Chapter 5

No Child Left Behind is something that consistently arises in class discussion. Many problems have arisen over what went wrong with this plan, things such as over-reliance on standardized testing. This chapter brings up issues such as this. This one quality of the NCLB act requires teachers to cover specific curriculum, and therefore engage most of their focus in preparation for a test. This leads to a whole bunch of problems such as a national curriculum, or standards in a sense, and furthering the justification for problems based on performance. Although the testing is designed to see where funding and help would be needed it also helps to isolate the problem by dumbing down teaching style and curriculum, and pinpointing the poor performing schools. This could cause more stratification, because those with the means to go to a different school could opt out to leave when test performances are made known. Do you think that less foreseen effects, such as the increase of stratification I just mentioned, have come from the No Child Left Behind? Also, we spend a lot of time talking about the negatives of the No Child Left Behind Act, can you think of any positives of the Act which you would carry over into newer legislative reforms.