While the stated goals of the No Child Left Behind Act seem reasonable at first glance, as the years pass educators and parents have come to question its effectiveness.
The No Child Left Behind Act, an adaptation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), is the primary law on the federal level that governs all public schools in the United States. It was a seminal law from the new president in an attempt to raise the level of learning for all students by narrowing the levels of achievement among school children and making sure that all teachers were appropriately qualified.
However, in reality, instead of concentrating on developing well-rounded children, American students are being stuffed into daily time blocks that drill the testable math and language arts skills they will need to perform at a level that will allow their schools to be adequately funded the next year.
Changes to the No Child Left Behind Act
The United States Congress is scheduled to re-authorize the law next year; however, there are some issues with the changes that are included in the plans. One of the main concerns yet to be addressed is the money that is going to be appropriated to fund the reforms – most analysts believe the money is no where large enough to fund the law, and that the distributions are inconsistent among the states.
Not to worry, however. U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, one of the chief architects of original The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), announced recently that she plans on taking matters into her own hands to make substantive changes to the No Child Left Behind without waiting for Congress to take action. Several educational groups will be watching this unilateral approach very carefully.
Standards May Be The Key to Successful Reform
As educators know, along with local school district or county academic standards, there exist numerous national, international, and collegiate standards that have been created after long periods of examination and discussions for each field of study. It is at the benchmark level where schools can make connections with nationally established standards, such as the learning goals that are found in Project 2061's Benchmarks for Science Literacy.
By following this approach schools can assure each gifted student's progress towards exit-level standards by providing observable and measurable outcomes that fit within the curriculum and are substantiated by national standards! Any number of assessment devices can be used to substantiate a student's progress towards exit-level standards including the use of portfolios, rubrics, self-evaluations, traditional testing materials, teacher/student conferences, computer technologies, running records, literature logs, peer conferences, journals, logs, and a number of other similar tools.
The Department of Education had a similar opportunity when originally drafting the No Child Left Behind Act. There could have been a gathering of educators from around the country to set reasonably appropriate standards taken from the best standards available to meet the needs of American school children. This would then allow the states the opportunities to examine the needs of their children and design the curricula for the different schools that meet local needs.
Instead, the Law provides no curricular guidance on the federal level for the individual states to follow, which means that each state is free to set its own set of standards and levels of competencies. Needless to say, there are some vast differences between states’ expectations as a result – what could be top level work in one state as reported on their standardized tests could be barely passing in another.
No Mention of Gifted Children
Somewhere in the middle of all these discussions, and perhaps lost in the process, is the topic of gifted education. None of these reforms talk about gifted and talented children – our country’s greatest natural resource. In fact, even with the scheduled reauthorization of the NCLB Law next year, even greater damage could be done to gifted education.
For over a year now, national organizations that support gifted children, including the umbrella organization of almost all other programs, the National Association of Gifted Children, have been warning about the U.S. Department of Education’s plans to diminish the only federal program that supports gifted students. The fact of the matter is that the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act of 1994 was written and designed to support children who have been identified as gifted and talented. While some of the principals of gifted education can help some other students in the classroom, the spirit behind the Act has been to support gifted children.
What Can Be Done?
Given all of this, what can be done to both overhaul the government’s efforts to refurbish the No Child Left Behind Act and to benefit gifted education?
The first and most obvious answer is that principals, teachers and parents need to have a better understanding and a larger voice in what’s happening to their schools. Students need to receive an education that is driven by a standards-based curriculum, and not by preparing for a high stakes standardized test.
Teachers need to be free to teach subject material and not worry about having their names published in the local newspapers because their children didn’t spend enough time drilling to take a test. The government needs to take a leadership role in establishing a set of well-established standards for all disciplines, including math and reading, and help the states by appropriately funding and supporting each state’s efforts to raise students’ levels of achievement. Tests need to be used to assess students’ learning to adjust a school’s curriculum and to help develop a learning plan for boys and girls, and not to just hold them back.
And, when all of this happens, then maybe schools can then take a few minutes and couple of dollars to support the gifted and talented children, who are now being lost in the mix.
