No child left behind?

No Child Left Behind: A Success or a Failure?

In January 8, 2002 President of the United States singed the program called No Child Left Behind that is the federal law in this country. Its aim is to “Improve the performance of the U.S primary and secondary schools by increasing the standards of accountability for states, School districts and schools, as well as providing parents more flexibility in choosing which schools their children will attend.” It will also increase focus on reading, writing and math skills especially on those students who desperately needs this attention. This program requires more hours spend on reading, writing and math in school and cutting off subjects such as history and other arts. However, this reform program became the matter of vital controversy, especially from the parents’ side. According to them, the program is concentrated on weak students who have difficulties. But what about the children who are gifted? In a lot of families there are exceptionally bright children who may lose the opportunity to develop their art skills because they will have to boringly be on the same page with the ‘left behind’ students. Will not the gifted students be ‘left behind’ than?
The resent test result depicts that “Nearly a quarter of pupils are unable to read at the appropriate level, the state extends ‘personal literacy plans’ to reach those in higher grades.” It is scary that such amounts of young students in the U. S. have problems with basic reading, writing and math skills and they are below grade level. The J. Jordan in his article writes that “In several urban districts, the problem is far worse- about half of their students struggle with reading.” But the problems include also writing and counting abilities. Therefore recognizing as soon as possible such problem and solving it, is necessary for the success of the future generation and the each individual child. If they need extra help with those subjects they should necessary get the kind of ‘personal literacy plan’ that will gear to meet the needs of those children with the special attention and let them be more profitable in later years. For example, reading is the essential ability and it is really important to understand what a child reads because being able to read instruction in every subject in school but also in life, is the key to good existence. Reading, writing and math will be significant from first-grade through college, and throughout adulthood. People will not have possibility for better choices in their life, if the fact of poor literacy will not change. It is really important to educate the nation in as early childhood as possible hence in later future and in the higher levels of education, they will not struggle with the fundamental skills needed to develop in other, more sophisticated subjects like history, biology, geography, chemistry, music and other interests. I believe that the idea of the No Child Left Behind program has a good reasons and goals because what Flahery, the deputy commissioner of education, said “Deficient reading skills lead to other problems, including students frustration and behavior issues and a higher dropout rate”. Therefore it may cause even more problems not only in school but also in life outside of it.
No Child Left Behind program has a good base. Its goal is to focus on the crucial education of all children. This program definitely will gain a success but only for those students who need the additional attention. Unfortunately, it really concentrates only on the weak students and leaves the gifted ‘at the back’. It is a failure for the bright students who need to focus on more advance subjects that will bring them joy and achievement. From my perspective, the educational system in U. S. should find other solution for this really important problem. The suggestion would be to create a school that stands between the elementary and high school. If the child will not get the certain scores to get to high school it should be sent to it where concentration and more individual studies are involved. If the students will advance fast, he/she can be transferred to high school. This method works perfectly in some other countries and there is rather not much children ‘left behind’.