No Child Left Behind

President Bush called No Child Left Behind "the cornerstone of my administration," back in 2001. Even Senator Kerry voted for it. It gave unprecedented control to the federal government, which is a major deal since it comes from a Republican, a group who normally advocates state control over education issues. Now, four years later, the law has shown some major problems in the implementation of its goal and fundamental problems with the law itself. During the election you would have expected something this important would have received more focus during debates about domestic issues. However, because of the fact the two candidates did not want to show some courage and make any major changes to No Child Left Behind during the election, it became somewhat of a moot point. No Child Left Behind is broken and all of the politicians are afraid to fix it.

The purpose of No Child Left Behind is to close the achievement gap and to make sure that all children learn their math and reading by 2014. The law tries to accomplish this hefty goal by implementing different tactics. One of them is to have stronger accountability in the schools. In order to achieve this goal they use standardized tests to see how well the schools are teaching all of the students, with specific emphasis on students who are disadvantaged, like poor students or minority students. They divide the students into subgroups according their ethnic backgrounds and wealth and give them the tests. The tests are supposed to show how well the students are doing learning their basic skills such as math and reading. In theory, the school can then identify those students who are falling behind and focus more attention and resources on them. The schools then test the students again in order to determine if there was any improvement in their basic skills. If there is no improvement in two years the school system must provide other alternatives for the children. For example, the school system must pay for the