no child left behind

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On high stakes ' standardized testing

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was signed into law with the aim of improving the performance of primary and secondary schools all over the country . One of its features is standardized testing wherein which all students are to be subjected to the same statewide battery of aptitude tests and measured against uniform passing criteria . The students ' performance would determine whether they would be promoted from one grade to the next , graduate , accelerate grades or take remedial

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This type of testing would be good in determining the gaps in learning among schools within districts and states . Policy makers , together with the education department , could use the data that would be generated to determine which good schools should be lauded and given more funding Schools would also know the standing of their respective institution and their students compared to others in the district and even in the state so they could plan future programs and inter-school reforms along their weak points using the test results as gauge

The disadvantage of standardized testing may lie on the unfairness of the process to the diverse cultures in schools and the general types of students from the immediate community who attend them . Although all public schools may follow the same curricula and program of skills to develop among students in every level , factors like race , economic status , number of students with disabilities , and English-language ability of the general student population could affect the overall performance of the school and thus , their standing , reputation , and federal funding allotted to the school . There are also other factors which affect the passing rate of students which are not considered in the law . For example , communities which could provide better learning opportunities for children like access to good libraries and community groups supportive to school endeavors could produce better-performing students

Another concern is the fact that because of the high stakes ' of the exam , schools and teachers would focus their attention towards teaching the students how to pass the exam instead of teaching lessons in the usual ways . Some schools might also start eliminating students who are performing poorly because retaining them would affect the overall average of the school . The worst scenario , but hopefully something that schools would not resort to , is schools rigging test results to improve their standing

Standardized tests would be good but only if they would be used to gather data about the quality of education among public schools today and not as major determinant to the future of the child and the federal budget allotted to schools . An alternative to standardized testing would be to use the student 's grade in the test as a mere fraction of the like a multiple intelligences test could comprise the remaining percentages . Another alternative is to train the teachers and introduce them to a nationwide objective-based curriculum . This way every teacher would know which particular skills and how much of each should be...