I have changed my opinion about The No Child Left Behind Act as I read and talk more about it. Although it seems like a good law because it targets improvement, and demands teachers and students to work hard, there are other factors to consider that might affect student's education and the way we as educators teach. One of the most important factors to me is the fact that some teachers are "teaching to the test", meaning that they focus more on teaching how to become excellent test takers instead of teaching the aims of the curriculum. If students are taught strategies to become good test takers they will not know how to apply the knowledge they received in school in their real life situations. Although learning how to take tests is also part of learning, I think we should focus more on preparing students for the the upcoming changes (such as technology), and not focus so much on the test-taking strategies.
Another factor is that they goal seems to be unrealistic, taking in consideration that students have different learning styles, therefore this law will become a challenge for some of them. Of course there should be some improvement every year, by which teachers, students, and parents, are encouraged to work more to improve childre's academic skills. But it is not reasonable to compare nor judge schools that have different population, groups of students with different learning styles and mental disabilities.
2 comments:
Thank you for this insightful post.
I am sure at the time it was passed, NCLB seemed like a good idea. however, it has proved to be quite flawed.
Do you have any suggestions as to how lawmakers can improve it?
My suggestions to lawmakers of the NCLB would be to be more flexible with the program and to develop new standards to monitor the progress of non-English speaking students.
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