Going behind "No Child Left Behind"
Many speak out against the federal law

Jelean Durrant | photo editor
jdurrant@smcvt.edu

Imagine being a young student, dealing with social and academic pressures and seeing your school's name on the list of schools deemed "non-proficient." If you can imagine that, you may understand what it can feel like to be a student under the federal No Child Left Behind law (NCLB).

Across the country, many teachers and school administrators have been speaking out against NCLB, saying that the law is interfering with the academic enrichment of students and is costing schools more than they can afford.

St. Michael's Education professor Laima Ruoff says the NCLB law isn't up to par. (Jelean Durrant, photo)

“It [NCLB] is detrimental to everyone’s [teachers and students] self concept when it is publicly shown that their school is underperforming,” says Laima Ruoff, the chair of the education department at St. Michael’s College. “Then the federal government penalizes the school districts by taking away federal funding.”

The law and its purpose

NCLB is a federal law that all public elementary, middle, and high schools in the country are required to comply with it. The law was passed in 2001 with the purpose of attaining 100 percent proficiency in math and reading in all U.S. schools by the year 2014.

Additionally, science assessments must be developed and put into place by the 2007-08 school year and administered no less than one time during grades three through five, six through nine, and 10-12.

Jill Remick, communications director at the Vermont Department of Education, says NCLB was designed with the idea that there are many minority students, students who come from low income families, and students who live in poverty who are being left behind in the academic world. Remick says the government realized the education system needed help so that those students could receive equal education and reach higher achievement levels in years to come.

Under NCLB, students each year in grades three through eight and those in high school are required to take an assessment test to measure their proficiency levels. According to Remick, the schools that don’t meet the required level of proficiency are put on a list and each state is responsible for publishing the names of all the schools that aren’t making adequate yearly progress (AYP).

Problems with the law

Though the intentions of the law are positive, many people seem to have issues with the way in which it is set up.

"Instead of teaching social studies or science, teachers are teaching children how to fill in the bubbles," Ruoff says (Jelean Durrant, photo)

“I think it [NCLB] interferes with the school’s curriculum,” Ruoff says. It forces teachers to spend valuable academic time on teaching children how to take the test. It only measures children’s performance in one way, through standardized tests. Not everyone performs well on standardized tests. We have young children filling out bubbles; this is not a developmentally appropriate way to measure their performance.”

According to the NCLB Web site, each state has to design its own standardized test for all its students, including those with disabilities and language barriers.

“People don’t like the fact that different states have different tests and different standards,” Remick says.

According to Remick, every year the achievement levels that schools are required to reach go up, making it harder for students to pass.

“In addition to having to pass tests that get harder each year, if NCLB doesn’t work for a particular school, meaning the school hasn’t made AYP for several years, the principal of that school can be replaced,” Remick says. “Though this hasn’t happened in Vermont there are states that this has happened to.”

Another big issue is that NCLB costs schools more than the government is willing to give.

“This is a law that is under-funded,” Ruoff says. “It is mandated by the federal government, but they don’t help fund the cost of the testing. So this financial burden takes away from things like textsbooks, field trips and other school activities and materials that might help further the children’s learning.”

Connecticut not connecting

According to Hendry Garcia, bureau chief with the office of education in Connecticut the states Attorney General Richard Blumenthal sued the federal government, stating that the NCLB legislation amounts to an unfunded mandate. Connecticut was the first state to file such a lawsuit.

“We’re arguing that though we aren’t opposed to the law, we’re against implemented unfunded mandates,” Garcia says. “We do what they [the federal government] say, but they aren’t giving us enough money to do it. They say they are giving us millions, but it’s not enough.”

Garcia says that because of NCLB, Connecticut has had to test more students. They used to test only the students in grades four, six, eight, and 10, but under NCLB the state is now required to test students in grades three, five, and seven, even though the extra funds aren’t given for them to do so.

“In Connecticut we demand that students do more than just multiple-choice questions,” Garcia says. “We require that they have open-ended questions on their tests, so it costs more money to develop these kinds of tests. We want students to use their critical thinking skills but the federal government says other states are doing multiple-choice, so they don’t want to give us more money.”

Garcia says that though he thinks NCLB has a great objective, the federal government needs to give states more financial assistance.

“We think a lot of things about it [NCLB] are important,” Garcia says. “We just need more money to accomplish those things.”

The student-teacher perspective

Jordan Smith is a student-teacher who deals with NCLB issues while teaching in Malletts Bay School in colchester Vermont. (photo, courtesy of Jordan Smith)

St. Michael’s senior Jordan Smith is a student-teacher at Malletts Bay School in Colchester, Vt. Like many others, Smith says she understands the idea behind NCLB, but says having to prepare students for the standardized tests is time consuming.

“These standardized tests are different from the assessments they’ve been given [in the past],” Smith says. “So in order to prepare them for these tests, which are foreign to them, we try to do weekly worksheets, which takes time out of normal class instruction. I think that time could be better spent.”

Smith says that the law assumes that teaches don’t already do what is needed to help students reach their potential.

“Any teacher in their right mind is trying to get all their students to their potential achievement level,” Smith says. “This is something that we all want idealistically for the student; to have none of them ‘left behind.’”