No Child Left Behind

This education research paper topic centers on No Child Left Behind. You will want it to examine the effectiveness of No Child Left Behind. Custom research papers are Paper Masters specialty.

In an effort to raise the standards of public school education in the United States, Former President Bush and his supporters believed that holding schools accountable by measuring academic progress would also improve programs and education. Critics of NCLB legislation would also like to see improvement in public school education.

The thesis statement on No Child Left Behind you see here is just a SAMPLE research paper of what we can provide you in research.

The matter of reforming the American public education system has been a major plank of George W. Bush's campaign and presidency. One of the first major actions of Bush's presidency was signing into law a measure that was designed to ensure a high degree of quality for all students attending American public schools. This legislation, known as the No Child Left Behind Act, touches on a broad variety of issues relating to public education, including the dispersal of federal funds and parental choice in the case of failing schools and for the learning disabled. The term papers and studies reviewed here have presented a broad variety of information and findings pertaining to the type of high-stakes standardized testing that is proposed in president Bush's No Child Left Behind Act.

The Law and No Child Left Behind

The law gives the federal government unprecedented input into the quality of public education in the United States. It emphasizes issues such as funding for poor school districts, achievement for poor and minority students, and accountability for student progress. The accountability and testing issue has become the most debated aspect of the NCLB law.

The provisions for accountability required the expansion of standardized testing for students in the primary grades each year in reading and math. Most of the debate on this issue focused on how states would maintain control over their own standards and tests, how these testing mandates would be funded, how the test results would be reported, and how schools would be held accountable. Also, the law did not explain the criteria for passing or failing. Finally, critics worried that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) would be used as a national benchmark against which state test scores would be judged.

One of the main directives of the NCLB law is that states must implement challenging academic standards in reading and math. Objectives must ensure that all groups of students are proficient by graduation, and progress will be monitored through annual testing. Federally mandated testing is prohibited, but rather, states must design their own tests and align them with state curriculum standards. The federal government is required to provide funding to assist with test development.Why Did We Need NCLB

The NCLB Act was initiated because proponents felt it would finally keep children from falling through cracks in underachieving schools. To achieve this, the following changes to the educational landscape were undertaken:

1. Annual testing was mandated for reading and math.
2. Academic progress was to tracked through proficiency tests.
3. Annual report cards had to be furnished.
4. Funding was redistributed to give states more flexibility in how to distribute allotments.

Many advocates of special education children have criticized the fact that special needs students are held to state standards in order to graduate but yet are not provided with the education necessary to pass the tests. However, one lawyer for special needs students supports the NCLB Act. Byrne notes that NCLB requires schools to test all children and measure progress. Previously, schools could lump all tests together and use the highest performing students to outweigh the special education students. With NCLB, schools must demonstrate progress in subgroups. Therefore, the public can see how schools have progressed with poor, minority and disabled children. Furthermore, he says that the criticism of lack of funding is useless. History has shown that laws demand behavior and accountability.