Chapter Review

Running head : NCLB 'S PITFALLS

NCLB 's Pitfalls and Potentials NCLB 's Pitfalls and Potential

The book Many Children Left Behind (Meier and Wood , 2004 ) shoves a direct attack on the No Child Left Behind Act , commonly shortened as NCLB . Its second chapter , penned by co-author George H . Wood focused on the detrimental effects of the law to the actual classrooms and schools that are included in NCLB 's scope : the schools of United States of America

The chapter expounded on how the one-size-fits-all style of testing of NCLB , which is

recommended for standardization of measurement of school calibre , forces the school administrators and teachers to put aside other activities unrelated to testing and simply focus on making the grade . With these schools ' credibility and even , in some cases , their very existence endangered by the threat of punishment upon the acquisition of a failing mark on the tests , the schools do whatever they have to do in to protect themselves . Unfortunately , the ones on the losing side of this whole matter are other than the students who get to be constantly made to study for the rigorous examination withholding naps and break times in favour for more study time . Not only that but some schools , in their desperation to save themselves from the iron arm of the NCLB , encourage the method of teaching narrower variety of s to those to be included in the tests (known as the teaching to the test method ) or provide distorted incentives to students just to make the school look good . But the worst deal of all is when students are forced to transfer or drop out entirely just to make the school 's test statistics look good it is in this arrangement that the gap between race and financial capacity gets widened to the detriment of the students . According to Wood , the humanity and the experience of school is stripped by the test-mindedness school environment encouraged by NCLB . And this loss of experience is not confined to students . Teachers are the ones in the middle , getting torn between doing what they should do as teachers and doing what they should do to help the students pass the tests . In the end , some of them become pawns to the NCLB , their work reduced as hander of worksheets and test-drillers of children they ought to be teaching with all they know , in the best possible way they know - sucking up the joy of their profession

However bad the NCLB might have turned out in reality , surely the rationale for its implementation only aims for a better calibre of students for the country . Those tests were not initially designed to torture the students into overworked test-oriented zombies , but to see whether there have been improvements in them every year . The insistence for highly-qualified teachers is not for the purpose of discriminating against those who are not , but to provide the students with the best possible mentors the country can offer . But , it cannot be denied...