It has already been noted that schools have had to trim down on the subjects that are being taught, and the depths to which certain subjects are taught, and this ha of course had a direct effect on teachers' ability to both direct their own teaching and serve what many feel is the true purpose of their work as teachers -- providing true cultural knowledge and critical thinking rather than simply fundamentals. Though change was definitely needed, the No Child Left Behind Act was not the right change according to many teachers.
Schools that were already strapped for funds were the hardest hit by the new regulations and standards for federal funds, as they had fewer resources with which to achieve the standards being set by the No Child Left Behind Act and to provide the individual attention that the legislation required from each student as part of the school's "report card" (Reeves 2003). Especially hard hit were schools in rural areas, which are typically the schools with the least in the amount of absolute and per-student funding and also have difficulty attracting teachers (Reeves 2003). It was immediately clear that these schools would be unable to comply with the standards of the legislation and would suffer the consequences of reduced funding if state and county governments did not intervene and find ways to change their rural schools; for teachers this meant the instant increase of bureaucratic intervention in the teaching practice that did not clearly improve academic achievement, but that quite clearly frustrated teachers' intentions 9 Reeves 2003; Toppo 2007; Bernstein 2010).
The No Child Left Behind Act also had immediate implications for teachers in terms of job security. Section 1119 of the actual text of the legislation mandates that all teachers teaching "core" subjects be "highly qualified," and that states and schools must show certain increases in the number of "highly qualified" teachers employed (USDOE 2001). This has several implications for teachers. First, the designation of core subjects automatically relegates other subjects to lower attention, funding, and support. Second, the term "highly qualified" is loosely defined and the requirement of improvements in the numbers of "highly qualified" teachers necessarily entails many teacher losing their jobs due to this Act.
Personal Assessment
As stated in the introduction to this paper, I do not believe that the No Child Left Behind Act has been especially effective in achieving its desired goals or in improving education at all. It has done little if anything to close the education gap that exists between minorities and non-minorities and between genders, and also ended up hurting many of the schools that were already some of the worst performers. While removing unqualified and/or bad teachers and improving standards are certainly laudable goals and something that everyone can probably support, cutting funding to schools that fail to perform is certainly not the way to go about achieving these goals. In addition to these general problems, there is also one specific area of the legislation that has me especially worried and angered.
There are several ways in which the No Child Left Behind Act is unfair to special needs students, teachers, and classrooms. First, the legislation mandates the same standards for all learners, and while most students with special needs are quite capable making large advancements in their learning, certain standards are simply out of step with developmental trends in certain disabilities (IU 2006). In addition, special needs classrooms often cannot progress in as linear a fashion as is proscribed by the standards of the legislation; the many different learning needs and developmental stages of students often involves varying curriculum that are not supported...
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