No Child Left Behind
In 2002 the United States government passed an act that would give more opportunity for all children, rich or poor. It was aimed to make schools more accountable, give parents greater choices in education for their children, and close the wide gap between ethnic minorities and Caucasians.
The No Child Left Behind Act benefits children by aiming to remedy what some believe was the failure of the government to deal with an education system that could not longer deal with the great demands placed upon it. It would ensure that teachers taught only within their expertise. It would stop the complacent attitudes of schools towards their increasing failure to properly educate America’s children.
Since the No Child Left Behind Act came into affect, the U.S. Department of Education has seen greater improvements in students’ marks in math’s and reading since 2005. The data collected showed that the progression of 9-year-olds during the past 5 years has increased more than it had ever done so in all 28 years prior to that. In fact, young teenagers showed the highest scores in math’s ever recorded in American history. Despite this, the gaps between the achievements of African American and Hispanic children versus Caucasian children could never have been lower. However, the overall results across DC and 43 other states showed academic improvements.
The No Child Left Behind Act had set out to benefit every child. It is still gaining ground. Now every penny put into education has to be accounted for by administrators. State academic standards are linked with students’ grades. In fact, minorities like low-income, disabled, Latinos, African Americans and others must be better served by both schools and their districts, with the priority focus on traditional academic achievement.
Other improvements in this educational focus would benefit children in such areas as:
- Closing gaps between rich and poor
- Support of early reading programs
- Improved educational quality
- Better classroom practices
- More parental involvement
- More professional development programs
- Improved standards of administration
- Continued and increased monitoring of childhood performances in math’s and reading
- Return to the traditional core academics – science, math, reading and writing
- Add subjects to the core – art and algebra
- Make school/district reports more detailed for parents
- Make schools keep parents informed of the teachers qualifications to teach their child
- Allow children better access to other schools that better meet their needs or higher standards
- Evaluate school districts based on performance, proficiency and improvements
- More funding resources for schools
- Develop commonly respected expectations amongst all ethnicities of students
The ‘No Child Left Behind’ law will probably show its greatest improvements in the future in the United States’ impoverished south, where the numbers of those even graduating high school is still the lowest in the country. Here the statistics for college and university graduates is still dramatically lower than the rest of the country, and the numbers of African Americans, Hispanics and Latinos are much higher.