"No Child Left Behind" - Help or Hinderance?

In his first term of office, George W. Bush created federal legislation that was suppose to bring accountability to public schools. This legislation, "No Child Left Behind," was enacted in 2001 with the goal of making sure that ALL students across the nation would learn academic skills as determined by each state. Sounds good, but...
Children are being left behind. Some say they’re being left behind at a greater rate than before the act was passed. Why?

• One of the problems with the act is that it assumes that administrators and teachers in schools that are failing aren’t doing their jobs. This act is designed to show that teachers are not educating the children properly, and they will be shamed into doing their jobs better lest they want to be branded as a failure again and again.
• This legislation made no provisions for students with special learning needs or IQ differences. Hence, a special education student with an IQ of 56 is required to pass the same achievement test as a regular student with and IQ of 100+.
• It doesn't actually measure students' performance from year to year; progress is compared from one grade's performance to the same grade's performance a year later. So if a school's fourth graders reach the 50th percentile in English, the next year's class of fourth graders would have to do better for the school to progress, even though different students are being tested.
• There are 37 criteria that have to be met for adequate yearly progress. If a school meets 36 of the 37 criteria, it's deemed as much a failure as the school that got zero of the 37. Even if students are growing academically, they may not be growing at a fast enough pace to avoid failure. For instance, if the goal is the 65th percentile in English, and you bring a group of kids from the 35th up to the 60th , you've still failed.
• Those schools that received Title I funding from the government were the only schools monitored and held accountable during the first three years of the new legislation. These are the schools with the most at-risk populations and the highest percentage of special education students. Any of these schools that did not show the required level of academic achievement growth over a continuous 2-year period received the label "failing schools" and faced sanctions that included being reported in the newspaper and allowing parents to move their children to another school. After 3 years, the schools face more severe sanctions that include dismantling the entire staff, closure, and take over.
• In order to pass the most students, states have set the bar at the proficiency level. With the focus set on "proficiency" (minimal basic skills), this will not “maximize the capacity” of every student. No only will special education students suffer, but academically gifted students will not be challenged as they should.

Additionally, the federal government did not fully fund this new legislation. So, there is inadequate money and other resources available to support this federal mandate. Each state is left to its own means and standards to determine the curriculum, assessment, funding sources, etc. that would be established for measuring school accountability. Revisions were made in the 2004 version of NCLB, but much of what was wrong with the original legislation remains intact.

No Child Left Behind - consistent with most of the George W. Bush policies? This Blogger thinks so. Agree? Disagree? Share your thoughts, questions, experiences.

Links:

http://www.publiceducation.org/2006_NCLB/main/index.asp

http://www.fairtest.org/presidentelect-barack-obama-no-child-left-behind

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2001918661_raspberry04.html

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/special_reports/bushplan/test191.shtml

http://www.novoteleftbehind.net/getedu_archive/nochild.php

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=No_Child_Left_Behind_Act

http://www.edweek.org/rc/issues/no-child-left-behind/

http://www.edexcellence.net/doc/NCLBreport.pdf