behind" Been the Solution?

The law that is known as "No Child Left Behind'' is the primary statute governing the federal government's role in education. First passed during the Johnson administration as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, it was rebranded as part of its last major overhaul in 2001, when Democrats joined with President George W. Bush to make its focus the use of standardized test scores in schools, particularly those serving minority students.

The Obama administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of what became President Bush's signature education law, calling for broad changes in how schools are judged to be succeeding or failing, as well as for the elimination of the law's 2014 deadline for bringing every American child to academic proficiency.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Mr. Bush made education reform a major plank in his domestic platform, saying that he wanted especially to end the "soft bigotry'' of low expectations for minority students. The test-based system of accountability he proposed appealed to many Republicans, but the vastly increased role for the federal government in an arena traditionally left to the states ran into opposition from conservatives. Many civil-rights groups rallied to the cause of the "No Child Left Behind'' bill, as it was by then called, and with the help of some leading Democrats, notably Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the bill became law -- and Mr. Bush's only solidly bipartisan domestic achievement prior to the Sept. 11th attacks.

The current law calls for every state to set standards in reading and math, and for every student to be proficient at those subjects by 2014. Students in grades 3 through 8 are tested yearly, and reports are issued as to whether schools are making "adequate yearly progress'' toward that goal. The scores of groups like minorities, disabled and non-English speaking students are broken out separately. Schools that fail to make the required annual progress, whether overall or for subgroups, face a mounting scale of sanctions, from being required to provide tutoring to students in poor-performing schools to the threat of state takeovers or the shutting down of individual schools.

But has the "No Child Left Behind" act been a solution or a crunch on a system already crippled? And what are the challenges that teachers face in the current era of teaching? The New York Times article "Building a Better Teacher" by Elizabeth Green touches on these points and I encourage you all to check it out at the link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?emc=eta1