No Child Left Behind: Is It Working?

By: Jakob R. Lustick I

Albany, N.Y., November 12, 2007- There is a belief in America that children are the future and their education is of the utmost importance. The No Child Left Behind Act, which was signed by President Bush five years ago, has the intention of improving the education of America’s students.

It is a law that uses a theory called standards-based education reform, and is based on the belief that high expectations and setting of goals will result in success for all students. Students are given tests every year from third grade to eighth grade and at least once in high school. The act requires states to develop criterion-based assessments, which focus on whether a student knows the required content or can do the required skill as outlined in the state's standards.

No Child Left Behind is a controversial law and some in the teaching profession see it as downright harmful to their goals.

“The government is telling us that, the way to improve student performance is to evaluate them every year,” said Susan Rothchild, a speech and language pathologist in the Guilderland school district. “We get to teach kids from September to December and then the testing begins. It's taking away precious time from teaching, and the value of these tests is yet to be seen.”

This appears to be the main criticism of No Child Left Behind and is shared by teachers across the country.

“We can teach children the content and skills required, but if we don’t teach them how they will be assessed, they will not be as successful as they could be.” said Kathy Cathell, a fourth grade teacher in the Schalmont school district. “So we’re left to ‘teach to the test’, which doesn’t mean teaching what’s on the test, it means teaching how to take the test.”

This is a common sentiment.

“Obviously I have to incorporate No Child Left Behind into my courses, and it has made quite an impact on what I have to teach,” said Barbara Govendo, a professor of education at Lesley University. “I almost have to get my students to develop teaching styles with less creativity since they are being forced to teach to the test more than ever. NCLB puts all the focus on doing well on the test and nothing else seems to matter.”

Both Cathell and Rothchild work with special needs children and they share the sentiment that this law is especially causing harm to them.

“Too much time is now spent in preparing students for the state exams...and it's particularly frustrating when some of those students aren't capable of performing within the required parameters, because of their disabilities,” said Rothchild.

This is something most teachers agree with.

“It seems naïve to me to include both “Challenging Academic Standards” and ‘all children’ in the same expectation,” said Cathell. “I’ve had special education students in my class who are one to two years behind in reading and/or math, who are doing their very best every day, and are not going to pass the assessments despite the growth they may have achieved in a year. I don’t have that unrealistic expectation of them, but NCLB does. It focuses on their failures instead of celebrating their growth.”

No Child Left Behind certainly has its supporters however, especially when it comes to special education.

“NCLB has changed the face of special education in many positive ways. Special education teachers must be highly qualified,” said Joanne VanGenderen, the Pupil Personnel director for the Schalmont school district. “Special education teachers who teach the secondary level must meet the NCLB highly qualified criteria. This serves to ensure that students with disabilities receive core educational services only from High Quality teachers. In my upstate suburban school district, hiring and retaining HQ teachers is relatively easy.”

Students with disabilities are graduating from high school at higher and higher rates. Rather than simply ‘exempting’ disabled students from state testing programs, they must be prepared to take these tests and school districts are being held accountable when this population does not make Annual Yearly Progress. So the bar has been raised and progress, while slow, is being made” said VanGenderen.

It seems that most in the teaching profession see that No Child Left Behind was created with the best intentions, but that it is a flawed system.

“I don’t think the idea of NCLB is all bad,” said Cathell. “The goal of ensuring ‘that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education’ is a commendable one. Personally, I think it’s a monumental undertaking and I’m not surprised we’ve found so many things lacking as we attempt to make it work.”

According to some teachers, this law also expects more from schools without giving them the necessary tools to achieve those goals.

“ No Child Left Behind provides no extra funding for the required help for students who don’t meet their standards,” said Govendo. “So a lot of schools find themselves having to provide different services without the same amount of personnel.”

For classroom teachers, the financial strain of No Child Left Behind even takes away from their own salaries.

“Children are being assessed on content and skills for which adequate materials might not have been available,” said Cathell. “As a classroom teacher, I can tell you that I’ve spent a sizable amount of my own money to purchase materials to prepare my students for the tests. And I’m not the only teacher to do this.”

Even the teachers who support the law have their doubts about this.

“In many rural or inner city districts, this requirement becomes more difficult to achieve,” said VanGenderen. “Federal and state funding may be at jeopardy if a district cannot recruit and retain teachers who are highly qualified”

There is also a lot of pressure on the schools to meet government standards and this affects the teacher’s abilities to teach. According to Rothchild, there are teachers who “get very anxious and upset during test time and it causes them to lose focus on teaching. There's tremendous pressure put onto the students, the teachers and the administrators to have the school do well on the school ‘report cards’ that are published every year.  If schools don't do well they could lose funding.

“We're told to be sure that kids develop critical thinking skills...which can be done in so many creative ways, but there's not so much time for this when we're shoving test prep down their throats” Rothchild said.

Another critical point is the absence of the children’s parents from a vast majority of this whole process.

“Part of the law requires schools to keep parents informed, but no part of the law requires anything of the parents,” said Cathell. “If you talk to many teachers, you’ll find most of us saying that we spend a lot more time today parenting our students than we did just 10 years ago. And we spend more time teaching parents how to raise their children. When you discuss a child’s success or failure on State Assessments, you can’t ignore the impact of their life at home on their growth and performance in school.”

The College of Saint Rose is known as a school for teachers, and No Child Left Behind is something that must be taught in the classrooms of this college. Even future teachers don’t seem to be too pleased with the law.

“It doesn’t leave much room for gifted and talented students,” said Brigitte Bondinello, a junior special education major. “Plus, English language learners can only be in the program for three years, and then apply for an extension, which obviously can hinder their education. For special ed, it seems like we have to do much more unnecessary work to test the students.”

Other education students agree.

“In class they said it puts a lot of pressure on teachers to have their students do well on standardized tests,” said Kara Kenny, a junior education major. “ And that it’s a major stress and anxiety factor in the classroom.”

It is quite clear that the consensus of those in the teaching profession feel that some change needs to be made to No Child Left Behind.

“Somewhere along the line, we lost sight of the reality that not everyone is the same academically. As an educator, why would I expect all my students to earn A’s and B’s? Some of them will earn C’s and do just fine in life,” said Cathell. “Will they all go to college? No. Will they become contributing citizens after they drop out of high school because they can’t pass the Global Studies or Biology regents the third time around? Probably, but I believe we’ve put them at greater risk unnecessarily.”