No Child Left Behind Act Pros And Cons - Term Paper
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No Child Left Behind Act Pros And Cons

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The No Child Left behind act was signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 8th, 2002. It was designed to improve student achievements and to help schools and parents work together to create educational solutions for struggling students. The act focuses mainly on standards, accountability, parental options, and to close the achievement gap between low-income and minority students and their peers. The act was designed to provide all children in the public school system with an equal opportunity to obtain a better education. Bush said, "The fundamental principle of this bill is that every child can learn, we expect every child to learn, and you must show us whether or not every child is learning."
The No Child Left Behind act set
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The act requires all public schools receiving federal funding to give a state-wide standardized test to all students 3rd through 8th grade in mathematics and reading. The issue with this, is that these types of tests measure only superficial knowledge and do not measure a child’s critical or creative thinking skills. The standardized tests also assume that every student will test the same, which is not always accurate. The tests do not take into account that students learn in diverse ways and in return will test differently from one another. Also many students are simply just not good test takers due to testing anxiety even though they may know the content of the …show more content…
Since the act has been authorized, classrooms have turned into teaching for the standardized tests only. Teachers use materials from past state-wide states and teach from there. This makes all other teaching material, not on the test, fall to the waist line. The pressure of failing not only affects the teachings of a classroom but also the teachers themselves. The pressure to meet these testing targets have been the causes cheating scandal, one which happened in Atlanta, that is the nation's largest ever, implicating nearly 200 educators and costing taxpayers millions in investigatory and legal

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