An Opinion by Sarah Tarver
News editor
No Child Left Behind is the name given to the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that was signed in January 2002. The real nickname should be Every Child Left Behind.
Although this act had good intentions, it has only been a detriment to our education system. I agree with the premise, that no child should be left behind, but the implementation is not achieving this goal.
With the standards currently in place, teachers are stuck teaching to a test, as well as teaching to the lowest test grade in the class.
So now teachers have students in their classes who are a grade behind, if not more, because no one wants to hold little Suzie back, and the teacher must teach only to Suzie.
The rest of the class is bored and not learning anything, but if the teacher cannot get Suzie to pass the test, then he or she is a failure.
No one is learning anything, except little Suzie, who feels like she is stupid because she needs the extra attention. This is why I say that this program is indeed “Every Child Left Behind.”
According to the department of education website, http://www.ed.gov/esea, the Obama administration is proposing changes, such as looking at the progress of each student instead of looking just at whether or not students can pass the test at their grade level.
If NCLB is altered to look at how much a student improves, instead of whether or not they can pass the test, then a student who improves, let’s say, their reading level by two grade levels but is still a grade level behind will be moved on.
That teacher is a success. He or she did an incredible job, but at what cost?
It is possible that another student in the class did not advance as much as he or she could have, and this is not the fault of the teacher, but of NCLB and its mandates.
There is a lot of controversy over holding students back (in fact Merry Gordon, a writer for education.com, wrote an article titled “Should Your Child Be Held Back a Grade? Know Your Rights”), and yet there is no issue with sports players being placed on a junior varsity instead of varsity.
If players need a bit more work, or could hone their skills a bit more, it is beneficial, for them to be on the jv team where they will get to play more and improve more.
If a player who is not ready gets moved up to varsity, then it is likely that he or she will sit on the bench for the majority of the season, falling even further behind in his or her training.
Learning is the same way. Sometimes it takes a little longer for someone to understand certain concepts. This does not make the student any less intelligent; it just means he or she learns at a different pace than the other students.
Holding a student back so that kids are at the same level is beneficial for everyone involved. The teachers are not spending most of their time working with just one or two students, unintentionally neglecting the rest of the class, and the students in all classes will get a better education because the teacher has the ability to provide it.
According to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California that looked at improvement of students who repeated first or second grade, “Most first-graders made sizeable improvements in reading skills when they repeated that grade, and second-graders made meaningful gains in English language arts and math in the year they were retained.”
Most school districts have honors, or advanced placement programs, some starting as early as third grade. This is like a freshman being recruited to play on the varsity team.
So why can’t it go the other way? Why can’t we have classes for students who may not have reached the standards for the grade yet? Why put the junior on the varsity team, just because they have already been on the JV team for a year, if they are not ready yet?
These issues are a lot simpler than everyone is making them out to be. Kids all learn differently and at different speeds. There is nothing wrong with that, and it isn’t fair to try to push kids beyond their abilities.
But at the same time it isn’t fair to, in a sense, hold back an entire class because we won’t hold back the one student who needs it.